BATON ROUGE, La. – They came with their shirts and they came with their signs. Some wore the words on their chests, “Free Will Wade,” and “Fire Joe Alleva.” Others wrote them in marker on sneaked-in poster boards, “Take Alleva; Give us Wade.” They coordinated chants, and they orchestrated taunts, “Free! Will! Wade” and “Joe! Must! Go!” They were mad and they were sad, and then they were happy and they were glad. “Ladies and gentlemen, your 2019 SEC champions,” boomed the public address announcer in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center, “the LSU Fight’n Tigers!”
On a most peculiar night in Baton Rouge, a team won its first SEC championship in a decade, with its coach suspended for refusing to disclose information to his employer, its athletic director publicly skewered by rowdy fans during a televised game, its star freshman guard withheld from play for potential eligibility concerns and, now, its season, arguably the best here in more than 30 years, in a most precarious position.