Will Wade almost won a Southern Conference championship during his second and final season as the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga men’s basketball coach in 2015.
In his second season at LSU, a Southeastern Conference title is there for the taking.
After winning games last week at Kentucky and at Georgia, Wade’s Tigers are 21-4 overall and tied for the SEC lead with Tennessee at 11-1. LSU will host Rick Barnes and the Volunteers this Saturday afternoon, but they must first dispose of visiting Florida on Wednesday night.
“We haven’t really talked about it that much,” Wade said Monday when asked about the conference chase. “We’ve talked about giving championship-level effort with championship-level habits. We’ve talked more about ingredients that go into what would become winning the SEC.
“Our guys are certainly aware of things and where things stand. When we were getting on the plane after we beat Georgia, everybody was walking past me and had their phone on the Tennessee-Kentucky game and were watching that.”
Kentucky’s 86-69 win over Tennessee has resulted in essentially a three-horse race for the SEC title, with the 10-2 Wildcats just one game behind the Tigers and Vols with six contests remaining. Incidentally, those three programs are the winningest in league history in regular-season championships, with the Wildcats having earned 48 and with Tennessee and LSU having won 10 apiece.
“I think everybody wants to win their conference, and I don’t think there is any doubt about that,” Barnes said Monday. “That’s why we play these games. It’s important in terms of continuing to grow your program and the notoriety it brings to your program.
“There are a lot of benefits to it.”
Kentucky last won the SEC in 2017, with Auburn and Tennessee sharing last season’s crown. LSU’s last regular-season title occurred in 2009, with the Tigers struggling to a 62-94 league record throughout the nine seasons that followed.
Wade inherited a UTC program that went 13-19 during the 2012-13 season and went 18-15 in 2013-14, earning him SoCon coach of the year. His second UTC team went 22-10 overall and 15-3 in league contests, finishing a game behind Wofford.
Between his stints with UTC and LSU, Wade guided Virginia Commonwealth for two seasons that yielded a 51-20 record with two NCAA tournament trips.
LSU was coming off a 10-21 season that included a 2-16 SEC record when Wade took over in the spring of 2017. His Tigers were picked to finish last in the SEC during the 2017-18 season but went 18-15 overall and 8-10 in league play and competed in the National Invitation Tournament.
His second season in Baton Rouge began with last September’s shooting death of junior forward Wayde Sims and an October appearance at SEC media days in which he defended his program against recruiting allegations. At the candlelight vigil for Sims, Wade said, “We’re going to be playing for Wayde all season long.”
LSU was picked to finish sixth in this year’s SEC race, but the Tigers have benefited from a league schedule in which the five teams they have to play twice – Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia and Texas A&M – are a combined 21-39 in conference play. The Tigers have not been as dominant as the Vols or Wildcats, with Tennessee owning nine double-digit SEC wins compared to seven by Kentucky and just four by LSU.
The Tigers have spent most of this season under the radar, but last week’s 73-71 triumph at Rupp Arena has changed that, as has a No. 13 ranking in the latest Associated Press poll, the program’s highest in a decade.
“Kentucky and Tennessee deserve the headlines,” Wade said. “Kentucky has been the bell cow in the league for a long, long time, and Tennessee won the league last year. I told our guys coming into this season that we’re a team that is not going to get the benefit of the doubt, because we haven’t been in the mix very much lately.
“All we can do is go about winning and do what we do.”
Showdown reaction
Auburn coach Bruce Pearl led his Tigers to a 64-53 win at Vanderbilt on Saturday in a game that tipped off at noon EST, so he was back on the Plains in time to sit back and view the No. 1 Vols visiting the No. 5 Wildcats on television.
“I very much enjoyed the Tennessee-Kentucky game just from the standpoint that I was very proud to be an SEC coach,” Pearl said Monday. “It was a matchup of two top-five teams in a great environment, and it was such a physical game. Even though Tennessee obviously knows it can play better, I thought it looked good for the league.”
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.