By GLENN GUILBEAU, Tiger Rag Editor
Will McNeese State athletic director Heath Schroyer become the next member of former LSU basketball coach Will Wade’s posse at McNeese State in Lake Charles to migrate two hours due east to LSU?
According to a well-connected LSU men’s basketball source, Schroyer is a strong candidate to be hired by LSU as an associate or assistant athletic director as LSU does have an opening in the athletic department.
LSU promoted Verge Ausberry to athletic director last November from deputy athletic director after LSU fired athletic director Scott Woodward on Oct. 30. Schroyer, a former basketball head coach at Portland State, Wyoming, UT-Martin and McNeese, may not be deputy AD, but he could be in charge of basketball operations.
At any rate, he would rejoin former McNeese State president Wade Rousse, who became LSU’s president last November.
Schroyer, 53, will also be reunited with just-named LSU Board of Supervisors chairman Lee Mallett, a Lake Charles business magnate who became close friends with Wade when Wade went 22-2 and 17-1 in 2023-24 and 28-7 and 19-1 2024-25 in his two seasons at McNeese State. Wade took the Cowboys to the NCAA Tournament in 2024 for the first time since 2002 and won McNeese State’s first-ever NCAA Tournament game last year over Clemson before taking the North Carolina State job.
Mallett, who has been on the LSU Board of Supervisors since 2008, was one of Jeff Landry’s major financial supporters in Landry’s rise to be elected governor in October of 2023. He then appointed Mallett to the Board chair last month.
It was Schroyer – while working under Rousse – who hired Wade as McNeese’s head basketball coach on March 12, 2023. That was one year to the day after LSU fired Wade following FBI and NCAA investigations found Wade to be the kingpin of a major recruiting scandal at LSU for most of his time there from 2017-22. Wade was named directly for five major, Level 1 NCAA violations involving paying recruits before players began getting paid via Name, Image & Likeness in 2021.
Woodward fired Wade on March 12, 2022 – the day LSU received the dreaded notice of allegations from the NCAA that included seven Level 1 violations in all against LSU basketball.
Schroyer hired Wade before the NCAA sentenced LSU and Wade, and he immediately suspended him for his first five games of the 2023-24 season for the NCAA violations at LSU. And he expressed an interesting perspective on the pending NCAA penalties against Wade and by association, McNeese.
“If the NCAA hammers Wade, all that will mean to us is we’ll get to keep him longer,” Schroyer told a McNeese supporter at the time.
Wade later received a two-year show cause from the NCAA, which meant McNeese State received NCAA violations by hiring Wade. That included another five-game suspension and various recruiting limitations and safeguards, limited off-campus recruiting, limited official and unofficial recruiting visits and limited recruiting phone calls. An additional NCAA compliance officer also had to oversee Wade to make sure he followed NCAA rules, and Wade had to submit a weekly report on all his recruiting activities to the McNeese and Southland Conference compliance offices.
In its final analysis, the NCAA said Wade “obstructed the NCAA’s investigation (of LSU) by concealing evidence and lying to NCAA officials in interviews. The NCAA charged him with “unethical conduct” that included Wade using his wife’s bank account to funnel money to a recruit.
Now, the triumvirate of Landry, Mallett, Rousse and soon Schroyer as the final fourth piece will continue trying to get Wade back to LSU. Landry wanted Wade as coach last year, but then-LSU athletic director Scott Woodward blocked it. Landry, in turn, spearheaded the firing of Woodward last fall.
Meanwhile, Wade was asked about the LSU job on Thursday after his North Carolina State team (20-13, 10-8 Atlantic Coast Conference) lost for the fifth time in seven games – 81-74 to No. 10 Virginia in the ACC Tournament in Charlotte, North Carolina.
“A lot of talk with you and the potential position at LSU,” the reporter began. “I wanted to see if anybody from that campus reached out to you, and give you an opportunity to speak on that.”
Wade said, “No,” in reference to anyone from LSU contacting him.
“Is the job open there? No,” he said in reference to LSU coach Matt McMahon, who finished his second straight horrific season on Wednesday with an 87-82 loss to Kentucky in the Southeastern Conference Tournament. The Tigers were 15-16 and 3-15 in the SEC in the 2025-26 season and 14-18 and 3-15 the year before. McMahon’s best season was his second in 2023-24 at 17-16 and 9-9 when he reached the NIT. He went 14-19 and 2-16 in 2022-23 after inheriting zero players from the fired and disgraced Wade.
“Listen, let me be very clear,” Wade said. “I’m excited at North Carolina State. I was hired at NC State to do a job. This wasn’t going to take one year. I’ve already met with our administration about next year and some of the changes that we need to make and some of the things that we need to do to put this program where it deserves long-term. We’re going to win, and we’re going to win big at NC State.”
Meanwhile, back at LSU, everything has gone silent. Ausberry has said nothing in weeks about McMahon’s job status after talking openly about it and supporting him somewhat last month.
Are Landry, Mallett, Rousse, Ausberry and soon Schroyer now just waiting until Wade finishes the season in the NCAA Tournament or NIT? Wade’s buyout to North Carolina State that he and/or LSU would have to pay the school to leave for LSU decreases from $5 million to $3 million after April 1. The next Transfer Portal window opens on April 7 – just after the Final Four.
LSU would also have to pay McMahon approximately an $8 million buyout as he has three years left on his contract. He, too, has gone silent after consistently communicating with Tiger Rag over the last two seasons.
On Wednesday at the postgame press conference, he also didn’t exactly fight for his job.
“I’ll certainly respect whatever decisions they make moving forward,” he said. “Certainly, there were plenty of challenges this season (key injuries to point guard Dedan Thomas Jr. and starting forward Jalen Reed). But that’s part of coaching. I’m sure we’ll break down and map out where things have got to be better and where we cane make improvement as a program.”
Observing McMahon, it feels like he knows it’s over, as does at least one member of his staff. How do you recruit to a program that is 6-30 in the SEC the last two years?
Wade signed a six-year, $17.2 million contract last year. That’s $2.8 million a year, which is exactly what McMahon signed for over seven years in 2022. Wade would have to at least make that much at LSU.
Ausberry was explaining just recently how it wasn’t “fiscally responsible” to keep firing and hiring coaches.
But apparently, LSU has found the money, regardless of how much debt it is in from the Brian Kelly $54 million buyout and the $91 million contract for new football coach Lane Kiffin.
Pride, ego and avoiding continuing embarrassment via men’s basketball is more important to the LSU powers that be than a $30 million projected budget debt. Period.
But still, why would Wade come to LSU? North Carolina State did make the Final Four in the 2023-24 season under coach Kevin Keatts before he was fired a year later. But the Wolfpack will almost always be No. 3 in its own state behind North Carolina and Duke.
Wade would have the No. 1 basketball program in Louisiana, whatever that means. And, here’s the clincher, he loved it at LSU, where he did win an SEC title in 2019 and took the Tigers to three NCAA Tournaments, though he only got to coach in one because of cheating-related suspensions. He wanted the job last year. And he may still want it this year.
The same Lake Charles source who said Heath Schroyer was close to coming to LSU did not say the same about Wade, though.
“I don’t know. Maybe,” he said. “He just got there.”
Wade over the last three years has significantly cleansed his outlaw reputation that he earned and then some at LSU.
“Wade’s cheating was planned, schemed and purposeful,” the NCAA said. “Wade’s conduct was deliberate and committed after substantial planning. Specifically, Wade offered inducements to secure prospective student athletes.”
Most, but definitely not all of what Wade did at LSU, is legal now. Players can be paid, but Wade did more than that at LSU. He embraced NCAA-criminal activity with zest and bragged about paying multiple other players on the infamous FBI wire-tapped phone call while discussing his “strong-ass offer” to future LSU signee Javonte Smart.
He is smarter and wiser now and has been since he found himself in Lake Charles.
“It was probably very good for me,” he said upon his hiring at McNeese of being caught at LSU. “I probably needed to be checked a little.”
With his reputation improved somewhat, would he want to damage it all over again by leaving a major basketball program after one season for one that he helped make a disaster.
A source said Wade has spoken to LSU people about a possible return and has ended phone calls with:
“See you this spring.”
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