Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Surviving Tar Pits and Telecopiers

Back when I took up sportswriting, the challenge of transmitting my story from the road back to the office could be a far greater pain in the behind than writing the story in the first place. And no, I didn’t ever use carrier pigeon or pony express, despite what you might suspect from the gray in my beard.

But I did use telecopiers, and somehow lived to tell about it. Telecopiers were these large, bulky machines that linked up with each other, allowing the written word to be transmitted through phone lines. That’s when they worked, which was about a 50-50 proposition. We’d type our stories on typing paper, which would be inserted into a spool that rotated through a chemical solution that stunk to high heavens. At the other end, the receiving telecopier required special paper—nasty stuff that got the chemical substance all over your hands and clothes. And it took forever. The settings were for 4 or 6 minutes per page, and we were told to always send it on 6 because 4 rarely got through. Truth be told, 6 didn’t make it through that often, which required plan B.

Plan B was to pick up a phone, dial the office and dictate the story word for word to some unlucky soul at the other end.

Early computers really weren’t that much better. The first wave were also heavy and bulky and had a screen about the size of a slice of bread, and the phone had to be inserted in couplers. If the crowd roared before you could get the phone in the couplers, the noise would trigger the transmission prematurely and cause you to stop, reset everything and start all over again. The second wave, the Radio Shack TRS-80s (Trash 80s in sportswriter parlance) were reliable little buggers, but they gave you only four or five lines to a screen and the capacity was so limited that when you were writing a long story, you had to print out the notes and quotes you had transcribed, and delete the file to have enough bytes available to write the piece itself.

It was a happy day when we graduated to laptops. Even then, however, we had to dial up the modem back at the office, and the phone systems in many of the arenas and gyms we found ourselves weren’t always reliable. So again we had to resort to Plan B from time to time.

The greatest innovation in my time as sportswriter, in terms of saving me time, sweat and aggravation, was wireless. With wireless you’re solid gold. A click of a button and you’re connected to the company email. I remember covering the Orange Bowl of 2006 and having to send at least a half-dozen transmissions over the six or seven hours we were at the stadium. If I had been forced to jump through hoops every time, I would have been led out of the press box in a strait jacket. And my copy would have never made it back by deadline.

What set me off on this tangent was my new favorite song by one of my old favorite singer/songwriters, Robert Earl Keen. He’s asking the same question I’ll be asking if I’m lucky enough to make it through the Pearly Gates. Is There Wireless in Heaven?

Monday, February 22, 2010

It’s Time for Leaders to Lead

The great fear that’s spooked the Wake Forest fan base over the past week is that the Deacons hit the high-water mark of their season with 12 1/2 minutes remaining in last Tuesday’s game at Virginia Tech.

The Deacons, as I’m sure you recall, led the Hokies by 11 at that point and appeared rolling toward their fifth straight victory. That was until Virginia Tech scored 37 points over its final 26 possessions to win going away. Instead of learning from the experience, the Deacons stumbled into Raleigh, committed 15 first-half turnovers against an N.C. State team that applies little defensive pressure and ended up getting waxed by 14 by the last-place team in the ACC.

Given Wake Forest’s recent proclivity for turning the promise of January into the pain of March, it’s inevitable that the Deacons’ two-game slide has raised the specter of another late collapse. And maybe that’s what is indeed in store for the remaining three games of the regular season leading into tournament play.

But Coach Dino Gaudio mentioned something a week or so ago that might provide a bit of hope for those among the faithful ever prepared to again assume the fetal position. He was talking about the makeup of teams, and how a coach-driven team can sustain its momentum for only so long. It’s the player-driven teams, he said, that usually advance deep into March.

All season Gaudio has raved about the leadership on this team, provided mostly by seniors Ish Smith and L.D. Williams. Time and again he has described moments when the players themselves took the floor during team meetings and how much more of an impact that can have. But the leadership has not been confined to Smith and Williams. He recalled sophomore Al-Farouq Aminu recently pulling freshman Ari Stewart aside after a scouting report had been given to the team and warning Stewart what to expect from a certain opponent that Aminu played against last season.

Many of you have observed that this team is probably not as talented as last year’s team, but that it appears to have better chemistry. I agree, even after the debacle in Raleigh. Jeff Teague and James Johnson were obviously skillful athletes, or else they wouldn’t have been drafted among the top 19 players in last summer’s NBA draft. But Teague is introverted by nature and Johnson has a flippant personality that is hard to read. Neither were the natural leaders that Smith and Williams appear to be.

Not to absolve Gaudio of any responsibility, but it’s mostly up to Smith and Williams and the rest of the veterans to assert their leadership and ownership of the team over this next week and have everybody ready to play North Carolina in Joel Coliseum Saturday.

Otherwise, the makeup of the team might be different but the final results could be the same.

If You’re Checking in Riley, Check This Out

One day during football season I asked Riley Skinner if he had ever heard of Gram Parsons, the visionary singer/songwriter from the 1960s and early 70s who graduated from Bolles School in Jacksonville, the same school Skinner and many members of his family attended. I really didn’t expect Riley know know of Parsons, a tortured soul who died in 1973 at the tender age of 26. By way of explanation, I mentioned that it was Parsons who had “discovered’’ Emmylou Harris singing in a club in Washington, D.C. and had helped catapult her to fame.

When Riley, a self-professed fan of country music, said he had never heard of Emmylou Harris, I was surprised. Stan Cotten, the voice of the Deacons, and I chided Riley a bit, and said he should check Emmylou out. A couple of you guys in the Peanut Gallery wrote in to mention that Riley should be excused for this particular gap in his musical knowledge, given that he wasn’t even born until 1986, and I agreed that you were right.

I was reminded of our exchange a couple of days ago when a long-time pal, Billy Armour, sent me a link to a performance by Emmylou Harris and Ryan Adams of what is probably my favorite Gram Parsons song of all time, Return of the Grievous Angel. So to Riley Skinner and anyone else who doesn’t know Emmylou Harris, this is why you should. Return of the Grievous Angel

As a side note, I never really got Ryan Adams before. Now I do.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Wake Comes up Empty During and After Loss

Coach Dino Gaudio and I had something in common along about 4:30 this afternoon. I wanted to know why his Deacons came out the dreadful way they came out in the first half against N.C. State.

And so did he.

“I don’t know,’’ Gaudio said. “I wish I had the answer to that. I really do. I wish I had the answer to that.

“We were off on Wednesday. I thought we had a really good practice on Thursday. We talked a lot about these seniors wanting to win here.

“I thought mentally we were ready to play. There was a lot to play for. In this series, our seniors before today were 4-4 with these guys. There was so very much to play for. I wish I could put my finger on why we came out the way we did.’‘

I posed the same question to L.D. Williams, C.J. Harris, Al-Farouq Aminu and Ish Smith, and none them had a clue. Or if they did, they weren’t telling.

If you think I was pushing the point a bit hard, you obviously didn’t see the game. The Deacons were as bad offensively in the first half as I’ve seen them since the first half of last March’s disastrous loss to Cleveland State in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. They had 36 possesions in the half, which they spent committing 15 turnovers, missing 20 of 27 shots from the floor and four of eight free throws.

And they were playing the last-place team in the ACC, one that had lost five straight games.

“I don’t know if there’s any explanation for it,’’ Aminu said. “That’s a poor job on us. We’ve got to make sure we’re mentally ready for the game. We have to improve on that.’‘

Friday, February 19, 2010

The New Kid is Coming On

JCG, a regular in the peanut gallery, requested an update on Nikita Mescheriakov, the transfer from Georgetown who joined the Deacons this semester. It just so happens that Michael Jennings of Scout.com and I watched Nikita go through his paces at yesterday’s practice and we agreed that he certainly looked like he belonged on the court.

By way of disclaimer, I’m hesitant to draw too many conclusions about a player based simply on practice because I’ve seen too many be a beast at 3:45 in Miller Gym and a bust at 9 o’clock in Joel Coliseum playing against Duke in front of a nationally televised audience. I’ve also heard so many times about the newcomer, a transfer or a redshirt, being absolutely unstoppable in practice, only to find out the next season that he’s not really all that after all. Mescheriakov didn’t exactly leave a lasting mark at Georgetown. There was little apparent anguish when he left. His stats were nothing to text home to Belarus about.

Having hedged, I will say this about Mescheriakov. He’s tall, taller than the 6-7 he was listed when he played at Georgetown. That’s rare. Usually the 6-7 guy that shows up is actually 6-5 1/2, if that. Nikita looks every bit of 6-8 and may be close to 6-9. He and sophomore Ty Walker are on a separate weight-training regimen under Todd Hedrick, the basketball strength and conditioning coach, that has them both lifting four times a week. It is beginning to show in Mescheriakov’s upper arms and shoulders. He looks stronger than he did a month ago.

He’s left-handed and his shot is a line drive. But his touch looks pretty good. And he has 3-point range.

He also has spring in his legs and moves well. Again, he looks like he belongs on the court.

Coach Dino Gaudio said one reason he took Mescheriakov on the rebound was he liked his versatility. Dino felt he could play three or four positions on the court. He’s a natural wing forward, and I didn’t really see him as a power forward in his first days at Wake. But if he continues hitting the weights all through the off-season and puts on another few pounds of hard-rock muscle, then he might give the Deacons some minutes inside next season. He’ll definitely have the experience that the five incoming freshmen will not.

I’m not ready to climb out on the limb and say he’s a lock to start next season. But if he keeps working hard and developing, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him in the rotation.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Facial Hair No Longer Apparent On McFarland

Am I ever glad I made it by Wake Forest’s basketball practice today. Otherwise I’d have missed the scoop of the season.

Chas McFarland is clean-shaven.

McFarland, if you’ve haven’t been paying attention, was threatening to shave his mustache after Saturday’s game against Georgia Tech because he said it itches. But he didn’t feel he could because the Deacons, at the time, were on a four-game winning streak and he didn’t want to jinx his team. Talk about loyalty and commitment.

Well after Wake lost at Virginia Tech Tuesday night, McFarland made good on his threat and showed up today with no ‘stache. I didn’t even notice it when I said hello before practice, but of course even when he had it you had to look really hard to see it. Then somebody mentioned he was clean-shaven, and after getting up close enough I confirmed that was indeed the case.

When he came over for water late in practice, I asked him how many razors he wore out taking his mustache down. He said he used a trimmer.

I didn’t even razz him about our “Battle of the ‘Staches” challenge because I could tell from the way he was talking on Saturday he wasn’t going the distance. But he still has time between now and graduation to get back in on the competition, which would be triggered by Wake making it to the Final Four.  And of course, as I said before, I’m willing to take on all comers—so long as they play basketball for Wake. I’ll even take on the walk-ons, though I don’t see a lot of threats there.

UPDATE: Derrick Jackson, who along with his son Joshua are two of the most dedicated Wake Forest fans around, emailed me to say that our Battle of the ‘Staches reminded him of a classic Bugs Bunny Cartoon called The Rabbit of Seville, in which Ol’ Bugs dumps both hair restorer and “Figaro Fertilizer’’ on Elmer Fudd with some hair-popping results. He said I’d better hope that nobody on the Wake team gets a hold of that stuff, or I’d be trounced. He sent the link. The pertinent part starts at about the 5 1/2 minute mark, but you’re obviously going to want to watch it all.

Rabbit of Seville

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Bad Night in Blacksburg for Men in Stripes

If you’ve dropped by for an excuse as to why Wake Forest lost to Virginia Tech in Blacksburg last night, you’ve come to the wrong place.

The Deacons lost because the Hokies, after falling behind by 11 early in the second half, took the game by the throat and played harder and better than Wake down the stretch. They attacked the basket with abandon, they hit their free throws, they outscrapped the Deacons for rebounds and they shut down Al-Farouq Aminu after Aminu’s amazing 21-point first half outburst. Their crowd was the best I’ve seen this season outside of Cameron, and Coach Seth Greenberg made the right moves down the stretch.

Kudos to Tech. It was an impressive win, one that should all but lock them into a bid for the NCAA Tournament.

And I’ll say once again, the next best thing to winning is to lose with a good excuse. As humans, we always think we’ve been wronged when we lose. Apparently, that’s the way we’re programmed.

Now having stipulated all that, I’ll agree with the general outcry that it was a terribly officiated basketball game. It was so bad it was hard to watch Mike Eades, Bob Donato and Tim Kelly botch one call and one situation after another.

The biggest problem was there wasn’t a lead official—technically known as a referee—among them. Eades was designated as such, but last night’s performance is pretty compelling evidence that he’s not up to the role. I agree with a good friend who said that if there had been a true referee on the court, a guy like a Karl Hess or Les Jones or even a Mike Wood working that game, it wouldn’t have disintegrated the way it did.

I didn’t see a replay of the shot by Malcolm Delaney that put the Hokies ahead in the second half, but I’ve heard from enough people that it was a two-pointer and not a three to believe it must have been. Putting the wrong player on the free throw line in the second half was an embarrassment, especially when he’s allowed to shoot and miss a free throw that is waved off while they get the right guy.

To me the saddest call of all was the double technical, and I’m basing that on having seen a good replay of the incident. Kelly called it originally on J.T. Thompson for shoving Chas McFarland. But after the officials huddled for about five minutes, and watched video of the play, they came back to say they were assessing a double technical on both players.

First off, I’m not even sure Thompson should have gotten a technical. I’ve seen far harder shoves that didn’t result in technicals. But I’m absolutely convinced that no other player in the ACC would have gotten the other technical besides Chas McFarland. He got that one on reputation. You could say he bumped Thompson, but it was little more than a brush, and much, much less than it was made out to be. I’ve seen Hess and Jones officiate enough games to know that they would have gone to both players and told them in no uncertain terms to knock it off. And the players would have, and play would have gone on.

Chas McFarland has a reputation as an agitator, and it’s well deserved. I wrote about it early this season and I read about it recently in ESPN The Magazine. Everyone knows that reputation, including Mike Eades, Bob Donato and Tim Kelly, and last night they allowed that reputation to influence the way a game was called. You can say McFarland brought it up himself, but it’s up to the officials to call the game as it’s played on the floor, period.

A good game was marred by bad officiating. It was hard to watch.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Sorry Tybee, a Challenge is a Challenge

Chas McFarland said the other night that his mustache is itching and he would love to shave it, but can’t. The Deacons are on a four-game winning streak, and he doesn’t want to jinx it.

If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was just trying to avoid any humiliation from the `Battle of the Staches’ I proposed last week.

The reaction I’ve gotten from my offer to shave my beard and mustache in the event that Wake makes the Final Four has been so strong and gratifying that I imagine I’m in regardless of whether Chas or any of the Deacons want to challenge my ability to sprout facial hair. The gauntlet I threw down, if you weren’t paying attention, was that should Wake Forest reach the Final Four I would shave my face clean of mustache and beard and grow back only my mustache over the weeks leading up to Chas’ graduation in May, at which time photographs would be taken and I’d have all you guys judge who has the best ‘stache. I’ve even offered to allow Chas to keep growing his, giving him a handicap of sorts to help make up for the 40 years of practice I’ve had in growing mine.

So here’s the new deal. I’ll take on all comers, as long as they play basketball for Wake Forest. I’ve noticed that L.D. Williams has pretty heavy growth. He might be really tough to out-sprout. But I’ll willing to give it a shot.

I told Dino Gaudio about my challenge last week and he loved it. Everyone has, in fact, except for my bride Tybee. And she was aghast. See, she’s one of the few people in Forsyth County who have seen me without a beard and, judging from her panic-stricken face when I informed her of my offer, she obviously doesn’t want to see it again.

“You’re going to what?’’ she demanded.

I told her to calm down, that Wake hasn’t been to the Final Four since 1962. That relieved her a bit, but I could see she was still a little shaken over the possibility of having to see my face.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Beware the Bottom Feeders

In lieu of a prediction for tomorrow’s game between Wake Forest and Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, I’ll forecast what will happen if the Hokies lose.

Virginia Tech will then win either two or three of its remaining six games (counting the first round of the ACC Tournament) and present a resume of a 23-8 or 22-9 overall mark with a conference mark of either 10-6 or 9-7. And when the NCAA Tournament selection committee leaves the Hokies home for the sixth time in Seth Greenberg’s seven seasons as head coach, we’ll all hear Greenberg grumble to high heavens.

But he’ll have only himself to blame.

Greenberg needs to grasp what Coach Dino Gaudio of Wake Forest learned two seasons ago. That was the year the Deacons were 17-13 overall and 7-9 in the ACC and couldn’t even get an invite to the NIT. Their problem was they played N.C. Central, Winston-Salem State, USC Upstate and Presbyterian all in the same season and it trashed their strength of schedule. Every team plays over-matched non-conference opponents, but the key is to play over-matched teams ranked by the ratings percentage index between 100 and 200 and not those ranked between 200 and the final spot of 347.

Truth is, a Wake Forest or Virginia Tech should be able win a home game against Appalachian State (No. 121 in the most recent RPI). So schedule Appalachian State instead of clogging your slate with N.C. Central (No. 343), Maryland-Baltimore County (No. 338), VMI (No. 316), Charleston Southern (No. 280), Longwood (No. 259), UNC-Greensboro (No. 253), Brown (No. 228), and Delaware (No. 205)—all of whom decorate (to use the term loosely) the 2009-10 Virginia Tech schedule.

I don’t discount the element of luck. Schedules have to be made out a year or two in advance, so you can’t always help it when a team you expect to be decent actually crashes and burns. There have been seasons when Greenberg could expect to get more credit for beating Penn State (No. 225), and it was the ACC that paired Virginia Tech with Iowa (No. 182) in the ACC-Big Ten Challenge.

Wake Forest has played Winston-Salem State (No. 298), Elon (No. 264), UNC-Greensboro), High Point (No. 239), UNC-Wilmington (No. 228) and East Carolina (No. 215), but none except for WSSU, Elon and UNC-Greensboro are among the 100 worst-ranked teams. And Gaudio balanced it out by playing Gonzaga (No. 19) and Purdue (No. 10) on the road and Oral Roberts (No. 130), Richmond (No. 27), William & Mary (No. 51) and Xavier (No. 20) at home.

You can make the case that Wake’s schedule should be harder. After watching the Deacons play East Carolina, High Point and WSSU in succession in November, I might have agreed with you. But Gaudio hasn’t painted his team into a corner with a schedule that requires 25 wins to make the NCAA Tournament.

I imagine Greenberg has been warned of what can happen to teams that plays too many cream puffs, but apparently the lesson has yet to take.

The Night Dean Wouldn’t Let Me Down

“A thousand dollar car going to let you down,
More than it’s ever going to get you around,
Replace your gaskets and paint over your rust,
You’ll still end up with something that you never trust,
A thousand dollar car’s life was through,
Bought 50,000 miles before it got to you.
Oh why did I ever buy
A thousand dollar car?”
From A Thousand Dollar Car, by the Bottle Rockets.

Every time I hear that song on the Bottle Rockets’ CD the Brooklyn Side, I think about the $500 car (cost adjusted for inflation) I drove back in the mid-1970s. Or I should say I drove whenever I could get it started, which wasn’t always that easy to do.

A good buddy, Rico Cavatinni, took me down to Fayetteville where his father ran a used car lot and we came back with a 1967 Triumph. I’ve made some bad decisions in my life, but few of them have cost me as much aggravation and money as that one. The car’s most constant problem was the starter, which, on cold nights, took forever to kick off the engine. It would always crank, but often not until I had sat there and grinded the key in the ignition a dozen or so times while holding my mouth just right.

And that’s exactly what I was trying to do on one of the most embarrassing nights of my life. It was about 2 in the morning on Feb. 18, 1975. I was sitting in the parking lot of the Pines Restaurant on the outskirts of Chapel Hill and the only other car in the parking lot was a baby blue Cadillac. And in that Cadillac were Dean Smith and his son Scott. I kept telling Coach Smith that I’d be fine, that the car would start eventually like it always did, but he wasn’t leaving until he saw me drive off.

By way of back story, I was working at the time for a Captain Ahab-type character named Orville Campell, the publisher of the Chapel Hill Newspaper, who, in his constant quest to save a buck would arrange for me to fly with the team to cover road games for the paper. It was really awkward because if you knew anything about Dean Smith and the way he ran his program, you know how big he was on doing things the Carolina Family way. And with Dean there was always a clear delineation as to who was in the family and who wasn’t. As a scruffy, bearded 23-year old sportswriter who had hitch-hiked a ride on the team plane, I was in no way, shape or form a member of the family. He let me know that at least twice on the trip, once right after I had boarded the plane at the Raleigh Durham Airport, and again when we were boarding the plane in Roanoke, Va. after the Tar Heels and their freshman point guard Phil Ford had beaten Virginia Tech 87-75.

When I first got on the plane over at Raleigh-Durham, Dean had strolled down the aisle from the front to tell me that I was welcome to be on the flight, but he would prefer if I just sat there throughout the trip and didn’t say ``Boo,’’ to any of the players or staff. I assured him that was fine with me. And then after the game, I was walking a few feet behind Dean and the Voice of the Carolina Tar Heels Woody Durham on the tarmac, ready to climb the steps into the plane when Dean stopped me cold. “Hold on Dan,’’ he said. “Players board first.’’ Hell I didn’t care when I got on, but he made me feel like I was knocking people over to get the best seat.

Those of us who covered Dean knew how exasperating he could be. A contrarian by nature, he would always pick a point with whatever assertion he felt your question might imply. And he never, ever, ever forgot a perceived slight. One sportswriter wrote that of the two most famous sports figures in North Carolina at the time, one was named Petty and the other was also petty.

But all of us have competing sides to our nature, and the people who loved and appreciated Dean would go on and on about how loyal and decent and thoughtful he could be. That’s the side I remember after the team bus dropped everybody off at the parking lot of the Pines and all modes of transportation dispersed into the cold February night but my Triumph with the balky starter and Dean’s baby blue Cadillac. He had his son with him, I’m sure he wanted to get home and I’m sure he was planning to rise the next morning far earlier than I was. But he wasn’t leaving until, at long, long last, my engine finally turned over and I was able to get home on my own.

I saw Dean on television the other day, and he’s clearly showing his age. Scott is now a referee who works Southern Conference games. My son, Nate, is the age I was that night in the parking lot of the Pines, the night Dean Smith made sure I was going to be OK in spite of my $500 car.