Fansided

LSU coach Will Wade caught on wiretap discussing offer to recruit

By Brad Berreman

BATON ROUGE , LOUISIANA - FEBRUARY 26: Head coach Will Wade of the LSU Tigers reacts to a play during a game against the Texas A&M Aggies at Pete Maravich Assembly Center on February 26, 2019 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. (Photo by Sean Gardner/Getty Images)
BATON ROUGE , LOUISIANA - FEBRUARY 26: Head coach Will Wade of the LSU Tigers reacts to a play during a game against the Texas A&M Aggies at Pete Maravich Assembly Center on February 26, 2019 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. (Photo by Sean Gardner/Getty Images) /
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The FBI take-down of corruption in college basketball has hooked a bigger fish, as a wiretap reportedly captured LSU coach Will Wade discussing an offer to a recruit.

LSU men’s basketball coach Will Wade has been one of the coaches under scrutiny in the FBI’s investigation of college basketball, with an expected subpoena ahead of an upcoming trial. Now the ante has been upped. As first reported by Yahoo! Sports, Wade was caught on a wiretap discussing a “hell of an offer” to a recruit with Christian Dawkins, who was sentenced to six months in federal prison earlier this week for his role in the corruption scandal.

During the call in question Wade appeared to be talking about LSU freshman point guard Javonte Smart, a top-50 prospect in the 2018 class from Baton Rouge, Louisiana who also had offers from Kansas, Alabama, Florida State and Baylor.

According to Yahoo!, between June 19 and June 30, 2017, Dawkins made at least three calls to a cellphone belonging to Wade.

Wade’s end of the conversation is quite damning

"I was thinking last night on this Smart thing,” “I’ll be honest with you, I’m [expletive] tired of dealing with the thing. Like I’m just [expletive] sick of dealing with the [expletive]. Like, this should not be that [expletive] complicated."

"Dude,” Wade continued to Dawkins, “I went to him with a [expletive] strong-ass offer about a month ago. [Expletive] strong."

"The problem was, I know why he didn’t take it now, it was [expletive] tilted toward the family a little bit,” “It was tilted toward taking care of the mom, taking care of the kid. Like it was tilted towards that. Now I know for a fact he didn’t explain everything to the mom. I know now, he didn’t get enough of the piece of the pie in the deal."

"It was a [expletive] hell of a [expletive] offer,” Wade continued. “Hell of an offer."

Smart announced his commitment to LSU on June 30, 2017. Wade went a little further, citing a “two or three-year kid” in the context of what was apparently a good “offer”. Smart, averaging 11.4 points per game this season, was not considered a one-and-done prospect.

The Tigers 25-5 and ranked 10th in the country, and they only need to beat Vanderbilt in Saturday’s regular-season finale to clinch their first SEC regular-season title since 2009.

Wade has quickly returned the LSU program to relevance over his two seasons, with an NIT berth in his first season and now this year’s run to a top-10 ranking. So any calls for him to be fired, including one from USA TODAY’s Dan Wolken, are likely to be met by words like “allegations” and “internal investigation” from university and athletic department brass.

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But if more is coming, including specifics of what an “offer” to Smart or his family looked like or the uncovering of similar conversations about other recruits, things will get messy for Wade. In a broader sense, this feels like the tip of the iceberg in the take-down of recruiting misdeeds in college basketball.