For Will Wade, Saturday was about McNeese State.
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He will worry about NC State later.
McNeese State fell to No. 4 seed Purdue 76-62 in the second round of the NCAA Tournament on Saturday, ending the Cowboys’ season and Wade’s two-year tenure as the team’s head coach.
Wade is expected to be named NC State's next men's basketball coach in the coming days. He has signed a six-year deal with the Wolfpack, CBS Sports reported on Sunday.
“I'll worry about that tomorrow,” Wade said. “Look, I'm an honest guy but today I want to put a bow on everything with McNeese if we can. That'll be up to whatever else happens. Now I want to worry about McNeese.”
Wade won back-to-back regular-season and conference tournament titles at McNeese State, a small school in Lake Charles, Louisiana. The Cowboys qualified for consecutive NCAA Tournament and upset No. 5 seed Clemson in the first round.
Wade fought back tears and choked up at times when discussing his two years at McNeese State. He said his team would remain in Providence, Rhode Island, the site for the first two rounds of the tournament, overnight and fly back Sunday morning.
“We'll enjoy this here and when we get back, we'll figure out next steps,” Wade said. “But I do want to say whatever happens, our program at McNeese is in great shape. We have tremendous leadership. We're not dumb. We have a plan to keep this program rolling, whoever is at the helm, and this program is going to keep moving in the right direction. This program is going to keep winning and I really believe we're just getting started.”
Wade got the McNeese State job after being fired from LSU due to NCAA allegations of improper recruiting. After successful stints at Chattanooga and VCU on his way to LSU, Wade had to start again. He was suspended the first 10 games of the 2023-24 season at McNeese State by the NCAA as a result of the LSU violations.
McNeese State went 58-11, including 40-2 in the Southland Conference, under Wade.
“I'm a believer in second chances,” Wade said. “A lot of people in our program are second chances, myself, the players. That's kind of why we're close. We got a lot of stuff that bonds us together and so I'm a big believer in it and hopefully we did right by the people who gave us a second chance.”
Now he is expected to get a second chance in a high-level conference with the Wolfpack. NC State fired Kevin Keatts earlier this month after he finished 12-19 and did not qualify for the ACC Tournament.
Keatts and NC State won the 2024 ACC Tournament and reached the Final Four with an improbable nine-game winning streak in March, but the program was unable to sustain that success this season.
Wade is one of four new coaches hired by ACC schools since the end of the regular season, joining Jai Lucas (Miami), Luke Loucks (Florida State) and Ryan Odom (Virginia). Just one ACC team (Duke) reached the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
"It's really good hires for our league with where we need to go and the response we need to have moving forward," Duke coach Jon Scheyer said Saturday.