Thursday, March 10, 2011

The End

Wake Forest’s basketball season swirled down the bathtub drain today at the ACC Tournament, leaving a really nasty ring.

By halftime of the 81-67 loss to BC, it was pretty obvious to all that the Deacons were playing their last game of the season. Offering the Eagles a path of least resistence into the quarterfinals, they gave up one open shot after another. But to those of us who have been along for one of the bumpiest rides in Wake history, it was nothing we haven’t seen time and time again from a team that ranked dead last in the ACC in field-goal percentage defense and scoring defense and next-to-dead-last in 3-point percentage defense and steals.

And when the Eagles did miss—which wasn’t often, considering they shot 58 percent from the floor in the first 20 minutes—they usually pounded the boards and got another crack. Again, that shouldn’t have come to a surprise considering the Deacons ranked dead last in both rebounding defense and rebounding margin.

Although both teams featured first-year coaches, Steve Donahue inherited a team at BC with four key seniors (Joe Trapani, Corey Raji, Biko Paris and Josh Southern) and a junior (Reggie Jackson) good enough to make first-team All-ACC whereas Jeff Bzdelik was dealt a hand that had one sophomore (C.J. Harris) who had ever started game, a senior (Gary Clark) who spent his first three seasons outside the rotation looking in, a junior (Ty Walker) who didn’t play a minute against ACC competition as a sophomore, a sophomore (Ari Stewart) who never got with the program under the new coach, a junior transfer (Nikita Mescheriakov) who didn’t become eligible until the second semester and five freshmen.

And of the five freshmen, one (Tony Chennault) missed 19 games with a broken foot, and another (Melvin Tabb) was suspended for most of the season.

“Let’s look at the rosters,’’ Bzdelik said today. “What does Boston College have, six seniors and a junior? And Trapani’s a fifth-year senior.

“I made this comment to our staff yesterday, right before we took the floor for practice. We were stretching in the hall way and one of the other teams was walking by us. I said to my staff `Look at the difference in the bodies.’ Well, that’s a difference in the age, and the maturity, the physical maturity.’‘

The question that always arises in turbulent times is one I asked several of the Deacons after the game. How many players leave for what they perceive as greener pasture? And I allowed all of them the consideration of not taking into account the status of Stewart, who was suspended for academic reasons this week at a time Wake Forest is on spring break.

Harris and Travis McKie said they were confident that everyone else will be back. And sitting here right now, I believe them. Maybe six weeks ago I thought freshman J.T. Terrell might bolt, but I changed my mind down the stretch as I saw him slowly but surely make the transition from unbrindled individual talent to valued team member. Terrell said today he has no intentions of transferring.

“It’s been a big learning experience, that’s basically it, just a lot of learning,’’ Terrell said.

What, I asked, did he learn?

“I learned how to be a team player, and learned how to play defense and rebound and pass the ball – a lot,’’ Terrell said. “I learned how to play winning basketball.’‘

He’ll have no chance to prove it until next season, which we can only hope will not be anything like the one that ended today. The Deacons have a lot of work to do to scrub that ring off the tub, and several said they plan to get right to it.

“Everybody’s in, all in,’’ Harris said. “Everybody’s ready to get better and come together.’’

Wednesday, March 09, 2011

Bzdelik Has His Say

If you’re like me, you’ve been looking for hard evidence that Wake will be better in basketball next season than this season, when the Deacons made the wrong kind of history by losing 15 conference games.

When asked today at the ACC Tournament why he expects next year to be better, Jeff Bzdelik made his case.

“I’ve seen moments when we’ve played extremely well,’’ Bzdelik said. “And you take Tony Chennault, Travis (McKie) said it best. Travis said `Tony is like us when we were back in December,’ because he had that broken foot and his conditioning was far inferior than what it should be right now. He’s about 10 pounds overweight.

“But all this experience these young guys are getting is invaluable. I mean I went throught this at Colorado. I inherited a team at Colorado that won seven games, and all these freshmen played. And now Alec Burks is a sophomore and they have kids who are juniors and seniors, and now they’re probably going to be in the (NCAA) Tournament.

“And so I saw the same process, a bunch of young players playing together and sometimes doubting themselves because they haven’t had much success. They need to get through that doubt and they will get through that doubt. They get knocked down but they keep getting back up, so that says a lot about who they are as people. And then the fact that you take a young man like Travis and look at the numbers he’s putting up. Can you imagine him another year from now, or another two years from now? How about Carson (Desrosiers)? Again, he’s a 7-0 freshman getting valuable experience right now. He came in benching 135 pounds back in July and he’s now up to 165. Hopefully next year he’s at 225. And that’s going to make a big difference when he’s around the rim.

“And C.J. Harris is just a sophomore, and J.T. Terrell is just a freshman. He dropped down 36 against Iowa (32 actually) for example. A lot of players can’t do that, even in their senior year.

“So there’s a lot of bright moments as they continue to get stronger. Now they have a reference point too. I could take to them in July and August and September and October about what they were going to encounter and they’re looking at me like deer in headlights. Now when I talk to them they go `Oh, yeah, I know. I understand.’

“That’s why I believe the future is very bright.’’

Nary an Ari in Greensboro

You didn’t have to be the Wake Forest beat guy to know that Ari Stewart was on thin ice with his coach. All you had to do was watch the Deacons’ game Sunday at Boston College, where Stewart spent 36 of the 40 minutes on the bench, most of them with his arms crossed.

When Jeff Bzdelik needed a body at wing forward, he turned to Ryan Keenan, a 6-4 junior walk-on who previously had played a total of 19 minutes in 11 games, almost all of them in mop-up time. Keenan played a career-high 14 minutes against the Eagles, contributing two rebounds and taking two charges.

Well today the ice broke and Stewart plunged through. I’ve never been one to say never but if Stewart ever resurfaces at Wake I’ll be surprised.

Stewart was not at today’s practice at Greensboro Coliseum, and Bzdelik said afterward Stewart will not play in the ACC Tournament. The reason given was that Stewart had some academic work he needed to take care of.

But it takes only a cursory look at Stewart’s sophomore season to reveal that he clearly wasn’t doing what the coaches wanted him to do. Otherwise, he would have been playing more than the 45 minutes he has played in the last four games. He started 16 of the Deacons’ first 23 games, but none since the 91-70 loss at Maryland on Feb. 5.

He came down with the flu, and missed the game home game against Miami. He also missed the two practices leading into the game and, if you’ll remember Bzdelik and a couple of players described them as the best two practices of the season.

Stewart has a sweet stroke with wonderful spring in his legs that allows him to shoot over defenders. But he has always been shaky with the ball, and hasn’t played the kind of defense the coaches are looking to see. When a player who played such a meaningful role as a freshman falls so far out of favor by the end of his sophomore season, you have to wonder if he’ll be around long.

Bzdelik didn’t tell the whole story today, but he came close when asked about Stewart’s cameo in Boston.

“You know what, players determine playing time – coaches don’t,’’ Bzdelik explained. “It was just a coach’s decision.

“You noticed that I played a young man, Ryan Keenan, and Ryan played 14 minutes and took two charges. He moved the ball. We shot 50 percent from the floor and scored some points.

“What’s that saying by Johnny Wooden? It’s something to the point of `it’s about players making their team great, not about great players.’ ‘’

Tuesday, March 08, 2011

A Hearty Congratulations to Mime O

When I began this blog on Oct. 10, 2008, one goal was to foment a lively discussion with the readers whom I irreverently, but with great affection, referred to as the Peanut Gallery. Two and a half years and 1,938 post later, I’d say I succeed in that if nothing else.

A faithful reader named Tom Willis earned the distinction of first comment, sent at 1:23 p.m. on Oct. 13, 2008. Tom barely edged out Racer Deac, whose first comment came in 18 minutes later, at 1:41 p.m. that same day.

But by Nov. 7, still not satisfied with the volume. I posted a blog titled Plenty of Seats in the Peanut Gallery which shamelessly begged for more participation. The entreaty had its desired results, as the comments soon became coming in hot and heavy.

I said In the Nov. 7 blog that I was mindful of the maxim “Be careful what you ask for because you might get it.’’ And there have been times when some of you guys have scalded my hide pretty good. But for the most part the level and passion of the discourse has been all a blogster such as I could ever hope for, and even my detractors have served the purpose of keeping me humble enough to live with. My bride thanks you for that.

A reader named Mime O sat down earlier today and wrote the following comment to my post titled Why Wait? 

Herb Sendek looks alot better now with his boring 22 wins per year and his continuous appearance in NCAA tournament.But don’t feel sorry for him, have you ever been to Tempe?

mime o on 03/08/2011 (1:31 pm)

Mime O of course had no way of knowing it, but that just happened to be the 5,000th comment in the history of My Take On Wake. So congratulations to Mime O, and thanks to all the denizens of the Peanut Gallery who have helped make this blog one of the favorite and most fascinating endeavors of my life.

I feel like I need to offer a prize for the honor of 5,000th post. Tell you what Mime O, my pregame ritual at basketball games has been to go up to the concourse about an hour or so before tipoff and order a large cup of Brunswick Stew (yum). You let me know the next game you plan to attend and I’ll make sure I’ll buy you one as well and we’ll talk about the game. Maybe we can even take you down the media room for free sodas and enlightened conversation.

Now we’ve got an ACC Tournament coming up and let’s start working toward that 10,000th post. Maybe by then I’ll have a car or something to give away.

Why Wait?

At some point while plummeting through the depths of this bottomless season, I was perusing a message board that caters to the long-suffering basketball fans of N.C. State. Best I could tell, the rank-and-file Wolfpackers had coalesced around the conclusion that barring some miracle over remainder of the season then Sidney Lowe was coaching his last handful of games for his alma mater.

Made sense to me. It’s not as though Lowe—who has never finished above ninth in the ACC and never even whiffed an at-large invitation to the NCAA Tournament—did anything in his five years to prove he was the right man for the job. Besides he was now working for an AD other than the one who hired him, and I imagined that his new boss, Debbie Yow, like most ADs, was more than willing, if not anxious, to put her own stamp on the program.

But Lowe has always been more than obliging to the media as well as respected by the fans who will always revere Sidney Lowe the player, the one whose steady hand at the point directed the Wolfpack to the 1983 National Championship. Furthermore he hadn’t embarrassed himself or his university in any manner as a coach—his 25-55 conference record notwithstanding.

Let him coach out the season, the consensus opined. Then say nice things about him as he’s headed out the door and move on. It’s not like Yow was going to have the trouble explaining the decision that Ron Wellman faced last April when he exchanged Dino Gaudio for Jeff Bzdelik. I have to say I was impressed with the maturity being displayed all around.

Then along came a bomb-thrower who was having none of it. Not a bit.

We’ve all seen what he can do, the dissenter railed. We’d be crazy to let him do any more damage to our program. Get rid of him this moment, right now. Why wait?

Why wait?

Not to say I have a lot of virtues, but I know patience isn’t one of them. If I’ve ever been on your back bumper as you tooled down the left-lane of a major highway doing 10 miles under the speed limit then you’d know exactly what I’m talking about.

But even being the HPA (the first two letters stand for High and Pressure and I’ll let you figure out the third) I can be, I could see the post not as a statement on one isolated subject but a mantra of sorts of the times in which we live. Why wait?  Why wait for anything? Who needs to know how it’s going to turn out? Sometimes you’ve got to do something, as one of my former favorite bands BR-549 put it so eloquently Even If It’s Wrong

First I concluded the mindset was a product of the Why Wait? Generation, only to almost immediately realize we’re talking about more than one generation. We’re actually talking about an Age, The Why Wait? Age, in which communication, conversation and conclusion have been accelerated to warp speed and beyond by all the technological advances of the day, the internet being chief culprit No. 1. By the time the question, any question, is even asked, there is a groundswell down with the answer.

The casualties of the WW?A are everywhere and piling up daily. One place I see them daily is in recruiting, where players without lofty rankings are belittled, if not dismissed, by the fans of their chosen school who have yet to see them play.  Rankings, in the big picture, do matter. Skip Prosser said many times that the college teams with the most NBA-to-be players usually win, and a five-star recruit is more apt to make the NBA than a two-star recruit. But personally I’d rather watch a player play before I decide if the coach who recruited him knew what he was doing. I have to think the kid, if not the coach, deserves that. But maybe that’s just me.

The old clock on the wall says it’s time for me to shut down this post, take a shower and head to the office for a 1 p.m. appointment, to be followed by a swing-through campus to watch the Deacons go through their paces. What I’ve hopefully set up, though, is a framework for explaining what I feel about the immediate future of Wake Forest with Jeff Bzdelik as head coach.

Sorry, but for that you’ll just have to wait.

Monday, March 07, 2011

MTOW’s All-ACC Team

In that I cover Wake Forest, I didn’t see a great deal of ACC basketball this season—at least not a great deal I would recognize as such.

But if you will forgive my blissful ignorance, I’d like to lay my All-ACC Teams and conference superlatives on you before they’re announced shortly.

My two rules of thumb in picking these are a) lean heavily on conference-only statistics and b) don’t make your call until all the games are played. I seen players honored after loading up against the lesser lights on the schedule and I’ve seen many a first-team lock in mid-January who I barely consider for honorable mention by early March.

So without further adieu:

First team
Nolan Smith—Duke
Jordan Williams—Maryland
Reggie Jackson—BC
Iman Shumpert—Georgia Tech
John Henson—UNC

Second team
Malcolm Delaney—Virgina Tech
Harrison Barnes—UNC
Kyle Singler—Duke
Jeff Allen—Virginia Tech
Demontez Stitt—Clemson

Third team
Tyler Zeller—UNC
Reggie Johnson—Miami
Joe Trapani—BC
Tracy Smith—N.C. State
Corey Raji—BC

Coach of the Year
Roy Williams—UNC

Player of the Year
Nolan Smith—Duke

Rookie of the Year
Harrison Barnes—UNC

All-Freshmen
Harrison Barnes—UNC
Kendall Marshall—UNC
Travis McKie—Wake Forest
Terrell Stoglin—Maryland
C.J. Lesie—N.C. State.

It bears noting that I put great weight on team success, which at least in some ways explains the picks of Henson for first team, Barnes, Singler and Stitt for second team, Raji for third team and Williams for COY. But I’m not intractable about it, which is why I had Shumpert—who was absolutely fabulous in all areas for an distant also-ran—as first team.

I imagine I’ll catch the most flak for going with Henson over Delaney for first team, and that’s more than OK. What good are these teams for anyway other than to stir up discussion, and I’ll be expecting to hear your teams as well over the next few days. But my reasoning goes as following:

Henson, in conference games only, ranked second in the ACC (behind Williams) with 10.6 rebounds a game and led the conference with 3.4 blocks a game—one per game more than anybody else in the league. He, more than anybody else I saw, changed how the games were played, and was probably the best defensive player in the ACC. And his team is seeded first in the ACC Tournament.

Delaney averaged 18.7 points in league play, third in the conference. So it’s really hard to leave him off. But he didn’t shoot as well against ACC competition (40.7 percent) as he did against non-conference teams (43.8 percent) and he was only 11 of 28 in the two late losses to BC and Clemson. He probably wore down, considering his conference-high 38.8 minutes a game.

As in most seasons, there are more than five players probably deserving of first-team honors. But the rules only allow for five, and I’m going with Henson over Delaney (who I really like as a player) because Henson’s team finished first and Delaney’s team finished sixth.

Friday, March 04, 2011

Some Times I Feel. . .

Instead of putting my spiffy, laminated 2010-11 Wake Forest Men’s Basketball Media Season Credential in the glove compartment of my car tonight, as I faithfully do, I wore it home and brought in the house. It’s hanging next to my computer as I listen to an Allman Brothers Concert from 1970 Whipping Post drink an adult beverage and try to figure out what to do with it.

I could frame it obviously, a souvenir for surviving every home game of the season. Well almost. Of the 20 home games, I was there for 19 1/2. Got sick to my stomach by halftime of the Iowa game and wouldn’t you know it, missed the best half of the season. Actually it was one of the few worth watching. That’s one on me.

But I got to thinking about the first game against Stetson, the team that beat Wake 89-79 in November and had its coach reassigned to an assistant director of athletics position by March, and how I was at least heartened to know the season had nowhere to go but up. Problem was, it didn’t. The Deacons played 20 games in Joel Coliseum, with only victories against Hampton, Marist, Iowa, Holy Cross, UNC Greensboro, High Point and Virginia to show for the trouble of turning on the lights and charging admission. Stetson, VCU, Winthrop, Presbyterian will all have much fonder memories of the 2010-11 season played at Joel Coliseum than will the Deacons, who didn’t need an opponent like Duke to run them out of their own building.

This was a season when an N.C. State or Georgia Tech—both with perennially embattled coaches barely, barely hanging on—would more than suffice. The Yellow Jackets had lost 13 straight ACC road games, which would date back to the 2008-09 season. Tonight, the walk-ons were on for the final three or four minutes and Tech won by 26.

So from Stetson, we came full circle tonight. It was a trip I hope none of us ever has make again. All season long I looked for signs of progress. What I saw tonight, in the last home game of the season, was a team that came out in the second half against a 1-2-2 zone trap and looked for all the world like it had never seen the defense before. Only of course we all knew it had, as recently as 15 minutes before—in the first half.

The Yellow Jackets sprung the trap on Wake in the first half and went on a 17-0 run. Wake regrouped, talked all about it, and came out in the second half and had the ball taken away on five of six possessions. Just taken away, and more often than not turned into fast-break points. That ignited the 18-3 spree that chased so many people up the aisles I was almost getting lonely by the buzzer.

So yeah, I could frame my 2010-11 Wake Forest Men’s Basketball Media Season Credential and put it on my wall alongside my framed photograph and me standing next to a grinning Mickey Mantle, or I could get a nice chain and wear it around my neck as a badge of courage. I don’t believe, laminated as it is, it would ever burn. But maybe I could get some sharp clippers and cut me out two or three nice guitar picks.

Problem is, I doubt those picks would play anything but the blues, and I know I could never be as good as Duane.

But who ever could?

Thursday, March 03, 2011

A Decision Left Unexplained

Any person who makes a decision they can’t adequately and sufficiently explain is apt to find themselves in an unenviable, if not untenable, position.

Ron Wellman made such a decision last April when he fired Dino Gaudio coming off Gaudio’s second straight trip to the NCAA Tournament. The basis he gave for cashiering a coach who had won 61 and lost 31 in three seasons was the failure of Gaudio’s teams in late-season and post-season play.

The explanation might have flown if Wellman hadn’t turned around and hired a coach in Jeff Bzdelik with scant post-season success on his resume.

Time and again I’ve asked Wellman to square the two decisions and I’ve yet to hear him do it. He acknowledges that he’s going on a hunch. Given what he knows about Bzdelik, Wellman is confident that in time the Deacons will be more successful in post-season than they were under Gaudio.

Here’s the real bottom-line reason Dino Gaudio is no longer the head basketball coach at Wake Forest. Ron Wellman—and most likely some very generous and influential boosters around Wellman—didn’t want him to be. When Wellman saw Gaudio, he didn’t see the man he wanted to be the face and mainspring of the Deacons’ basketball program. As for why Wellman felt that way, he declines to say.

In some ways it’s right and commendable that Wellman won’t trash Gaudio publicly. To do so might earn some points with his fan base, but it would be cheap and probably wouldn’t accomplish much in the long run. And when I finally got a chance to talk with Gaudio a few weeks back, he also declined to say anything about Wellman or his departure from Wake. Both men have chosen to take the highest road available.

So why, 10 months later, do I even bring up Gaudio and his departure from the program?

The first reason is that the questions lingering from Gaudio’s dismissal, and the way it came down, have been a thread woven throughout the narrative of a long, trying season, the likes of which I hope to never have to go through again. I firmly believe at least some of the criticism directed toward Bzdelik is a byproduct of the confusion and even rancor stemming from Wellman’s inability to adequately and sufficiently explain why he’s the head coach in the first place. If Gaudio’s record had been 31-61, the answer would have been obvious enough that Bzdelik might have gotten more consideration and support from the first day he took over. But it wasn’t 31-61. It was 61-31.

The second reason is to reply to criticism of my coverage of the coaching change. I hasten to mention that I appreciate all comments, positive or negative. If I had my choice between a Peanut Gallery 100 percent in favor of everything I write or one comprised of a certain element ready, willing and able to give me the business from time to time, I’ll choose the latter. The former would be too thick with conformity, if not adulation, and my bride has a hard enough time living with me as is. But there are some of you in the Peanut Gallery—most notably my friend Tony C—who have given me a pretty good working over for not telling ``the real story,’’ about why Gaudio is no longer Wake’s head coach. Tony C said it’s proof that real sports journalism is dead in Winston-Salem. I understand the frustration, and as pointed out above, recognize where it comes from.

Well, the truth is I could go out today and find a dozen people connected with Wake who would tell my why they think Gaudio was let go. But it would all be off the record. They’d be more than willing, if not anxious, for me to write a story about all of Gaudio’s shortcomings as a head coach. But they wouldn’t attach their name to their opinion, and I would have no real way of knowing if what they were telling me was true. And even if those accounts were indeed true, how do we know those were the reasons Gaudio is no longer the Deacons’ head coach? The two men who do know the story, Wellman and Gaudio, aren’t talking.

I’ve seen in my time as a sportswriter where one party in a dispute will wage a whisper campaign against the other in order to strengthen their position. I vowed long ago not to be a party of any such unscrupulous tactics. And it needs to be mentioned, and commended, that no one from Wake (and no one from those who know and support Gaudio) have asked me to. Good for them for that.

If the phone were to ring this moment and Wellman were on the line telling me, on the record, exactly why he made his decision to change coaches then I’d have it up on Journalnow.com as fast as I could – but not until I got in touch with Gaudio to give him a chance to respond.

Until then we’ll all continue to wonder. Such is the case when a decision is made by one who can’t or won’t adequately and sufficiently explain that decision.

Tuesday, March 01, 2011

Kurt Vonnegut, Rico Cavatinni and Me

There’s a minor character in one of my all-time favorite books, Slaughterhouse Five by the incomparable Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., who had this line I keep thinking of in times such as these.

Vonnegut identifies the character only as a 40-year-old former hobo, and no matter the indignities and hardships Billy Pilgrim and the other POW’s suffer at the hands of their German captors, the guy kept saying `‘You think this is bad? This ain’t bad.” As Vonnegut would have to have it, those proved to be his dying words.

Bad might be covering a college basketball team that has won two games since Christmas, that is one loss away from setting the school record and two losses away from becoming the first team in ACC history to finish 1-15 in league play. But I know at least one guy who has it worse.

His name is David Zucchino, but his closest friends from back in the daze call him Rico Cavatinni. And besides playing a mean game of Cozmik Croquet, Rico has spent his professional career as a foreign correspondent—mostly with the Philadelphia Inquirer but for the past 10 or so years with the Los Angeles Times. When I ask him how many times he’s been to Afghanistan, he has to stop and add them up. I believe it’s around a dozen by now.

In a recent edition of the L.A. Times, Rico had a byline Libyan Rebels Brace for Attack  from Port Brega, Libya, which, if you’ve been following current Middle East events will know as one of the strategic points under rebel control in Eastern Libya that the forces still loyal to that wacky madcap dictator Moammar Kadafi are trying to recapture. When we exchanged emails earlier today, he was in Benghazi, another happening place. He said not to worry, that the locals love journalists, especially those from America, and that he hasn’t had to pay for a kabob yet.

So between being in Benghazi, Libya or in Joel Coliseum Thursday night to cover Wake Forest and Georgia Tech, I’ll take Joel Coliseum. But if you ask me the same question come the middle of the second half, I might actually have to think about it. At least Rico is getting free food —something not too many sportswriters can say in these days of rampant austerity.

You think this is bad? This ain’t bad.

Monday, February 28, 2011

The Place to Be

The proceedings have just started and I can count around 60 or 65 members of the general public who have accepted Coach Jeff Bzdelik’s invitation to watch him put the Deacons through their paces today at Joel Coliseum. I recognize a few as being Wake employees and a family member of two. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the numbers swell toward triple figures by the time we’re done.

Oops, just lost two. A little one was getting fussy, so his mother led him up the aisle by the hand.

Bzdelik walked over before beginning, was he is wont to do, and mentioned he was putting in a set today he learned from Jerry Sloan. They’re walking through it now, against no defense. After this, strength coach Todd Hedrick and basketball trainer Greg Collins will conduct the obligatory strength and condition drills to loosen the players up, and then practice will begin in earnest. I’m expecting a long scrimmage today.

The next game’s not until Thursday, at home against Georgia Tech, so I don’t imagine Bzdelik will turn his sights to the Yellow Jackets until tomorrow.

I don’t see Ron Wellman, the Deacons’ AD who often drops by for practices.

UPDATE: It’s going on 5 now and the numbers who have shown up for practice are holding pretty steady. I don’t think we ever got to 100, but we weren’t far off at the peak. So far no scrimmaging. Mostly the Deacons have been working on defensive drills. One reason people may be hanging around is there’s a pretty heavy storm passing through Winston. As I look through the doors of the concourse it looks like it’s already 7 p.m.

Coach Bzdelik walked over to tell several of us that practice tomorrow will be at 7:30 a.m. because he’s going recruiting tomorrow night. He said he’s going to a prison in Virginia because one of the inmates is soon getting out. I’m pretty sure he was kidding but it reminded me of one of my favorite quotes of all time, courtesy of Jerry Wainwright, the former assistant at Wake before he took over as head coach at UNC Wilmington, Richmond and DePaul.

Wainwright’s great line was that the only two places he wanted to recruit are penetentiaries and orphanages—penetentriaries because there are no alumni and orphanages because there are no parents.
Coaching can breed cynicism, especially in someone as sardonic by nature as Jerry.

And Ron Wellman has shown up, at a little after 5. He’s in suit and tie, so my guess is he just got out of a meeting.

FINAL UPDATE: It’s 5:50 and the Deacons have just wrapped up pracitce, which ended with a bang. The first team scrimmaged the second for five minutes, which got pretty loud and animated. I’d be anxious to hear the reaction to the day from any of the Peanut Gallery that made it by.