re: I still love Will Wade

“Dumpster fire? LSU was not the dumpster fire people say when WW took over. They had one bad year before he took over. Before that they finished 3rd in conference in back to back years. One of which was a sweet 16 appearance. Which is further than a WW coached team ever went in his career.”



Everything you posted here is false.
Here is what really took place the 3 seasons prior to Wade’s arrival.

2016-17- (10-21) overall record, (2-16 SEC record) worst in program history, 13th place in the SEC.

2015-16- (19-14) overall, (11-7) in the SEC, no NCAA tourney, no NIT, 4th place in the SEC.

2014-15- (22-11) overall, (11-7) in the SEC, 1st round NCAA tourney loss to NC State, 3rd place in the SEC.

If Woodward was not a flaming vagina with an anti-Wade agenda none of this would have ever happened.

I’m the biggest Wade fanboy in the world, but what Coach Matt has done in his short time here is astounding. But if it wasn’t for WW our fandom would not be at this level for basketball. Coach Matt will lead us into the promise land, WW kicked the door, MM will knock that sob down boyz!

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But are we ending up with a better HC?

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no doubt. Wade was terrible at Xs/Os

I’ve always liked WW, I think he got a bum deal. But I think his attorney gave him some bad advise in regards to communicating with lsu. Two sides to every story I guess. I enjoyed his fire on the sidelines

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ok, so give me a number (a hard number) of the years of experience as a D-I head coach where the "he's young and learning" can't be used anymore.

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Do your own research.
How old was John Wooden when he became a winner? Then he found a millionaire who helped him sign the best players in America. Goodrich, Walten, Alcindor, Bibby
Coach K was on the verge of being fired, after three years, then he signed a recruit named Johnny Dawkins. He was worth as much to the program as Zion.
Wade had enough talent signed to put us in the running for a National Championship. Without the injuries, we may have been in the running last season.

Should have seen Miller's face light up when Jordy mentioned Wade on his show last week. They love the man.

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Wade fans will forever embellish how bad the program was when he took over, then conveniently ignore that McMahon inherited an empty roster and a very dark cloud of sanctions.

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The Jones era peaked in 14-15 with the NCAA Tournament appearance. The next season preseason expectations where the the highest they had been in years with a highly ranked recruiting class coming in headlined by Ben Simmons. LSU was a preseason top 25 team for the first time in nearly 10 years. Almost from the jump that team looked like they weren't going to live up to expectations as they lost 4 of their first 8 games. 3 of which to VERY mediocre teams. Once SEC play started LSU started to improve. The season then reached a crescendo when #1 Oklahoma entered a completely full PMAC. LSU lost a heartbreaker that day which signified the beginning of the end of the waste of time that was the Jones era. By the end of the season the team, and their best player (Simmons) had flat out quit. Culminating in a 33 point loss to Texas A&M in the SEC Tournament where LSU scored at TOTAL of 38 points.

The next season apathy completely set in. Everyone knew Jones was on his way out after wasting the prior season (IIRC, LSU was the only preseason top 25 team to not make the NCAAT). At very best, only about 5,000 asses were in seats at the PMAC to watch LSU flop to its worst SEC performance in program history. Any and all goodwill the program had built up between 2013-2016 was COMPLETELY gone. Wade walked into a program where the feeling surrounding it was worse than anger. It was apathy. No one gave a shite. From his very first press conference he instilled a sense of hope and belief in the program. He then went out and signed Tremont Waters who was the key in taking a team picked to finish dead last in the SEC to one that was at least competitive.

McMahon walked into a tough situation. However, the sense surrounding the program was the complete opposite from when Wade took over. Anger surrounded the program. Not apathy. I will ALWAYS argue apathy is worse because anger at least means someone still cares enough to get angry. And Wade had shown that with solid players you COULD consistently win at LSU...something no other HC had done in nearly 30 years.

Now, to be fair, Wade did not have to deal with an ENTIRE roster deciding (initially) they weren't returning to the team. That was unprecedented (at least at LSU). But McMahon also had two big advantages available to him that Wade didn't in 2017 to help quickly rebuild the roster. The one-free-transfer rule AND NIL, which essentially sanctioned "pay for play". McMahon took full advantage to both retain some players from last year's team and bring in key transfers (along with highly rated freshmen).

Who entered a "worse" situation is completely subjective. Wade had a roster when he arrived. But it was one that produced terrible results the year before and he had very few tools at his disposal to quickly rebuild the program. McMahon had no roster. But he also had tools available to quickly rebuild it.

I was a Wade fan. I was angry to see him go because I know the last 4-5 years of consistent success was the outlier relative to the last 30 years of LSU basketball. However, I'm not so self-absorbed as to completely dismiss the success of the prior coach (Wade), or hope for the failure of the new coach (McMahon) just to win some sort message board credit points. I hope McMahon exceeds any and all success Wade had at LSU. But that hope doesn't cause me to ignore the fact Wade was the best thing to happen to LSU basketball in 30 years. Even if LSU does face the "dark cloud of sanctions" (and I don't think they will. Those will be reserved for Wade individually) so what? LSU returns to being the mediocre to bad program for a few years... just like they were for most of the 30 years prior to Wade? As a fan I'd rather have enjoyed consistent success and lose it rather than rarely seen it all

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Wade fans will forever embellish how bad the program was when he took over,

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No embellishment needed.

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But I think his attorney gave him some bad advise in regards to communicating with lsu.

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It was good advice, and here’s why.

LSU could have fired Miles with cause (sexual harassment + covering up rape) in 2013 but didn’t because FKA had political aspirations that could have been sabotaged by such a scandal. In 2016, LSU fired Miles for football reasons and paid a buyout. Later, at the same time that Orgeron was doing his own rape cover-upping and while a giant lawsuit was in the works, Wade (who doesn’t harass women and cover up rape) gets the NCAA’s attention for possible/obvious basketball violations.

By not cooperating with the investigation (and getting suspended), he dared LSU to fire him with cause, which would have given him grounds for a juicy lawsuit at the expense of an employer who paid two rape-cover-upping football coaches’ buyouts but not the buyout of him, a (dirty) basketball coach who never hurts people.

LSU, in transition with a new AD and president, called his bluff and reinstated him under the agreement that if there were any level 1’s or 2’s, he’s gone. In came the letter, and out went Wade.

Another WW thread