LAKE CHARLES, La. (KPLC) – McNeese Men’s Basketball is doing things Lake Charles has never seen, and doing things the Southland Conference has never seen either. The Cowboys are on a 14-game win streak, the longest in the country, and are 19-2 on the season, and 8-0 in conference play which is the best start to a season in program history. For many, that would be good enough and they would try to bottle up what has worked, and take it into the next game, but Head Coach Will Wade is unlike many others.
Following McNeese’s 89-65 win over Northwestern State on Monday night, a game in which the Pokes led by as many as 28 points, Wade went on a rant in the postgame press conference and instead chose to focus on what didn’t go right.
“We need to play better, I mean this is fool’s gold right now, we need to play better. If we take that effort on the road Saturday at southeastern, it would be a loss. Kiss that winning streak and all that other stuff y’all like to write about, kiss it goodbye. So we better get it fixed or 8-0 is not going to be 8-0 for very long. We have real basketball issues that we’ve gotta get fixed. I mean this is simply not good enough, if we want to be the team we’re capable of being, this ain’t it, this ain’t it, period. So until we get it fixed, we’re just going to wallow through things, we’re going to lose a couple of games on the road, and maybe that’ll teach us what we need to learn,” said Wade after Monday night’s 24-point win.
On Wednesday morning Wade met with the media for his weekly press conference previewing the next week’s games, and he echoed what he said on Monday night.
“Whether you win or you lose it’s about, what we do. We try to get three game standards, three of our five game standards every game, we got two against Northwestern State. So that’s not it, that’s not it. Even though we won, we’re going to be running tomorrow morning in practice because we didn’t play to our standards. When we play the best teams on our schedule we have to get three, three guarantees a win, but we have to get three or four of those game standards, and we didn’t do that on Monday night and when you don’t play to your standards there are consequences. We have to consistently do the things that allow us to win, and we didn’t do those well enough Monday night,” said Wade.
Wade did not dive into what those standards are, but he was clear that just because the Pokes win a game, does not mean they played a good game. Much of what Wade was disappointed with was McNeese’s slow starts to both the first, and second halves, something they have struggled with previously.
McNeese fell behind 8-0 2:20 into the ballgame and trailed 10-4 at the under-16 media timeout, and in the second half, it was similar before they eventually found their rhythm, got out to a 28-point lead, and would eventually win by 24.
“Starts haven’t been good, starts to the second halves haven’t been good, we’re focused on all of that. We just run poor offense to start the game, we’re not as dialed in defensively, it’s almost like we’ll test to see if he can shoot, and we’ll test to see if the scouting report is right. Well, it’s right most of the time, you should be out there and ready to contest, and ready to go. We have to dive head first in, you can’t dip your toe in the water to start the game or start the half, we have to dive in and be a lot better to start games, and second halves,” said Wade.
One thing Wade and the McNeese coaching staff have noticed is that Southland Conference opponents are using similar tactics to try and stop them, and to try to slow them down as they get deeper into conference play.
“Everybody is kind of copying the same gameplan, it’s not really if it’s the first or the second matchup, they’re just kind of copying the same formula that a couple of teams have used. We have to fix ourselves to fix what they’re doing to counter what we are doing. The reason they’re able to do what they do is because we’re not able to do what we’re supposed to do right. If we do what we’re supposed to do right, it won’t be as simple for them to do what they do to manage us. I look more into fixing ourselves than to adjusting to what somebody else is doing,” said Wade.
Wade and the Cowboys head to Hammond on Saturday to take on Southeastern, who they beat 74-65 on January 13th.
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