Will Wade's unabashed honesty and transparency is why NC State wants him and why McNeese is still dancing

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The transparency king of college basketball was rewarded for his candidness on Thursday. 

Because what's happening with Will Wade and McNeese is basically unprecedented in these ever-paranoid times in the sport.

Every March, there are hot-name coaches who guide their teams to this tournament. Privately, as this is happening, they and their agents talk to other schools about the prospect of taking another job. It's quite literally what's transpiring elsewhere with a number of vacancies right now. 

Normally, everyone keeps it hush-hush — or at least tries to until the jig is forced to be up.

With Wade, there is no jig. He is jig-less. The most publicly honest coach in the sport has not run nor hid from a would-be awkward situation. Instead, he's leaned into the blunt truth (what a concept!) and it's helped his McNeese Cowboys make history in the process. Wade is in line to be the next coach at NC State. We only know this because he hasn't tried for a second to make anyone think otherwise. 

Going into Thursday's game against fifth-seeded Clemson, plenty thought that a supposedly distracted McNeese team might get pushed out by a 27-6 Tigers team that won more games this season than any previous one in its history. 

Nope.

McNeese refused to have its season end Thursday. Wade's 12th-seeded Cowboys upset Clemson 69-67 to improve to 28-6 and advance to Saturday's second round, where No. 4 Purdue awaits. It's the school's first NCAA Tournament win ever and it's the Southland Conference's first NCAA conquest of an ACC opponent — ever.

"We're not worried about any of that stuff," Wade said outside the team's locker room, re: NC State. "I mean, here's the thing: We can sit here and lie about it, but it is what it is. Our guys aren't worried about it, I ain't worried about it, none of our administration's worried about it, nobody's worried about it. We've been honest with everybody. It's great! Keep winning! Keep going!"

We only know all of this because Wade isn't afraid to talk about it. To the media, to his athletic director, to his president, to his players.

"I think when you're in the loop and both ends are transparent about things, there's not too much room for conflict," McNeese senior Christian Shumate said. "Everybody is aware of everything that's going on, and when there's a clear understanding, everybody keeps the same angle in the front of mind. We'll worry about all of that stuff later."

For now: jubilance.

Once the game went final, Wade was as joyful and celebratory as any coach we'll see Thursday or Friday. You can be a cynic and think he's just headhunting for a bigger gig, or you can watch this and see a man reacting in real time to what he considers the most rewarding moment of his jagged career. 

After the game, Wade traded off responding to questions about how his team beat Clemson (his alma mater, by the way) and how he's handled all of the NC State chatter. 

"I could have gone in there (to the press conference) and lied to everybody," Wade said to a small scrum of reporters outside the McNeese locker room. "If you don't know how we operate day to day, then you can't judge how we how we do things. And so we have a transparency that most people don't have."

This is the payoff. With Wade, what you see is what you get. He is so frank, it is jarring. There is no filter on that 42-year-old mouth. There is no one like this guy in college basketball. 

"You may not like what I've got to say but I'm going to tell you what I think," Wade said. "Our guys know that. That's what (Qadir) Copeland was laughing about in the press conference. Sometimes he tells me, 'My man, can you sugarcoat the truth a little bit?' Like, it's just too direct."

You know what else was direct? The way McNeese punked Clemson. The Tigers were overwhelmed. They saved face with a desperate second half push that got the final margin to two, but Brad Brownell's team was effectively finished in the first 20 minutes. The Cowboys clobbered the Tigers 31-13 by halftime, marking the second-fewest points in the first half of an NCAA Tournament game ever by an ACC program. (Wake Forest: 10, in 2001.) 

Wade pulled out a surprise: He deployed a 2-3 zone defense for the first time this season. Clemson was shook. It got down by as many as 24 in the second half and didn't have enough time to pull off the comeback. 

"We've been saving that zone all year," Wade said. 

McNeese, in this tournament for a second straight season and now with 58 wins over the past two years, was champing at the bit to be the bracket-busting Cowboys out of Lake Charles, Louisiana. 

"It don't got nothing to do with Clemson," Copeland said. "We could have beat any team in here. It's just amazing to win with these guys."

His players are just as honest as he is. Clemson just happened to be the victim; it could've been nearly anyone.

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Whenever McNeese's season ends, Wade will be off to NC State within days. There are other coaches in this tournament who have been in frequent contact with job openings; those guys are either hiding from that reality or fillibustering around it.

"There are five coaches right now negotiating with other schools! I mean, c'mon, It's true! Villanova is trying to hire a coach out of the NCAA Tournament right now!" Wade said, a completely out-of-pocket comment. 

It's also a true statement. 

The guy is different. He's operated on his own agenda dating back to when he got his first shot to run a program at Chattanooga 12 years ago. He won big there, then went to VCU. He won big there, then went to LSU. He broke NCAA rules, was eventually fired from the university and paid a price — a one-year banishment from college coaching.

The things he was party to then are basically legal now.

And now this is Will Wade's world. When news broke Wednesday about his impending hiring at NC State, Wade's players weren't caught off-guard. They were practicing at Brown University's Pizzitola Center. When everybody went to check their phones after practice they came back to hundreds — thousands, maybe — of collective texts. 

Truth is: Wade had already told his team the deal days before, when they gathered in the film room of McNeese's basketball facility. 

"People don't know how we operate," Wade said. "We operate really well when the chips are down. We operate well in chaos because we just narrow in. We operate well when there's outside noise that, 'Oh, you're not going to be focused, you're not going to be prepared.' F--- that. We're going to be prepared. We're going to be focused. We're going to be the more focused team." 

All of that was on display in Providence. The Cowboys made Clemson look like the middling mid-major, beating the Tigers with 44 points in the paint (Clemson was allowing just 28.3 paint points heading into the game), 19 points off turnovers, 18 offensive rebounds and 16 second-chance points on their way to a 12th straight win. Wade's team has one loss since mid-December. 

"The bigger the game, the narrower your focus" is Wade's mantra. 

To the end, McNeese was itself. It played with aggression. Clemson pushed hard. It put the game in doubt late with shots taken too quickly, instead of bleeding the clock. But McNeese had enough to hold on. The Cowboys won their way.

"That's who we are: The Bayou Bandits, baby!" Wade said. "You ain't winning playing conservative. You ain't being anybody. If you're gonna win a game like this, you've got to be aggressive for 40 minutes. ... You're not going to beat a team from the ACC if you're if you're on your heels or you're reacting to them, you got to go."

Things have changed drastically in college athletics in the past three years. You can make a case few are more equipped to handle the choppy waters better than Wade. 

"You know how many schools are in these guys' DMs right now?" Wade said. "I mean, damn, this is great for them. Their market just went up in the transfer portal."

Who else is talking like this on the record? Nobody. Honestly, it's refreshing. Wade made a lot of enemies with how he handled his business at LSU. Truth is, he never gave a damn. He was who he was and if people didn't like that it never bothered him and he never held it against anyone. It's why McNeese athletic director Heath Schroyer wasn't afraid to hire him two years ago. He did so while Wade was still awaiting NCAA punishment. Wade had to sit to start his career. 

Two years later, it was the best possible thing Schroyer could have done for McNeese and the Southland.

"We're all going in the same direction with the same vision, and we have great supporters. And when you have great alignment and great support, you can accomplish amazing things," Schroyer told CBS Sports. "I think we have the best alignment in the country, if you want to know the truth."

Schroyer, who previously was a head coach at Portland State, Wyoming, UT Martin and McNeese before coming the school's AD in 2021, said he and Wade have "been very transparent with each other from the start."

He knows he's losing his coach. He's basically as up-front about the reality of the situation as Wade is. Being a former coach goes a long way to creating such a healthy dynamic. 

"I've never had a coach/AD relationship like this one," Schroyer said. "Most of the people in the country thought I was insane. No one knew if he was going to coach again."

Not only did Wade return, he came back to an NCAA landscape built, in many ways, just for him. This is who Wade has always been: a baby-faced renegade carrying a hard handshake and even harder competitive edge. Similar to Rick Pitino, a lot of people could have taken a chance on him but were afraid to pull the trigger. Schroyer embraced Wade for who he was and now McNeese is having its biggest moment in school history.

"They thought we were a little wacky when we did it," Wade said. "But, hey, who's laughing now?"

That would be Wade and his Cowboys, who are riding into weekend as the refreshingly honest and uniquely compelling early Cinderella story of this tournament.