Over the last 10 years, Will Wade has coached at four different schools, won four regular season conference titles, led a team to the Sweet Sixteen, been fired by LSU and suspended by the NCAA, and rebuilt McNeese into a powerhouse in the Southland. Amid all that change, he has started every single day in the exact same way: by running at least one mile.
The ritual was born on January 1, 2015, while Wade was a head coach at Chattanooga. He has not missed a run in 3,706 days — and counting. He has kept the streak alive even when sick, on the road, traveling overseas, swept up in scandals and coaching in March Madness.
Wade always knocks it out first thing in the morning. The benchmark is a mile, but he typically runs several unless pressed for time. If McNeese has a 5:00 a.m. flight, then Wade is up and moving his legs before sunrise. He mostly runs outside and likes to listen to podcasts or audiobooks while he gathers his thoughts about the day ahead.
It was at the encouragement of Greg Graber, a renowned mindfulness expert and mental performance coach, that Wade first began these daily runs. At first, Graber also participated in the ritual, but he dropped out after about two-and-a-half years. Wade kept going. He had set a personal goal of 10 years and he is not one to walk away from a challenge; on the contrary, his mindset is to run — literally — right at it. “The quickest way through a hurricane is straight through the eye,” he tells Hoops HQ.
Wade has weathered his fair share of storms throughout his career. Once villainized and widely dismissed by the college basketball world, he is now at the center of one of the most remarkable stories in the sport. Say what you want about him, the 42-year-old McNeese head coach is a winner. The Cowboys (23-6, 17-1 Southland) have already locked up the conference regular season title and are on track to play in the NCAA Tournament for a second consecutive year, matching the program’s total number of NCAA Tournament appearances from the five decades before Wade took over.
Two years ago, McNeese was one of the only Division I schools willing to hire Wade. He had been fired by LSU on the eve of the 2022 NCAA Tournament after allegations of multiple Level I NCAA violations. Rather infamously, he was caught on a federal wiretap discussing a “strong-ass offer” made to a recruit with aspiring agent Christian Dawkins, the central figure in the NCAA’s large-scale investigation into corruption and bribery in college basketball.
Wade did not coach in the 2022-23 season, as his case was under review by the NCAA’s Independent Accountability Resolution Panel. Many wrote him off, assuming the scandal would effectively torpedo his career. Wade admits that he had some doubts about whether a Division I school would take a chance on him, especially while the investigation was still pending. “I didn’t know how many schools would take the risk before knowing what everything would be,” he says. “But McNeese was certainly the most aggressive and the most willing. I’m extremely appreciative of that.”
For a struggling mid-major like McNeese, the potential reward was worth the risk. The school hired Wade in March of 2023—before the NCAA had concluded its investigation—and proactively suspended him for five games. To that point, in his nine years as a head coach, Wade had amassed a 196-96 overall record. He led VCU to back-to-back NCAA Tournaments in 2016 and 2017 and spearheaded a major turnaround at LSU, transforming the Tigers into a force in the SEC.
The opportunity at McNeese appealed to Wade for a number of reasons, beyond the fact that it was one of the only jobs available to him. He was familiar with the area—Baton Rouge is just a two-hour drive away—and saw a lot of room for growth. “Even though we didn’t really have proof of concept, I felt like the program could be very, very good,” Wade says. “I couldn’t tell why we hadn’t been as successful, but we had everything. A lot of the stuff was in place to win. I think maybe we needed somebody that could kind of tie it all together a little bit.”
Wade was the missing piece the program desperately needed. As Heath Schroyer, McNeese’s athletic director, proudly declared at Wade’s introductory press conference, “I talked to coaches, athletic directors, search firms and agents from coast to coast, and all of them had the same opinion: McNeese is a sleeping giant. Well, ladies and gentlemen, the giant has just awoken.”
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Still, the odds were stacked against Wade when he arrived in Lake Charles. McNeese had suffered 11 straight losing seasons and gone just 11-23 the year prior. To make matters more difficult, the NCAA finally dropped the hammer in June, assessing Wade a two-year show-cause order and a 10-game suspension. His penalties included significant recruiting restrictions through June of 2025.
Wade rebuilt the roster using the transfer portal, bringing in several players who had bounced around and were determined to rehabilitate their careers in the same way that he was. “We were all on our last chance, or our second or third chance, and we wanted to prove to people that we weren’t maybe who other people thought (we were),” Wade says. “We just had a lot of guys who were pretty similar—took the rough road to McNeese.”
Throughout his suspension, Wade could be with the team on non-game days. He went on road trips to run practices and assist with prep as long as he could. “I would do the night before meeting with the team and then I’d leave,” he explains. “I’d get in a rental car, drive halfway back or drive all the way back, or drive to a hotel at the nearest airport.” Watching the games on TV was “pure misery,” he adds, but his assistant coaches did an exceptional job in his stead. The Cowboys went 8-2 during Wade’s suspension and then 22-1 the rest of the way. They won the regular season conference title and the Southland Tournament title, reaching the Big Dance for the first time since 2002. The giant had awoken.
This season, the winning has continued. With a resounding 100-65 victory over UT Rio Grande on Monday, McNeese clinched another outright league title. While last year’s team had a clear star in senior guard Shahada Wells, who won Southland POY, this year’s team is thriving because of its depth. The rotation consists of at least nine players, seven of whom average 7.5 points per game or more. The Cowboys simply wear down their opponents on both ends of the floor. Defensively, they are holding teams to just 64.3 points per game, which ranks 18th in the country.
Wade has adapted well to the new landscape of college athletics. He is a proponent of NIL and the transfer portal, as well as the five-year eligibility rule currently being considered by the NCAA. At McNeese, he has excelled at finding the right players and figuring out how to make them gel. His approach to building a successful program in the modern era goes far beyond Xs and Os. During the summer, the team does a special activity together every Tuesday, which alternates between something fun and something serious. One week it is paintballing; the next it is an emotional group conversation, in which each player is asked to share a bit of adversity he has overcome.
Wade and his staff also teach a weekly leadership course throughout the season. Any issues the team is having get addressed in class. There are often difficult conversations, but Wade believes that success in life is “directly proportional to the number of difficult conversations you’re willing to have.” It is a lesson surely learned from his own controversial history.
“We don’t duck anything. We’re going straight at it,” he says. “I just feel like that’s the way you go. Too many people try to shuck and jive. No, you got to face stuff head-on. Take your medicine, take your punishment head-on, and then you move on and you move forward. You try to do better next time, try to be better next time. That’s the way I like to roll. That’s the way I live my life and I’m not gonna change that.”
Wade doesn’t spend time looking in the rearview mirror at his past transgressions, however different they may appear in the age of NIL. He will get up tomorrow on Day 3,707 and just keep running.
