VCU head coach Will Wade was hoping to have a quiet Easter at home with his wife.
“That got ruined”.
Wade’s name surfaced Sunday in some stories linking him with the opening at Vanderbilt in his hometown of Nashville. Whether he was contacted by the Commodores or not was immaterial to Wade who was never leaving Richmond.
“I wasn’t going to look these kids in the eye after a year and say ‘I’m outta here'” Wade said. “That wasn’t on the table. For some of these guys, it would have been their third coach in three years.”
Wade met with reporters on Wednesday after agreeing to a contract extension on Monday that is projected to keep him with the Rams through the 2023-24 season. VCU Athletic Director Ed McLaughlin declined to provide specifics about the program “enhancements” included in the deal on Tuesday because it has not yet been signed, but Wade did give a little insight into what his program will be getting.
“Number one, it was things for our Life Skills Program” Wade explained. “We’d like to bring in better speakers and have more resources to give to folks. We also wanted more scheduling resources to have the best schedule possible. And also for my staff to make sure they were happy and taken care of.”
“Ed was totally on the same page with that and it was relatively easy.”
Wade will be getting a raise himself from the $1 million salary he received last year. He also earned over $200 thousand in incentives from the Rams NCAA tournament run. The rumors about the Vanderbilt job came out just as Wade was on the recruiting trail, which gave him an opportunity to address them to the future of the program.
“It’s good for recruiting” Wade said. “You call those people and let them know that they’re going to hear all this. But this is what’s going to happen and you build some equity. ‘Hey, coach did exactly what he said he was going to do'”.
“The people that needed to know, knew what was happening. Anytime VCU can be in the public spotlight, that’s good for our school.”
Wade also made the case that his current job is pretty attractive already. His press conference was held inside the team’s new $25 million training facility which is state of the art. Add to that a run of six consecutive NCAA appearances and VCU stacks up well against schools from bigger conferences.
“I think it says something when you’ve had head coaches here in the past that have had opportunities from power conference schools that say ‘No, this is better than those schools’. I think that’s a statement that can be made.”
