TIGER RAG NEWS SERVICES
LSU basketball coach Will Wade’s path back to Baton Rouge began long before his latest stop at LSU after first coaching the Tigers from 2017-22.
A product of Franklin Road Academy High in Nashville, Tennessee, Wade first entered the basketball world as a student manager at Clemson, learning the game from the inside under coaches Larry Shyatt and Oliver Purnell. That foundation helped shape the trajectory of his life.
“I never intended to do all this,” Wade said last week before opening the season with a win over LSU-New Orleans on Tuesday night at the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.
The Tigers (1-0) host Texas Southern (0-1) at 7 p.m. Friday in the Assembly Center. Those fans going to the upper concourse ticket windows of the Maravich Center, beginning at 6 p.m., can show their LSU-Alabama football tickets for free admission to the game. LSU students are also admitted free of charge with valid student ID.
“I was going to be a high school teacher,” Wade said. “My mom was a principal for 30-plus years. My degree is in secondary education. It kind of stuck with me and never left. So, I’m still teaching and doing all of the same stuff. You just do it in a different venue.”
That teaching mindset, combined with early experience as a student manager at Clemson, led to a successful career so far with bumps on the road. He won at Chattanooga, Virginia Commonwealth, LSU the first time, McNeese State after getting fired at LSU for a myriad of major recruiting violations, and one year at North Carolina State last season. He put eight of his teams into the NCAA Tournament – two at VCU, three at LSU, two at McNeese and one at N.C. State, though he was under suspension for one NCAA Tournament at LSU and fired just before the third one.
At both LSU and McNeese (2023-25), he engineered rapid turnarounds, leading the Cowboys to consecutive Southland Conference titles and NCAA Tournament appearances.
In his first stint with the Tigers from 2017-22, he guided LSU to an SEC regular season championship in 2019, and the Tigers reached the NCAA Sweet 16 under an interim coach. Now back in purple and gold, Wade has assembled a unique roster that reflects the lessons of those stops: experienced talent, a simplified approach, and players willing to buy into a clear process.
The 2026-27 Tigers are an older group by design. Fifth-year transfers Donovan Dent and Skyy Clark arrived from UCLA with significant college experience. Kentucky transfer Mo Dioubate brings SEC toughness with prior NCAA Tournament appearances.
International additions such as French center Brice Dessert, Italian forward Saliou Niang, and Croatian big man Michael Ruzic add high-level European experience.
Wade has been open about the deliberate construction.
“Having the experienced guys and having the older guys gave me some confidence that we could bring it together pretty quickly,” he said. “This is as simplistic as I’ve ever been on both sides of the ball. We’re not trying to do too much; we’re just trying to be really good at a few different things.”
That simplicity is already showing in early results, and in the players’ own words. After playing exhibition games this fall, Dent and Dioubate described a group that is connecting quickly.
“It was a lot of fun. We just know where each other is on the court at all times,” Dent said of playing next to former teammate Clark.
“We hang out off the court, we hang out on the court, we do everything with each other,” Dioubate said. “Coming together is coming natural for us.”
Wade has noticed an immediate impact from Clark.
“I love Skyy,” Wade said. “He’s a great player, but he’s just got a calming presence when he’s out there. He’s a two-way guy, really – good defender, great shooter. He’s just an experienced basketball player.”
At the same time, Wade has cautioned against the group becoming too comfortable.
“You can be too calm and too mellow,” Wade said. “You still got to have an edge. You got to play with some speed. You got to play with some force.”
The goal is balance. The identity Wade wants is clear.
“We want to be unconventional,” he said. “We want to be connected. We want to be physically and mentally dominant. We want that to pop through the TV. Whether it works is yet to be determined. It’ll be judged on how we play.”
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