To break up the monotony of football crash and burn threads, Will Wade was on Off the Bench this morning to talk about the team and upcoming season ( LINK)

Here are some notes on what Wade talked about.

On Javonte Smart:
- Great honor being recognized as a Bob Cousy award nominee
- Will be great and had best shooting score in 3 pt. drill on Mon. (made 100 of 108)
- Exhibiting great leadership skills

Offensive outlook:
- Jokingly said if he just stays out of the way, they will be alright.
- Told story about a TN high school coach who had a talented team and one day while Wade was observing their practice all they did was 3 on 2, 2 on 1 drills and then scrimmaged, and the coach told Wade he probably wondered what he was doing. The coach said I could coach them a lot, but we wouldn’t be nearly as good if I did.

Defensive philosophy:
- Have spent more time working on defense this offseason and in practice than probably last 3 years combined.
- Said that both Armstrong and Nickelberry are well versed in the defensive philosophy and scheme they plan to run. (Of note, Armstrong coached under Andy Kennedy at Ole Miss, who generally had a really good 2-3 zone defense)
- Said the defensive culture and mindset was all over the place the last few years and had you asked players what were the 3 main defensive focal points they had as a team, you probably would’ve gotten 15 different answers. This year that is different and all the players, 1-15, are on the same page defensively and know what the staff wants and expects out of them.

Extended and unusual offseason:
- Said they lost their way last year and weren’t where they needed to be. Said there was several reasons for that, but it starts with him.
- Said the culture they had built in the first 2 years had gotten off track and out of whack, so he knew they needed to get that back and “recalibrate”.
- Having big roster turnover helps with this b/c they didn’t see what things were like last year and the returning players knew that things weren’t right and are excited to get back to a better culture.

Mental part of game:
- Expects this season to be even more of a grind and teams will have to be even more mentally tough.
- Have spent more time and a whole new level on the mental aspect of game.
- Greg Graber (mindfulness coach), Joel Fish (sports psychologist), and Bruce Buggs (LSU asst. dir. of mental health for student athletes) make up the "high performance team" and work with the team extensively.
- Changes to staff have been huge for them. Vernon Hamilton is new asst. to HC and Lebrent Walker was moved up from GA to coordinator of basketball ops.
- Feels they are very high functioning and probably the best from an organizational standpoint they have been since here. Said it fell off last year, but are getting it back (he eluded to the culture of last year a lot…curious what this is about…I am assuming some of the reasons for why Heiar left played into this).

Schedule and fan capacity:
- Most of what he said is the same that Royal had in his post from last night in the schedule thread; so I’ll just post his comments here and a link to the post: ( LINK)
- "I was on a Zoom call with Will Wade last night. He hoped to have the schedule finalized by the end of the week. I think he said there will be 6 non-conference games followed by a multi-team event (MTE) in early January. The MTE is being finalized this week.

PMAC attendance is going to be limited to approximately 25% or 3,000 attendees. The bleachers will be pushed back to allow additional room between the court/players and spectators. This will obviously shrink the 100 level seating. He mentioned changes to team seating and scorers table (but no details). He also said that television commentators will be remote.

I recall La Tech in early December at home, South Florida in Atlanta, UNO, and VCU. He had two offers he was considering for the last non-conference game and he would figure that out this week as well."

Jalen Cook:
- Jordy asked specifically about him.
- Wade said that he is a hard worker and one of the early morning guys.
- He is shooting well, really smart and studies hard, solid defender.
- Still has some things to learn especially on running the offense and knowing when/where to pass the ball; but they are confident he will grow and has the ability to become great.
- Wade threw in that he told Cook’s dad the other day that he would like to know “who the hell rated him as a 3 star because they didn’t know what the hell they were talking about.”

Can't wait for the season to start and see how Wade blends this talented roster and gets the most out of them. Should be a great season in a very challenging SEC.