OKLAHOMA CITY – First-year Virginia Commonwealth coach Will Wade is one of the freshest faces in college basketball coaching.
In the closing minutes of the Rams’ first-round victory over Oregon State in the NCAA tournament West Regional, he smirked at his players, prodding them to finish the job. He whipped a towel playfully at one of his assistants.
At 33, he became one of the youngest coaches to win a tournament game (Branch McCracken of Indiana was 31, Brad Stevens of Butler was 32). No great accolades came from the feat. In the aftermath he seemed to be just one of the guys.
“The bus driver thought I was one of the players when I got on the bus,” Wade said Saturday on the eve of his team’s second-round matchup with No. 2 Oklahoma. “I said, ‘No, sir, I'm the head coach.’ He said, ‘Really, you're making the decisions here?’ I said, ‘Yeah, yeah I am.’ But he liked it when I paid for dinner. I had the credit card to pay for dinner. He liked that.”
An assistant under former VCU coach Shaka Smart, Wade knows his roster well. Close in age to his players, he relates to them in a fashion uncommon in the industry.
That bonding ability isn’t lost on his team. But don’t be confused. This is not the buddy system.
“He says it's a players' program,” senior guard Melvin Johnson said. “He's more of a father figure. He calls me, we talk about the opponents, we talk about things outside of that, and we just have a relationship where it's bigger than basketball. So when you establish that, it's pretty much an easy trust factor.”
Wade said there are advantages to having a small number of years between him and his players. Millennials react differently to the pressures of life and college basketball. Wade isn’t all that far removed from his days as a student manager at Clemson.
“I think it helps,” he said. “I'm a little bit more aware of what they're going through or what's going on, and I have a pretty good pulse of what goes on with the team. I spend a lot of time with them. We go out to dinner a lot with certain guys and certain groups of guys. So it's important to me to spend time with the guys, try to reach their hearts, try to get inside of them, help them out as best we can, because it's a crazy world and our guys have a lot of stress on them.
“Sometimes we think why is he not playing well? Why is he not doing this well? Well, there's a lot of other stuff going on, and it's my job to figure those things out and to help those guys. So I enjoy that part of the job. That's why I got into this. I was a secondary education major. I was going to be a high school history teacher and then I just kind of moved up in college basketball.
“So I enjoy helping our guys move forward academically, helping them move forward off the court. I do think my age helps with that. They'll tell me some things that maybe they wouldn't tell other folks, and then you've got to keep that confidentiality and help them move forward through those situations.”
Wade left VCU for two years to become head coach at Chattanooga. When he returned to replace Texas-bound Smart, he began putting his brand on the program.
VCU doesn’t press with the regularity it did under Smart. It doesn’t jack up as many three-pointers, preferring to drive the ball down low. All the success the Rams had under Smart, including a Final Four appearance, could have been daunting for the successor. Wade, who also learned under Oliver Purnell and Tommy Amaker, has this team dancing to his drumbeat quite well.
VCU (25-10) shared the Atlantic 10 regular-season championship with Dayton and St. Bonaventure. The Rams advanced to the conference tournament title game, bowing to St. Joseph’s.
They played free and easy against Oregon State and now face the Sooners (26-7) featuring National Player of the Year candidate Buddy Hield and a bevy of shooters, right in OU’s backyard.
Wade seems unfazed. He pinpointed what it will take to tackle the challenge and advance to the Sweet 16.
“First off, we need to guard the three-point line very well,” he said. “I felt like yesterday sitting in the arena Oklahoma gets a lot of confidence, almost like the fans are disappointed when they hit a two. I feel like they hit 10.5 threes a game, they shoot it 42% as a team. That's phenomenal. But I feel like we're top 30 in the country in three-point defense, so it will get tested to the max tomorrow. So we need to really, really guard the three-point line. If they barrage us with threes, the roof will come off the place.”
Wade’s boss, VCU athletic director Ed McLaughlin, called him an "old soul" and the perfect fit for the Rams. McLaughlin said his coach looks 17, but thinks and acts 47.
“We wanted someone who was invested in our students athletes,” McLaughlin said. “He’s young enough that he relates to the guys well. In this day and age, the kids aren’t going to listen implicitly to the head coach. The relationship has got to be there. He’s got to be a mentor and a coach and a teacher and a big brother and a dad and a best friend all at the same time. He really gets that with our guys.
“Will’s humble, he’s genuine. He does not want any of the publicity he’s getting right now. He’d rather it be about other people. That truly makes him a terrific coach. To be a really good coach you have to be selfless. Will Wade is selfless in every way."
ROUND OF 32 HIGHLIGHTS:
