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Thursday Morning Will Wade Update: He’s gone, but there’s more to the story

Lou Pascucci

Published

3 months ago

on

Ok, there is a ton to cover here, but I spent most of my day yesterday texting and talking to people on all different sides of this thing.

Because of that, I think I have a pretty good picture of where things stand and what comes next.

First off, if you haven’t read yesterday’s piece with our intel on the Wade situation, I think it would be smart to do that.

Now let me start today with this. Will Wade is gone. He’s heading to LSU.

I know there were meetings yesterday with NC State and Wade. I don’t know the specifics of what was discussed or offered, but I was initially told that there might be a window of time Wade is given to make a decision. That should now be marked as irrelevant. No contract bump or NIL promise that NC State was able to make was going to keep him. The McNeese St. reunion of him, Wade Rousse, and Heath Schroyer (which is now official) had been in the works for a while. How long is the real question?

At this point, I think it’s relevant to reveal our timeline.

In late February, the LSU message board rumors started up. We reached out to sources around NC State and inside the donor community to hear their thoughts. There was almost no real concern with most believing if it’s anything, it’s leverage for a contract upgrade and more NIL.

I believed the same thing and actually explained how insane it would be for a guy who is trying to rehabilitate his reputation within the coaching ranks, to make a move after only a single year.

But on March 1st I received a call.

This call was from the same person who called me to tell me NC State was in serious negotiations with Wade last March. At that time, there was no leaked information about Wade and NC State seriously engaging. Obviously, he was eventually hired, and this proved to be true.

In that call I was told “It’s basically a done deal. Wade is leaving for LSU.”

At that point, I knew things were a lot more real than I anticipated. But as I reached out around NC State, nobody believed there was reason to be concerned. I was told NC State met all of Wade’s asks financially and was going to rework his contract this offseason to lock him in. They expected him to use some leverage, especially to increase pressure around NIL funding.

We felt the best course of action was to just let it play out. Someone was being led astray here, and we couldn’t tell who it was. I’ll be fully honest when I say I trusted this source, but at the same time, leaving after just one year into your redemption tour, where your goal was to show that you can be trusted to build a program at the highest level of college basketball,  just seemed like something no normal human would do.

State still had the Duke game, the Stanford game, the ACC Tournament, and eventually the NCAA tournament. With so little clarity and so much uncertainty, we didn’t hint at anything. We needed to let it play out.

On March 8th, the day after losing to Stanford, we got another call from the same person who reiterated that the rumors were real and Wade was leaving for LSU. I shared the information that I had gotten from NC State about renegotiations, but was told, “It won’t matter. He’s taking the LSU job.”

About this time, we were told from a different source that there was some internal frustrations from Wade about not being able to bring in a 6’11 Russian center who became eligible midseason – We believe this to be Kirill Elatontsev, who ended up at Oklahoma.

NC State, at the time, was just starting ACC play, and it was obvious that they were going to struggle against bigger, stronger teams. The NCAA cleared Elatontsev to play, and he had one semester of eligibility available. The details of this are still not totally clear to us. Was it a money issue, an admission issue, or something else? I’m not sure, but this was reiterated by a second source without knowledge we had heard about it before.

Was this the beginning of the end? I don’t know. Something tells me wheels may have been in motion all along, but that’s just me speculating.

Anyways, things stayed quiet after that until after the Texas loss in the NCAA First Four. Wade’s comments coming out of that game made it feel like he was staying in Raleigh, but looking back at how he worded it, you can see where he left himself wiggle room.

In hindsight, this is hard to watch…


From there on, the entire thing is chronicled in my piece from yesterday. Up until yesterday afternoon, when we were told by someone very close to the program that Wade wasn’t coming back. We then confirmed that with someone who has firsthand knowledge. Prompting last night’s tweet…

There are rumors of the Boo meeting floating around that we won’t get into because we can’t confirm. But what we can confirm is that there is more to this story, in particular, the way the team collapsed down the stretch. As Wade’s exit becomes more official, we’ll be able to discuss that

As for what’s next, there will be a coaching search, and that search will be completed by the time the portal opens on April 7th.

At this point, while names like Josh Schertz (St Louis) have been mentioned, the only name we can confirm that will be targeted is Justin Gainey, the former NC State PG who is now the associate head coach and second in command at Tennessee. But he is currently still in the NCAA Tournament with the Vols and set to play Iowa State tomorrow at 10 pm, so don’t expect anything there to move too fast (I’ll be rooting for them to lose).

As for the Will Wade era. It’s over, and while it might look like a lost, pointless season, there will be a few silver linings that emerge in the next few days/weeks.

We’ll explain that statement when it’s appropriate.

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