Rice coach, former VCU assistant returning to coach Rams

VCU will introduce Mike Rhoades as men’s basketball coach Wednesday at an 11:30 a.m. press conference at the E.J. Wade Arena at the Stuart C. Siegel Center. Ten days after Johnny Jones was sacked after five ultimately rather fruitless and frustrating seasons, LSU has it’s new guy that will hopefully put the program back on the map and a fixture in the NCAA Tournament, where they’ve been just two times in the 11 seasons since John Brady’s team made that shocking run to the Final Four.

By his estimate, Will Wade should fit in just fine with an LSU roster of head coaches that includes Ed Orgeron.

Rhoades is a former VCU assistant and associate head coach for five seasons.

LSU has not officially announced the hire.

Rhoades completed his third season as the Rice head coach on Monday when the Owls lost to Utah valley 85-79 in the quarterfinal round of the CBI.

When all was said and done, when newly minted LSU basketball coach Will Wade and wife, Lauren, weighed the positives and negatives of the job, Wade said there was only one negative about accepting an offer to become the program’s 22 coach.

His hiring comes less than 24 hours after Wade acceepted the LSU position. The day before, Wade interviewed with Alleva and deputy athletic director Eddie Nunez in Richmond.

Wade replaces Johnny Jones, who was sacked after LSU finished last in the SEC this season. The Rams finished 26-9 in 2016-17 and reached the Atlantic 10 Championship Game before falling to Rhode Island.

Wade acknowledged that the program he took over at VCU was “humming”.

The VCU Rams went 1-2 in the NCAA Tournament with Wade at the helm.

Or, coaches look at next year’s roster and decide they can rebuild somewhere else with a new grace period, rather than try to rebuild at their current job. I am so excited about the opportunity to lead this program back to the top of the SEC and back to regular, consistent NCAA Tournament appearances. As head coach at VCU he had a record of 51-20 and took the Rams to the NCAA Tournament in both seasons.

The Rams will lose five graduating seniors from this year’s team, including scoring leader JeQuan Lewis, and are slated to have only two seniors on next year’s team.