As much as I would like to profess otherwise, I never saw Wake’s 76-40 thrashing by N.C. State today coming.
It was pretty apparent by the stunned look in the Deacons eyes, nor did they.
And why should they have? Friday’s practice was so spirited, so crisp, so uplifting that the players, to a man, said they woke up this morning feeling great about where they were as a team and where they were headed.
“We were upbeat, we were ready to go, we were energized,’’ senior Ty Walker said. “I just thought it was going to be a much better game today.’‘
As did C.J. Harris.
“Spirits were high, everybody was laughing, having fun, playing hard,’’ Harris said.
And that may have been one reason why coach Jeff Bzdelik had so much trouble explaining how a team that scored 40 points in the second half of Wednesday’s 70-64 loss at Maryland managed only 40 in the whole game against the Wolfpack today. The Deacons shot 25 percent in the first half, 29 for the game and finished with only 16 field goals on 55 attempts and two 3-pointers on 20 heaves.
“Guys were upbeat,’’ Bzdelik said. “We were moving through things, we felt good coming off the second half of the Maryland game. I felt good about today’s game. I really did.
“And to see us kind of just kind of sleepwalk through offense. We got hit and bumped and teams are going to do that.
“This is a league for men only.’‘
I’m not as quick as most to say that one coach out-coaches another. But today, sitting courtside, I heard the Wolfpack assistant coaches yelling to their players, telling them where the Deacons were going to be before they got there. When Wake set its ball screens at the foul line extended, the defender was waiting for the cutter as he was coming around, bumping him off his stride and stopping up all flow of the offense.
“We dealt with their ball screens,’’ coach Mark Gottfried said. “They set a lot of them. And I thought we defended those really well.
“In late-clock situations they like the high ball screen in the middle of the floor. We defended that really well. And that took away a lot of things they’ve been really good at the last couple of games.’‘
The Deacons afterward went on and on about how rugged the Wolfpack were.
“They’re extremely physical,’’ Harris said. “I mean, we didn’t push back when they pushed us, coming through the lane and stuff like that. And that’s something we can’t allow to happen.
“Another team cannot be more physical than us.’‘
And when they are, it’s not a pretty sight.
“You could tell five minutes into the game we had no offensive flow,’’ freshman Chase Fischer said. “No one was screening, no one was moving. And that’s a problem when you have that.
“It’s usually the other way around. There’s usually no defensive intensity. You always have offensive intensity. But tonight we didn’t have that on offense and it’s hard to score when you don’t have that.’‘
The loss had to be one of the most disheartening of Bzdelik’s time at Wake, if for no other reason because no one saw the haymaker before it landed.
“Well first of all give N.C. state credit,’’ Bzdelik said. “They physically hit us every time we went to move, combined with the fact that we had absolutely no offensive intensity. . . We weren’t cutting hard to get open, we weren’t screening, reading screens, using screens, setting screens. We were kind of walking through our offense and that’s not not going to work.’‘
Bzdelik called one timeout to stop the flow and then he called another. Nothing worked.
“During timeouts I was calm from the standpoint of `Guys, this is what needs to be done here. And just execute. And set screens. You can’t walk through offense,’’ Bzdelik said. “We talk about defensive intensity. There has to be offensive intensity where you’re cutting hard and reading how they’re playing you and you’re cutting to get open.
“I can vividly remember several plays where we’re just walking to get the ball, and they’re denying us. Well you’ve got to set your man up and cut hard and catch it and rip it, set screens, use screens. I just think it got the best of them because they want to do well. They do.’‘
The first time I talked with Travis McKie was by phone, after he had committed to play for Wake Forest. I was struck by how articulate, loquacious even, that he was, and nothing I have encountered since has caused me to alter my first impression.
He’s majoring in communications, which would fit. He communicates well, so well I fully expect to see him on television one day as an analyst or personality. That’s of course after his 12-year NBA career.
I caught up with McKie to talk with him about tomorrow’s game against N.C. State. The video is still a bit rough as I learn my way around the camera. But stick with me and I’ll stick with it.
There’s something to be said about a player waiting for the game to come to him. The problem is when the game takes too long to get there.
Wake lost to Maryland 70-64 tonight because it couldn’t guard without fouling or lock down its defensive boards well enough to overcome a sluggish start. The Deacons fouled 28 times, allowing the Terps to shoot 24 percent in the second half while making only seven field goals and still slip away with the win.
But Wake would have never found itself in a 34-16 first-half hole if C.J. Harris, the ACC’s second-leading scorer, had been more productive early. Instead he took only six field-goal attempts in the game’s first 25 minutes while the Terps, behind the ACC’s leading scorer Terrell Stoglin, were making hay.
Harris played well enough down the stretch for a player in the throes of foul trouble, scoring eight points in the final 14 minutes to finish with 10. But on a night Travis McKie was pouring in 25 points and Ty Walker (eight points, nine rebounds, eight blocks) was playing like the player he was once upon a time projected to be, the Deacons needed something more to throw at Maryland to pull off a second-straight upset.
The main reason I like Harris’ game so much may is he is a consummate team player and he doesn’t force bad shots. And one of the most impressive accomplishments of the early season is that Harris is scoring 18 points a game totally within the flow of the Deacons’ offense. But since returning from the strained groin that sidelined him against Wofford, he has attempted only 19 field goals in 70 minutes of play. He did hit the two biggest shots of Saturday’s victory over Virginia Tech, but lost in the celebration was that, up until crunch tiime, Harris had taken only six shots and made one.
I asked him tonight if perhaps he could help the team more by being more assertive early.
“As a player, you just have to go with the game offensively—moving the ball, everybody touching it, finding the open man, attack and attack for others,’’ Harris explained. “And that’s just something that definitely works. If we stick to that, we’ll be fine.’‘
I posed the question to coach Jeff Bzdelik as well, if perhaps Harris could help the team by coming out of the gates more aggressively.
“Within the framework of what we’re doing,’’ Bzdelik replied. ‘And he had a couple of good looks there too that he just didn’t make.
“They did a good job of keying on him, but others have to help us out there too by scoring.’‘
It’s apparent 16 games into the season that Wake has too many flaws to be a great team. The Deacons are weak on the boards, they blow too many prime scoring opportunities and they have a short bench. But they do have, in Harris and McKie, two of the ACC’s most prolific scorers. When both are on their game, they can cause problems for even good teams. When one of the other—or both—are sputtering, there’s not enough left to take up the slack.
Jeff Bzdelik wasn’t being paranoid when he said the whole world is against him and his basketball team.
Instead he was just being a coach.
To those who say the two terms are interchangeable, I’ll submit that I’ve worked with a string of coaches at Wake who have proven differently. But every coach I’ve ever known here or anywhere would use pretty much anything he or she could write on blackboard to get another victory, another strong effort, even another point, from their team.
And what Bzdelik is using with increasing frequency is the notion that nobody on the planet is giving the Deacons a chance at anything. He sounded the theme loud and clear at yesterday’s practice attended also by my esteemed colleague Edward G. Robinson III of the Raleigh News and Observer.
“The world gives us no chance,’’ Bzdelik said. “The outside world gives us no chance. But all we’re concerned about is our little world right inside here within our team. There’s a reason you play the game. So all we can control is how hard we play, how well we play and our mindset. And we’ll just take it one game at a time and all I can say is we’re going to show up.
“The last time I looked they haven’t thrown us out of the ACC.’‘
What, Robinson pressed, did he want to see from his team? The question was all Bzdelik needed to return to his point of the day.
“Just a team that’s gritty, tough and hard-playing in a collective way,’’ Bzdelik said. “That’s all. Just a team that knows that nobody else believes in us but we believe in ourselves. We know that the bottom line in this business is to win, but we’re going to show up.
“This is a really good group of young men and they care. They care about wearing Wake Forest across their chest, they care about playing the game the right way, they care about each other. So we know what gives us a chance to be competitive, we know what it takes to put ourselves in a position to win. And that is to play as hard as we can individually and collectively and play as well as we can.
“This is who we are and what we have and we will show up. I don’t mean that in a sarcastic way, I just mean, hey, we’re going to do everything we can to maximize our opportunity to win.’‘
Spent the afternoon messing around with my new Christmas toy, a Samsung video camera that I hope can enhance the viewing experience of the Macadamia Nut Gallery on My Take on Wake. What we have here is my favorite moment from Jeff Bzdelik’s post-game conference after Saturday’s 58-55 victory over Virginia Tech. The first voice you hear is that of my good buddy Sam Walker of the Gold Rush asking Bzdelik the question.
There was this new player playing for Wake at today’s practice. He looked pretty good. Heard he had to step in when Aaron Ingle turned his ankle in a weight room mishap. He might be able to help the Deacons, that is if he has any eligibility left.
Virginia Tech got caught in the grinder of Wake’s patient open-post motion offense Saturday and didn’t make it out alive.
Already the Deacons have proven, if nothing else, to be a bigger pain to play than a season ago. C.J. Harris and Travis McKie, currently No. 2 and No. 3 in the ACC in scoring, have to be reckoned with and the size of Ty Walker and Carson Desrosiers can cause problems inside.
But what really ruined the Hokies day yesterday was having to guard the Deacons for 20, 25 and sometimes even 30 seconds before getting the ball back. It’s a strategy coaches have been using to compensate for a lack of talent pretty much from the time James Naismith nailed the peach basket to the wall. But if it didn’t work, coaches wouldn’t keep doing it. And the Deacons, in their two biggest victories of the season, have done it rather well.
“I think they wanted to shorten the game,’’ coach Seth Greenberg of Virginia Tech said. “There’s no doubt about it.
“They wanted to control the tempo, shorten the game, get us out of transition and be in position to do what they did – have the ball on the last possession with a chance to win it. If you look at the games they’ve won – whether it was Nebraska – those are the games that they’ve been able to control the tempo. It’s a credit they were able to.’‘
It takes a team to execute such a strategy, something—as I’ve said before—the Deacons didn’t have a year ago. Instead they had an assemblage of players.
This year they have a team. It’s not a great team and on certain nights it won’t even be a good team. But it’s a team.
“You can’t play basketball if you’re not a team,’’ freshman Chase Fischer said. “And every team struggles with that. Some of it’s intentional. Some of it’s unintentional.
“When we don’t play like a team it’s unintentional, and I think that’s a really big thing, because we don’t have any selfish guys on this team. We do have one common goal and that’s to win.’‘
One game into the conference season, the Deacons have already accomplished one essential goal that eluded them throughout the lost season of 2010-11. And that’s a start—a pretty good one at that.
There’s never been any team in any sport, or at least none that I’ve ever come across, that didn’t profess to believe in itself. Some did. Some didn’t. Some only believed they believed and some, perhaps, only believed they believed they believed—if you care to follow me through that looking glass looking into a looking glass.
That’s why Wake’s timber-rattling 58-55 victory today over Virginia Tech could mean more to the Deacons than the 1-0 ACC start.
On Friday, both coach Jeff Bzdelik and forward Travis McKie said categorically they believe in this team Deacons Believe in Their Chances in ACC Of course they did. That’s what all coaches and players say.
As recently as Monday’s 56-52 loss to Wofford, Bzdelik was castigating himself in the frankest of terms (well not quite) for not getting his team motivated to perform.
“You know what, I’ve done a horse crap job — and you can write that,” Bzdelik said a decibel or two above his normal speaking voice. “I’ve done a horse crap job getting my team motivated and disciplined on both the offensive and defensive end.
“And somehow I’ve done a horse crap job of getting them to rebound the basketball. Throw it all on me.’‘
Five days later, after three solid practices and a session or two of analysis, the Deacons played like a team worth believing in.
Call it mind over blather.
“I think that what they went through last year, they’re only human,’’ Bzdelik said after the game. “And when you don’t win a lot of games, and when there’s all this stuff all around you – and this is what I’m getting at – all this peripheral stuff all around you causing chaos for example off the court and things like that. And then you couple that with not winning. And then everybody around you in the community is doubting you, because we live in a negative society. They’re only human, you’re young people and doubt creeps in.
“So what I meant by what I said last game was I’ve got to somehow got to get them to believe in themselves. that they are a talented group if they truly, truly believe – when everybody else around them is doubting them. It’s us. That’s the only thing that matters. Believe in yourself. I believe in you, and that’s what I was getting at.
“If all we’ve done in the last (few practices) in addition to their physical drills is to let them know how much we believe in them, I believe in them and they can do this. And they’re talented enough to do this. So that was a big focus about that.
“The first thing I wrote on the blackboard was The Mind. It’s a powerful weapon, the mind, and belief.’‘
McKie said he didn’t see anything he didn’t expect to see, as the Deacons were thumping Virginia Tech 42-31 on the backboards, moving the basketball, digging in on defense and making the shots that mattered when they mattered most. C.J. Harris, after making only one of his first six shots from the floor, nailed two 3-pointers in the final 65 seconds to hand Bzdelik his biggest win since he’s been head coach at Wake.
“You’re supposed to believe in yourself,’’ McKie said. “That comes from the leadership that me and C.J. instill in this team, that we can win. We can win these games.
“Don’t listen to the media. Don’t listen to the boards, or the people throughout the community. We can win this game. So I think it was a great win for us. It was a great for team morale to start out in the league 1-0 and I’m happy.’‘
As I was putting the finishing touches on this post, I found out that Clemson, the same Clemson that has looked like horse crap this season, routed Florida State 79-59 today. And both Georgia Tech and Boston College gave Duke and North Carolina more than they wanted.. To me, it just confirms what we should always remember, but rarely do, that if a team shows up, plays hard and plays together, and really, really believes in itself, then astounding things can happen.
Like Wake beating Virginia Tech to open the ACC 1-0.
“We all made a commitment to each other that all we care about is winning,’’ freshman Chase Fischer said. “We throw individual statistics out. We throw out everything that’s going on. We pick each other up. And coach Bzdelik and his staff have done a great job of preaching belief and I think that we do believe.
“Maybe some people don’t believe in us and maybe this is going to change some minds. But that’s what we’re hoping to do every game is come out and make statements. And hopefully the Wake Forest community believes in us as well.’‘
The posse has saddled back up, those among it who ever unsaddled in the first place. Once again it’s hard on the heels of Steed Lobotzke, a wanted man by many among the fan base for years now. Some of you in the macadamia nut gallery are riding in the posse. I’m hearing from you daily about how if Jim Grobe is going to make the unprecedented move of replacing assistants simply to shake things up, then why would he ever stop before getting to Lobo, the offensive line coach at Wake since 2001 and offensive coordinator since 2003.
A few points, in my mind, are in order.
To understand why Grobe hasn’t changed offensive coordinators for nine years, it might help to know what Grobe wants in an offensive coordinator. My guess is it’s not the same as those clamoring for a change.
I’ve had enough conversation with Grobe on this subject to know that the only offensive coordinator who could ever work for him would be one willing and ever ready to integrate the offense into the team’s game plan as a whole. Any gun-slinging type looking simply to build a reputation on gaudy statistics and lofty NCAA rankings need not apply.
Instead Grobe has long ago made the determination that the best way for Wake Forest to be competitive in ACC football is to play three quarters with the goal of getting to the fourth with a chance to win. It’s not like he wouldn’t like to drub everybody every Saturday, he just doesn’t think it’s going to happen often enough to build a game plan around the possibility. And sure enough, of the 135 games Grobe has coached at Wake Forest, 62 have been decided by seven points or fewer. Of those 62, the Deacons have won 29 and lost 33.
The over-arching strategy actually looked much better early this season when the Deacons won three of their first four games decided by eight points (I know I’m fudging a point to make a case) or fewer to bolt to a 4-1 record than it did late when Wake lost to Notre Dame by seven, Clemson by three and Mississippi State by six to finish 6-7.
Regardless, the philosophy flies in the face of what many feel should be the intent of any team in any sport, which is to start landing punches from the opening bell and not let up until one combatant is carried from the ring. I get that, and I imagine so does Grobe. He just doesn’t think that’s the right approach at Wake.
He has also said time and again that he’s fully on board with how Lobotzke calls a game. If he wasn’t, he would have changed coordinators by now. He has said to get to Lobo, the critics have to go through him. Anyone who takes him at his word would have to consider Lobo a proxy for the criticism that should be leveled instead at the coach who has hired Lobo in the first place, promoted him and who has steadfastly stood by him.
If you’re convinced that 11 seasons is long enough for Jim Grobe to be the head coach at Wake, more power to you. Nobody is happy with three straight losing seasons. Grobe proved that this past week. And if you think you and the school deserve better, then it’s your right, if not obligation, to make your sentiments known. Have at it. That’s one of the reasons I’m here for.
All I have to go by is the 42 seasons I’ve been watching Wake play football, and the research I’ve done on what took place before I arrived on the scene. And to me it’s indisputable that since Peahead Walker left over a contract squabble after the 1950 seasons, none of the 11 coaches who had their shot at the job before Grobe showed up did anything close to what he has accomplished. To argue that some other coach in college football would do better requires a leap of faith these old creaky bones wouldn’t dare attempt.
And besides, as I’ve mentioned a time or two before, I don’t ride in posses.
Coaching a football team can be a mean, cold, hard business.
It’s easy to forget that covering Wake, because coach Jim Grobe is, by nature, anything but mean, cold and hard. But if he didn’t have the capacity to do what he felt needed to be done, he would have never made it to the University of Virginia the hard way, through Ferrum Junior College playing for Hank Norton, and he would have never scaled his way up the ladder of a mean, cold and hard profession rung by slippery rung from Emory and Henry to Marshall to Air Force to Ohio.
And if he didn’t have that capacity, he wouldn’t be worthy of the job he now holds as head coach at Wake.
Coaches are let go all the time in college football. It’s a nomadic life, and those who live it have to be prepared for the day they’re called into the head guy’s office and told their services are no longer required at that particular institution. The stunning side of yesterday’s bombshell at Wake though was that in Grobe’s 11 seasons at Wake, every coach who departed had left on their own. As kindly as Grobe wanted to couch yesterday’s news that Keith Henry and Tim Billings were no longer on staff, he acknowledged that neither had a choice in the matter.
There was a question of whether Grobe was loyal to a fault. No longer.
He clearly didn’t want to do it. That came through time and time again in our 15-minute conversation. He and Henry have been together 17 years, back to the day he got his first head job at Ohio in 1995. He’s family, as are his wife Nicole and children Kirstie, K.J. Maya Ordee and Isaiah. And he’s bragged on the work done by Billings ever since 2006, when Billings bounced back from a bad situation as head coach at Southeast Missouri State to add expertise and a certain edge to the program. He’ll be missed, as will his wife Lisa and children Taylor Kay and Trenton Wade.
Grobe said if he could have avoided it, the news would have never come out. He entreated me to be as kind in my wording as I could be.
“They’ve done some really, really good stuff for us,’’ Grobe said. “And they’re my friends.’‘
But the bottom line for any sport at any school is wins and losses. And over the last three years there have been two few of the former and too many of the latter. Three straight losing seasons led Grobe to wonder of a certain complacency had settled into the program, a staleness or torpor that needed to be alleviated.
“We’re just in a situation now where it could be good for those guys to have new opportunities and it could be good for us to get some new ideas and things like that,’’ Grobe said.
No specific incident led to the move, Grobe said. The special teams, for which Henry was given the responsibility this season, were a liability from the opening loss at Syracuse to the closing setback against Mississippi State in Nashville. And Billings, who was elevated before the season to co-defensive coordinator along with Brian Knorr, could, for all his talents and energy, can be a hard-headed, hard-driving kind of guy. Maybe there were staff conflicts that Grobe felt needed to be resolved. I don’t know, and knowing Grobe, he’s not going to tell me, or at least not for public consumption. The last thing he would want to do is hurt the future prospects of Henry and Billings.
But he did tell me it was his call and his alone.
What role, I asked, did Athletics Director Ron Wellman play?
“None whatsoever,’’ Grobe said.
So the decision, I pressed, was in no way dictated to you.
“You know better than that,’’ he said. “No, no. No, no. Ron let’s you coach. That’s the best thing about Ron Wellman, he lets you coach your team.’‘
I wondered how fast Grobe would move to replace Henry and Billings.
“Not real fast,’’ Grobe said. “This is not one of those deals where we’ve made a move where I had people that I was going to plug right in. It’s not one of those kinds of deals.
“To be honest with you I’m thinking about juggling the staff positions a little bit. So it may not be that we replace a special teams coach. It may not be that we replace an outside backer coach. We may find ways to move things around, depending on who we hire. We may hire people that coach different positions to try to help ourselves. I’ve had that in the back of my head for awhile now.
“Most of our recruiting’s done now. We’ve got two or three more kids to try to bring in, but I don’t need to hustle to get people in here to recruit.’’
Come spring practice I’m going to miss Keith Henry and Tim Billings. And I’m not going to be the only one.
But coaching football can be a mean, cold hard business. And it certainly seemed a little meaner, colder and harder yesterday than it did the day before.
