LSU Basketball Coach Will Wade Believes 2020 Team Will Compete at National Level

LSU coach Will Wade doesn't know when or what a college basketball season will look like in 2020 but he's pretty sure professional sports will need to be back in some capacity first.

Whether it's the MLB starting their season or the NBA finding a way to finish its season, Wade said all it takes is one trend setter to get back on the right track.

“I’m optimistic but I’m realistic,” Wade said. “In reality, the virus and the health experts are going to control that timeline. People a lot smarter than us are going to figure that out. I’m optimistic by November we’ll have a lot of numbers we don’t have today, and it will get us closer to getting back on the court."

While Wade is hopeful about a return to college basketball, the outlook of his 2020 roster is one area he should and does feel very confident about, despite what happens with his talented underclassmen from 2019.

As of now, LSU has seen four players--Trendon Watford, Javonte Smart, Emmitt Williams and Darius Days--all enter the 2020 draft to test their draft stocks. Wade said Thursday he has a pretty good feel on which players he expects to return to add to the stacked recruiting class, which currently sits top-five in the country according to 247Sports.

Wade is hopeful that Smart will return to the program for a junior season after going through the draft process for the first time.

“We're hopeful that he'll be back and really position himself to be the premier point guard in the SEC and one of the premier point guards nationally,” Wade said.

As a result of the uncertainty surrounding the potential players coming back, Wade said the program is looking to add one more piece, a center, to the 2020 class to fill out the roster.

"We have a pretty good feel on who's coming back,” Wade said. “We have one guy that's a lot closer to 50/50 and so we're not sure exactly sure what's going to happen with him but we'll be at 13 scholarships by the time classes start, which is where we need to be."

If as many as three of the underclassmen return to the program to join the likes of Cam Thomas, Mwani Wilkinson, Eric Gaines, Jalen Cook, Bradley Ezewiro, Shareef O'Neal and Josh Leblanc, Wade thinks the 2020 Tigers will be a force not just in the SEC, but the country.

"It'd look like a major contender on a national scale," Wade said. "That's what we're after and that's what we're very, very close to doing. I think we'll have a team that competes at the top of the SEC and in the top-10 to 15 nationally. I think if things break like we hope, we could have three double digit SEC starters and scorers back and if you add [our recruiting class] you're in real business now."

Speaking of that highly praised recruiting class, headlined by Thomas, Wade said the incoming freshman has taken it upon himself to train four, sometimes five hours a day during the quarantine period. Wade envisions Thomas being able to fulfill the role left behind by senior Skylar Mays and be one of the lethal scorers in the SEC in 2020.

“He’s just a tremendous player and scorer. Talk about somebody who’s working hard. I talk to him every day,” Wade said. “He goes at 7:30 in the morning and does all his conditioning workouts on a track and runs a hill. At night, he’s got a little access to a gym and he goes through an extensive shooting and ball-handling workout. We’ll put him in the role Skylar had and he’ll certainly have a huge impact on our team early."

Wade has spent the last month looking ahead at the opponents on the 2020 schedule while also filling out the rest of the schedule, which he said should be finalized next week. That's normally what Wade would be spending the next few weeks doing but instead he'll be attacking the 2021 recruiting class and continuing to stay in touch with his players.

"That's really all there is to do right now, I'm sure the conversations will shift a little bit after exams to making sure the guys are staying in shape," Wade said. "Right now we're making sure all the guys are squared away academically."

If there's one area that concerns the fourth year Tiger coach, it's not having his players on campus. Ideally, Wade would like to have his players back in Baton Rouge as soon as possible so the staff can better monitor nutrition and training.

"That's one thing I'm somewhat anxious about is getting our guys back, even if we can't work them out," Wade said. "I feel like we can better serve them from a nutrition, from a mental health standpoint, I feel like there's just a lot of resources where he can better help our guys. Adding a sense of normalcy will help our guys."

With that not a possibility at the moment, Wade says LSU has done a great job of providing the players with the resources they need.

"I think they feel a little bit about how I do, about what's best for some of our student athletes and that is that we can serve them really well here with the nutrition center and the mental health aspect," Wade said. "But we gotta be safe about it, we have to have the testing capacity, we'll have to change what we do about wearing masks and taking temperatures."