Will Wade To Hire 2 SEC Head Coaching Veterans – LSU’s Johnny Jones And State’s Rick Stansbury

By GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor

New LSU basketball coach Will Wade has plans to hire two battle-tested Southeastern Conference former head coaches to his staff, a source close to the LSU program told Tiger Rag on Monday morning.

Johnny Jones, who took the Tigers to the 2015 NCAA Tournament and was head coach from the 2012-13 season through 2016-17, is returning to LSU, where he played from 1980-84 and was an assistant under Dale Brown from 1984-97. He resigned from Texas Southern as head coach on Monday and told his team he was leaving.

See you at High Noon. Will Wade rides again at LSU – NC-AA and NC-State baggage et al. Column:https://t.co/NcbrR4GulY

— Glenn Guilbeau (@SportBeatTweet) March 30, 2026

A DeRidder native, Jones, 65, has been Texas Southern’s head coach since the 2018-19 season through this past season and went to three straight NCAA Tournaments in 2021, ’22 and ’23.

Rick Stansbury, who was Mississippi State’s head coach from 1998-2012 and took the Bulldogs to six NCAA Tournaments and advanced to the second round four times, is also expected to be joining Wade’s staff. Stansbury, 66, was the SEC coach of the year in the 2003-04 season when he led State to the SEC title and a 26-4 and 14-2 finish.

A native of Battletown, Kentucky, Stansbury was an assistant at Memphis in the 2023-24 and 2024-25 seasons. He was Western Kentucky’s head coach from 2016-23 and an assistant at Texas A&M from 2014-16.

Wade was asked by Tiger Rag after his introductory press conference on Monday afternoon if he could comment on Jones and Stansbury.

“I can’t say anything at this point,” he told Tiger Rag. “And that’s not completely accurate.”

Jones returning to LSU is done, the source repeated later Monday, while Stansbury is not quite a complete deal, but could still happen.

Wade, 43, left his head coaching job at North Carolina State after one season last week to return to LSU, where he was the head coach from the 2017-18 season up until his firing just before the NCAA Tournament in the 2021-22. LSU fired him for a string of major NCAA violations.

His LSU teams went to three NCAA Tournaments and won the SEC title in the 2018-19 season. Wade surfaced a year after his firing as the head coach at McNeese State, which he took to two NCAA Tournaments and Southland Conference titles.

Wade took the Wolfpack to the First Four play-in round for the NCAA Tournament this past season.

He was scheduled to be introduced as LSU’s next coach at high noon Monday at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.