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PALMER: Tiger basketball is about the future, not the past

Mar 20, 2025 | 7:18 AM

By Hunt Palmer

I never cared for the purple blazer Will Wade wore now and again on LSU’s sideline.

That said, it beats an Ole Miss hoodie or royal blue tie with a “block UK” lapel. My memories of the Wade era in Baton Rouge are fond. His presence on the visiting bench every other year would have complicated things.

As reports surfaced that Wade is headed to Raleigh to be the head coach at North Carolina State, I exhaled.

I like him much better on Tobacco Road than back home in Music City with the Commodores.

And none of that has anything to do with the state of LSU’s basketball program.

If LSU was where Florida is in year three of a new coaching era, I wouldn’t want Wade in the SEC. If LSU had hired a new head coach two days ago, I wouldn’t want Wade in the SEC.

The rest of Will Wade’s coaching career is independent of LSU’s basketball future, and I prefer keep it that way.

I watched a successful, short-lived football era in Baton Rouge turn into a hated rival for 18 years, after one stop in between. I don’t need those complicated emotions again.

Plenty of LSU fans suggest any mention of Wade’s name is a black eye on the program, the reason LSU is one of two SEC teams not dancing this week.

The other side wanted to drag him down I-10 from Lake Charles for a reunion.

You can find me right in the middle. I knew he was never coming back, and I don’t have a single problem with Wade breaking any of the rules he did or didn’t while he was at LSU.

I’ve watched LSU’s basketball program try to win more with less my entire life. The only team to do it was a Baton Rouge-area AAU team that caught fire.

No thanks, I’ll have what Kansas and Duke are having.

Wade never reached those national heights at LSU, and his detractors are justified in bringing that up. He also blitzed the league to the tune of 16-2 in 2019 and helped send 11 guys from LSU to the NBA. He’s won 70% of his games over four coaching stops. That hurts the “he can’t coach” crowd’s case.

Either way, considering the last 35 years of LSU basketball, it was a good run.

And it’s over.

Now that Wade is out of the state, Tiger fans still stuck on the idea of a reunion should be able to move on.

Whatever he manages to do will not have any impact on what LSU does moving forward. Next March, LSU’s basketball program is going to look very different. Either the additional commitment and NIL funding will propel a Missouri-like turnaround in 2026, or there will be changes.

That reality brings hope.

I suppose the debates in Louisiana about whether or not Wade should have been ousted will live for a long time, but it won’t make them any more relevant to the present and future.

Those should be the concerns.

The SEC, not the Big East or the ACC, is now the premier league in college basketball. That alone makes LSU a desirable destination full of potential.

Ask Nick Saban or Tony Vitello or Dawn Staley or Tim Corbin or Billy Donovan or Nate Oats or Bruce Pearl if 50 years of program history matters to building a national power in the SEC. It takes commitment.

LSU has promised that to Matt McMahon. The SEC Network telecast brought it up during last week’s SEC Tournament. He’s going to be given every opportunity to turn this around. If he can, great. If he can’t, there will be options.

Either way, for LSU basketball, it’s time to look to the future, not the recent past.

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