Wednesday, February 29, 2012
If there’s anyone who knows commitment, desire and a will to win when they see it, it would be coach Mike Krzyzewski of Duke. And where Krzyzewski saw it tonight after his team outlasted Wake Forest 79-71 at Joel Coliseum was on the face of senior forward Nikita Mescheriakov of the Deacons.
Before he fielded questions in the post-game, Krzyzewski said he had something to say about the post-game conversation with Mescheriakov that lasted close to 30 seconds.
“I would like, before I answer any questions, to share something with you,’’ Krzyzewski said. “In my 32 years here at Duke and in the ACC, I’ve found that the coaches and players love this conference. They love their schools. There’s a brotherhood among all ACC players and coaches over the years that I think is above anyone else’s and that’s why it’s been an honor for me to be a part of this conference.
“The moment I’m going to tell you about is in shaking hands with their team, and the last guy I’m shaking hands with is Mescheriakov. And I know it’s his last game and he’s got tears in his eyes. And it just made me feel good. I spent a moment just with him. Here’s a kid, his team’s got a losing record, they’re in a rebuilding program. And their staff must be doing something right for that kid to feel that way in his last game. I just think it’s one of the really beautiful things.
“I’m so glad that kid could feel that way. I hope our guys feel that way.’‘
I’ve written before that there may be no one to ever wear a Wake Forest uniform to give as much effort with as little to show for it as Nikita Mescheriakov. So it was gratifying to see him close his home career at Joel Coliseum with his best game as a Deacon. He hit seven of 13 shots from the floor, two of three from 3-point range, to score a career-high 18 points to go along with five rebounds and four assists. And he was right in the middle of the Deacons’ 14-0 rally that cut a 20-point deficit to six and had Krzyzewski calling two timeouts in an effort to stop the roll.
Of course final home games are always going to be emotional, and I’m glad he had his brother Yegor, a former star at George Washington, with him to help him celebrate the moment. He’s playing good basketball right now, as is his team, and there’s something to be said for a player and a team that can keep getting better in late February.
“I was excited to finally give something back to the crowd,’’ Mescheriakov said of the lively gathering of 11,917, many of whom were wearing Duke colors. “Because I know they’ve been supporting. Sometimes there have been some painful moments when we would just give up and get destroyed.
“Today we actually showed some teeth and fought back.’‘
I asked Mescherikov about his emotional moment after the game.
“It’s seniors night and it really means a lot to me because it’s my last night I’m playing in this gym,’’ Mescheriakov said. “I really appreciate Wake Forest fans and everybody who supports the program.’‘
By Dan Collins at 01:30 AM
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Tuesday, February 28, 2012
The dates for spring football are notoriously flexible, so I didn’t bat an eye when Steve Shutt, Wake’s media relations director, told me an hour or so ago that the Deacons won’t practice either Thursday or Saturday as originally scheduled.
Shutt said no word was given as to when the Deacons will hold their first practice, and no reason was given for the delay. But it could be that coach Jim Grobe wants to get an assistant coach for the secondary to replace Steve Russ before getting started.
Grobe earlier downplayed the need to have a new coach hired, but he may have changed his mind.
As for what this means for the date for future practices and the Spring Game—originally set for April 15—I’ll have to find out and let you know.
By Dan Collins at 08:03 PM
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Over the years I’ve heard the conflicting sayings, ``When you’ve got two, you’ve got none,’’ and “When you’ve got one, you’ve got none.’’ As perplexing as that might seem, both make sense.
Concerning the first, if you can’t figure out who’s best at a position, you don’t have what you’re looking for.
Concerning the second, if you’ve only got one then that one is sure as shooting going to get hurt and leave you with nobody.
Barring a bigger upset than I can imagine, Tanner Price will start at quarterback for Wake in 2012. Jim Grobe didn’t have to say so yesterday, given that Price has started for two seasons and has emerged as a real team leader. But Grobe said so anyway.
“I think Tanner is going to be tough to push out, although if somebody plays better we would play them,’’ Grobe said. “A lot of times you’ve got to play more than one quarterback, and so I’d be excited if I was a quarterback. I’d think I had a shot to maybe earn some playing time.’‘
So one pressing objective for spring football will be to settle on a backup quarterback now that Ted Stachitas has decided to graduate in May and not return for next season. Based on his credentials, the leading candidate would appear to be redshirt freshman Kevin Sousa. He did, after all, commit originally to Michigan after also being wooed by West Virginia, Illinois, Louisville and Vanderbilt.
I asked Grobe if Sousa has a good shot at the role. At 6-3, 230 pounds, he certainly looks the part.
“He does,’’ Grobe said. “He really does. Again you’re talking about a guy who ran off cards all year (on the scout team), so the mental part will be key.
“I see Kevin very similar to Tanner in he’s got the big arm. He can really bring it. I think the key for him is going to be can he hit the spot passes, the dink and dunk stuff because he’s got kind of a long throwing motion and he’s got such a powerful arm. But of course what we think we’ve got with Kevin is his ability to run. He’s got really, really good footspeed. And that’s what we’re hoping for.”
Sousa will be looking to beat out rising junior Brendan Cross and rising sophomore Patrick Thompson. Another possibility is Tyler Cameron, the only member of the 2012 recruiting class to enroll early. But Cameron is scheduled for arthroscopic surgery on his left (throwing) shoulder on Wednesday, and unless he gets back in a hurry probably won’t get into the fray for playing time this spring.
“And then with Pat Thompson and Brendan Cross, some of those other kids, this is their shot,’’ Grobe said. “Spring time is when you look at everybody, so they’ll get some live reps and have a chance to show whether they’re ready to play or not.
“I think right now backup quarterback is probably wide open.’‘
Tom Elrod, the assistant who coaches the quarterbacks, mentioned last year that he was tweaking Sousa’s throwing motion. I asked Grobe if any progress had been made.
“We can’t work with him right now so we haven’t been able to do anything actually with his throwing,’’ Grobe said. “I know Tommy worked with him last fall and of course we’re talking to him about how to improve those type things. But until the first day of practice we won’t be able to do anything with him.
“But I think a lot of that’s going to be experience. What we had problems with Tanner his freshman year – if you remember – is just several times we’d have open receivers and you’d just panic because you’re trying to get it to him so quick. I saw Kevin do a little bit of that, where he catches the open receiver and just kind of hyper-ventilates before he throws the football. The ball comes off like a rocket and it might only be a five-yard throw.
“So just for him I think it’s just going to be reps and maturity more than anything else.’‘
By Dan Collins at 03:33 PM
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Monday, February 27, 2012
There may not be a man on this planet easier to kid with than Jim Grobe, which is one of the many reasons our gatherings to eat chicken and talk football are so special. And it was really special today, in that we haven’t had such a gathering since mid-December when the Deacons were preparing for their Music City Bowl showdown with Mississippi State.
Today, with spring practice set to begin Thursday, we gathered again. And because the ACC schedule was also released today, Steve Shutt, Wake’s assistant director of athletics for media relations, couldn’t help slipping in a question of his own.
“So when we go into the open date, do you expect to be 5-1 or 6-0?’’ Shutt asked deadpan.
Grobe, after a good chuckle, gave an answer he’s given many times before.
“That’s a Ron Wellman question,’’ Grobe said. “That’s Ron. You’ve been talking to Ron.’‘
The schedule released certainly gives the Deacons a chance at a fast start, with home games against Liberty (Sept. 1), North Carolina (Sept. 8), Army (Sept. 22) and Duke (Sept. 29) set for the first five weeks of the season—with the lone road trip being to Florida State (Sept. 15). Grobe is especially pleased to have the open date on Oct. 13 smack dab in the middle of the season after a trip to Maryland (Oct. 6).
The backside—which has Wake traveling to Virginia (Oct. 20), N.C. State (Nov. 10) and Notre Dame (Nov. 17) and playing at home against Clemson (Oct. 25), Boston College (Nov. 2) and Vanderbilt (Nov. 24)—is certainly challenging, but Grobe can worry about that when he gets there.
“I like our schedule the way it’s come out,’’ Grobe said. “It’s better than it has been.
“All the people we play are really good, so we’ve got to play good on Saturday. “We’ve had some open dates right at the start of the season and nobody wants that, and then we’ve had an open date as late as after the 11th game and you don’t want that either. So I think having an open date right in the middle of the schedule’s good for us.
“We’ve got a pretty good mix of home and away. One of the concerns is the Thursday night game. I think we’re at Virginia and then coming back to play Clemson on Thursday night, so that’s going to be a really quick turnaround against good teams. But still it’s exciting to play on Thursday night. I think it’ll be cool for our players and fans.’‘
I wondered, given the need to replace eight starters on offense, if it works to Wake’s advantage to being playing four of the first five games at home.
“I think it does,’’ Grobe said. “I think starting out where we can get some home games under your belt. One of the hard things for young kids is being in front of hostile crowds, and so having a friendly crowd will be, I think, a good way to start for us.’‘
Otherwise, the only news, so to speak, to come from the gathering was that senior Ramon Booi has been moved from nose guard to the offensive line and sophomore Jonathan Garcia has been moved from tight end to defensive end and senior receiver Scooby Jackson and senior linebacker Scott Betros will miss spring practices while recovering from shoulder injuries.
As for replacing assistant coach Steve Russ with a new secondary coach, Grobe said he’s still looking.
“We’re being patient about that,’’ Grobe said. “As you can imagine I’ve got a lot of good people, a lot of good candidates. We’re just trying to fit the pieces of the puzzle together, trying to get the right fit. That’s our biggest deal right now. I
“I haven’t decided what to do yet. We’re still working on that, but we’re getting there. I might end up having to coach this spring.’‘
One member of the Macadamia Nut Gallery—I can’t remember who—was asking about an update on redshirt freshman quarterback Kevin Sousa. The short answer is he’s competing against redshirt junior Brendan Cross and redshirt sophomore Patrick Thompson to back up Tanner Price, but I promise I’ll have more later.
By Dan Collins at 03:32 PM
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Saturday, February 25, 2012
So where’s that been all season?
The wise-acre answer, obviously, is Chestnut Hill, and there’s plenty of truth to it. The BC team that Wake annihilated today 85-56 is too young, too fragile and too flawed to survive intact the rigors of a long, arduous ACC season. Coach Steve Donahue said afterward he thought the Eagles, given a week off, could get the ball and go against the Deacons, and for awhile it appeared he was right.
But once Wake whacked BC with an 11-2 run late in the first half, the Eagles were done for the day. Donahue admitted as much.
“I just think that once stamina comes into play our execution goes out the window,’’ Donahue said. “It happened again tonight.
“I just thought against Wake we could kind of play our normal game that I want to play. It was probably the wrong strategy. I probably should have just walked it up and kept it going.’‘
Sophomore Travis McKie of the Deacons said he has seen a young team hit the wall before, as recently as last season at Wake.
“It’s just a mindset,’’ McKie said. “We went through it last year.
“They’ve got a bunch of young players. They’re just going through it like we were. They’re mentally not there right now. They feel like they’re playing for nothing at this point.
“But they have a good core group and I think Coach Donahue will get those guys ready and they’ll be a force to be reckoned with the next two or three years.’‘
Which leads me to what I found most impressive about easily the most lopsided victory in Jeff Bzdelik’s two seasons as Wake’s head coach. It wasn’t who the Deacons beat, BC. It wasn’t how they won, by shooting 55 percent from the floor, holding the Eagles to 43 percent and committing just seven turnovers.
It was instead when the Deacons delivered far and away their best performance of the season, in late February, down the home stretch of the regular season after they had already been run off the court time and again this season.
And that has to be to the credit of Bzdelik, his staff, and his team.
“That’s not a performance saying we are done,’’ C.J. Harris pointed out. “We played extremely well, we were diving on the floor, everybody was giving maximum effort.
“We definitely have not packed it in.’‘
The play of Carson Desrosiers today epitomized that of his team. Over the past four games, Desrosiers scored a total of 15 points while making only five of 14 shots from the floor. The 3-pointer he hit last Saturday against Miami—in four attempts—was his first since he made one of three against Virginia Tech in the ACC opener back on Jan. 7. And this is a player who actually started 14 games of the season, and 22 a season ago.
Instead of feeling sorry for himself, Desrosiers came out today and nailed the first three 3-pointers he let fly. His first gave the Deacons an 18-14 lead, the second put Wake ahead 54-38 and the third extended the margin to 57-38. A strong case can be made that nobody was more instrumental for turning the game into a rout. If anyone saw that coming, they’re clairvoyant.
Bzdelik was asked by my good buddy Bill Hass of Theacc.com to comment on the performance of Desrosiers, who tied his career-high of 13 while pulling down seven rebounds.
“Carson’s worst enemy is himself,’’ Bzdelik said. “It really is.
“The young man has so much talent. He just needs to believe in him. I certainly believe in him. I tell him that very frequently. And it really comes down to him believing in himself.
“He’s got great hands. He’s got a great I.Q. for the game. He’s a terrific young man. And you know what? He’s only a sophomore. It takes big guys some time to let their bodies catch up to their minds, in terms of their strength and understanding the game at this experience level.
“So he has a great future ahead of him and he’s an integral part of our plans for our future success.’’
By Dan Collins at 06:58 PM
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Thursday, February 23, 2012
From the moment I got wind of Jeff Bzdelik’s off-color encounter with a fan in Miami I considered it, for the most part, small potatoes. Of course that’s coming from a grizzled scribe who has been around long enough to cover the combustible likes of Norm Sloan and Tates Locke and Lefty Driesell and Gary Williams and Mike Kzyzewski.
Coach K may have never dropped an F-bomb on a fan, I don’t know. But it’s an especially juicy slice of ACC lore that he did drop one on another coach, that coach being none other than Dean Smith during the 1989 ACC championship.
After making the calls, I found that what Bzdelik is being accused of did happen. He admitted it, Ron Wellman admitted it and Wellman wrote an apology to the fan. The fan, who I talked with last night, said he came away from the experience with an ever deeper appreciation of Wake Forest.
We have a story up on line Wellman Calms Water with Apology Both Wellman and the fan say they consider the matter is closed, which, in my mind, it should be.
By Dan Collins at 01:08 PM
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Wednesday, February 22, 2012
MTOW: It seems to me you’re really looking forward to spring practice.
Grobe: “Yeah, I think we’ve got a chance to have a good football team. If you look at how much some of the kids improved from their freshman to their sophomore year, and if they do that again from their sophomore to their junior year that could be really cool. And a couple of our kids who had really good freshman years didn’t play great as sophomores. So now’s the time to make that jump and get that sophomore year out of the way and go be a good junior.
“So I think we’re in position where if we can stay healthy and do a good job coaching them we might have a pretty good football team.”
MTOW: So you’re looking at 12-0, right?
Grobe: Now you’re sounding like Ron Wellman. I think you called him before you called me. Only Ron would tell you 15-0. He’s like for us to play 15 games.’‘
MTOW: Thanks Jim. See you at the wall.
By Dan Collins at 01:02 PM
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MTOW: Will you have a special teams coach, the position Keith Henry had last season?
Grobe: We’re going to go back to what we used to do – let (Billy Mitchell) work with the kickers and punters and snappers. I think it’s going to take a little bit of pressure off Mitch with Lobo having fullbacks and tight ends, and now Mitch doesn’t have to worry about the fullbacks. So he’ll have less responsibility on offense, but more responsibility on special teams.
“That’s where we’ve been the most successful in the past with (Ryan) Plackemeier and (Sam) Swank and those guys with Mitch coaching them. I thought what we did last year made sense, but at the same time I think we’ve got a pretty good thing with Mitch working with those guys right now.
“And we’ve got good competition. That’s what’s going to make us better. I think now with a couple of redshirts gone, we’ll have a couple of kids kicking and a couple of kids punting and it’ll make it a little more interesting in practice now because the gloves are off. Everybody can play now, so I think it’s going to make it a little better for us.’‘
MTOW: How fast are you moving to replace Steve Russ, the secondary coach who left to return to Air Force?
Grobe: “We’re not moving very fast to be honest with you because we’ve got to have the right guy. One of the things that I think hurt us a little bit – and it’s not a slam against anybody – but what I’ve always just tried to hire the best people. And I don’t really care so much about what they coach. But I think this is one of those unique situations.
“I think we saw when we brought in Lonnie Galloway last year what a real, for real receivers coach could do with our guys. I think they really played well. I think the same thing is going to be true if we can find the right guy in the secondary. I think moving Steve was back there was a good thing last year, but Steve had not coached the secondary before. I thought he did a really, really good job with them for a guy who’s never coached them before.
“But I think we’re in a position right now where if we’re patient we might be able to find somebody with a little bit more experience in the secondary that could really, hopefully, come in a do some of the same things that Lonnie did with the wideouts. If we could find the right guy he could maybe come in and get our secondary cranked up pretty quick.
MTOW: How important is it to have the new guy in place when spring practice starts on March 1?
Grobe: “Not real, real important. I think we hired Lonnie the day before spring practice. We were really late losing Brad Lambert. So I think for us more than anything it’s getting the right guy. I don’t know who that is right now but he’s out there somewhere so I’m going to try to be as patient as possible and we’ll just kind of see who we come up with. I just want to make sure that the person we put back there with that secondary is experienced enough that when he gets here he can hit the ground running.
“If you look at some of the kids we have in the secondary I think we have some pretty talented players. And the nice thing is, you have to mesh the secondary with the front as far as run sets are concerned. But basically beyond that, no matter what you’re doing up front, cover two is cover two, man free is man free, three deep is three deep. So I think when we get the guy and get him plugged in, it’s going to be a pretty easy transition if we can find a good secondary coach.
“Because regardless of what we’re doing up front, and that’s what Brian (Knorr) and Derrick (Jackson) and Ray McCartney are working on right now, regardless of what we’re doing with our front, that secondary is going to be pretty much the same whether we are four or three-man front. So I think we’re in a pretty good situation if we can find the right guy to come in. Now if I find a great coach who wasn’t a secondary coach, as a person, then experience wise that wouldn’t bother me. But I think my first thought is to try to find somebody that’s got some good experience as a secondary coach.’‘
MTOW: Will Brian Knorr be the sole defensive coordinator this season after sharing the responsibility last season with Tim Billings?
Grobe: Yes.
MTOW: What’s your objectives there?
Grobe: “We’re going to settle into a little more base defense. We spent a lot of time last year trying to do a lot of different things, and sometimes we were a jack of all trades and master of nothing. And I think Brian’s going to do a nice job of just kind of settling us down a little bit.
“You’ve got to have enough X’s and O’s stuff to make things happen, but I think at the same time you’ve got to be really, really fundamentally sound. And your kids have to really feel comfortable about their assignments so they can play full speed. I just feel confident that the things Brian has planned for our defense is going to be really good.’‘
MTOW: Will you stay with the 3-4 or will you switch at times to the 4-3?
Grobe: “We did that this past year. First of all, I don’t think our kids handled that very well. I don’t think we were as good a fundamental football team as we can be by settling into one front.
“The nice thing about the 3-4 front is you’ve got so much flexibility, so many things you can do out of it that I don’t think we need to be anything else. I think it’s a good disguise in itself and gives you a chance to bring lots of pressure in a hurry, but at the same time cover and keep people off balance with the alignment itself. It’s a disguise by just getting lined up in it.
“So I think it’s something that we need to get better at. We’ve got to run the ball better offensively. We’ve got to play better defense. I think we started making strides again as far as forcing turnovers. I think we got better along those lines. But the quarterback sacks, tackles for loss, we’ve got have more of those. That’s where we’ve got to get better, and I think we can.”
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