Wearing the black hat doesn’t bother Will Wade. In fact, he seems to revel in it.

“You can’t run from your past so you might as well embrace it,” Wade said.

College basketball’s bad boy really isn’t all that bad once you get to know him.

That is, if you give him a chance.

Wade rode into town last spring with the reputation of a rebel. While at LSU he earned that and more, bucking his way into the good ol’ boy system of college basketball before being given an invitation.

In a game of sinners Wade was hardly a Saint and paid the price. His 10-game NCAA suspension at the start of this season — his first at McNeese State — was the punishment.

LSU parted ways with Wade and after a year — and those 10 games — of sitting out, he is back.

Wade makes his McNeese coaching debut Wednesday night at the Legacy Center.

“I’m excited to be back on the bench; I missed it,” Wade said. “I missed the day to- day being around the guys, helping them get through things. Not just in basketball but in life.”

Wade is a lighting rod when it comes to college basketball. To some he is a guy who cheated his way up the ladder, evidence of a game gone bad.

To others he is a guy who played the system and got caught doing what everybody else was doing. He says he isn’t worried about what people think about him.

“I’m never going to listen to anybody’s opinion who I would not ask advice from,” Wade said. “We live in a snapshot world and their snapshot of me is already taken.

“Those people who have opinions of me and have never met me, I’m not changing them. Maybe eight years ago that bothered me or I worried about that; not now. I’m much more interested in what the people I deal with everyday think of me.”

There are those in Lake Charles who love him, from the big donors who have given money to the basketball program as if McNeese just started the sport this season, to the fans who bought tickets in record numbers.

Wade has met with them all, but it’s the people he works around who capture his attention.

The other day, while walking through the Legacy Center, Wade met a worker changing the court over from graduation back to being game ready. Not only did he stop to say hi to the man, he asked about his kids and how they enjoyed being at a local camp over the weekend.

It made the man smile and feel a part of Wade’s world.

“I have been blown away by how Coach has embraced this community and our university,” said McNeese Athletic Director Heath Schroyer, who brought him to town. “I’ve known Coach a long time but never worked with him day to day. He’s even better than I thought I knew he would be (darn) good.

“He has truly electrified this community and I truly believe everything happens for a reason. Coach Wade and McNeese have been a perfect match at the perfect time.”

Wade took over a program that has lost 45 games the last two seasons, including a program-record 23 last year. He was also taking over a few years after the Lake Charles area was trying to recover from Hurricanes Laura and Delta.

That’s part of the reason he chose McNeese.

“This gives me a chance to put my imprint on something maybe bigger than basketball,” Wade said. “When you are always looking for the next best thing you don’t always make an impact.

“Leaving it better than I found it and having that be sustainable after I’m gone for coaches to come, that’s a lot more important now to me than before.”

The excitement of getting a big-name coach to come to a down-and-out program, even if he was trying to rehabilitate himself, may have been part of the reason the community grabbed on to him. He chose to be here when others were choosing to leave.

All this has put Wade back in the spotlight as regional and national media have wanted to tell his story. And Wade has agreed to grant each interview request.

“We have never had this much interest in basketball and Coach Wade has turned nobody down,” McNeese Sports Information Director Matthew Bonnette said. “He is willing to do every interview and talk to everybody who asks.”

Yet Wade said he would rather not be on center stage.

“I would like to be in the background but that’s not what it is now,” Wade said. “As a coach, you have to be the face of the program and you have to embrace it.”

That sometimes means wearing the black hat.