Friday, March 18, 2011

The Place to Be

Reverend Joe Haynes, who does great work with Athletes in Action at Wake, played football at Clemson, lettering as a 6-5, 250-pound offensive guard for Coach Danny Ford in 1987. He’s a fixture at the Deacons’ football practices, one of those I’m always glad to see.

We were marveling yesterday at the first spring practice of the season how different it is at Wake than pretty much anywhere else.

Haynes said that even for an ex-player, practices are almost impossible to get into at Clemson. He mentioned something about a moat with guards. He was kidding, but I got his drift. I’ve known a lot of football coaches over the years, and have liked most of them. The man I was named for, Richard Daniel Stott, was my father Hobe Collins’ best friend, and he was the head football coach at Franklin High. My dad helped out as an assistant and my brothers, Tom and Joe and I were ball boys from the time we were old enough to stay out of the way and not get run over by some rampaging linebacker. But as much affinity as I have for the profession, no one in this great good world takes themselves more seriously than a football coach.

So Haynes wasn’t overly optimistic when he dropped by Coach Jim Grobe’s office one day to ask if there was any way he could attend practices. Grobe’s reaction bowled Haynes over.

:“He just laughed,’’ Haynes said.

Not only could Haynes attend, so could his wife and son, and neighbor and casual acquaintance who bags his groceries down at the store. And not only is the public invited to Wake’s practices, it is welcomed with Jim Grobe’s open arms. Stand alongside the wall as the players and coaches are saddling by and Grobe will invariably pat backs, shake hands and have a warm word for pretty much anybody around. Jokes are told, laughs are shared, smiles are the order of the day every day at a Wake Forest football practice. If you look around and find Steve Shutt, the director of media relations, he’ll have a roster for you.

Lest you get the wrong impression, work gets done at these practices. The coaches are focused and intense, and they know their business. The train definitely runs on time. But what they don’t have is a high-pressured taskmaster walking around micromanaging the operation. Grobe can usually be seen talking with a scout or friend, or maybe his boss Ron Wellman. But you can tell he has an eagle eye, and doesn’t miss a thing.

Jim Grobe takes his job seriously. He wouldn’t have an ACC championship on his resume if he didn’t. But the beauty of Jim Grobe is I’ve never known anyone who takes himself less seriously. And because of that, he allows those who care about him, his players and his program, an opportunity you’re just not going to find at too many other BCS schools—a chance to swing by and watch practice.

There will be 14 more leading up to the Spring Game on April 16. If the weather is as sunny and bright as it was yesterday, there’s really no other place to be on a Tuesday or Thursday afternoon in Winston-Salem. They usually get going on the campus field around 4:15 or 4:30, and they’ll practice Saturday mornings at 10 at BB&T Field.

Maybe I’ll see you there.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Pitt Would Have Made Prosser Proud

In that I’m picking Pittsburgh to win the national championship, I hope to see the Panthers play a lot of basketball over the next three weeks. They’re a hard-nosed, experienced team with big hearts, and seem to be to be the most overlooked of all the four No. 1 seeds. Doesn’t matter who I go with anyway. I’m wrong every season.

But I can’t watch Pitt play without ruminating over how head coach Jamie Dixon got the job in the first place. Dixon has done a marvelous job for which he would never have to apologize, but the only reason he was promoted from his position as an assistant was because Skip Prosser couldn’t make himself do what he really wanted to do, which is follow his heart home.

I never discussed the decision with Prosser. Like most of his counterparts on his profession, the generally forthcoming Prosser clammed up pretty tight when the subject strayed toward the particulars of his livelihood. Even when Wake Forest held a press conference in spring of 2003 to announce that Prosser would remain at Wake, Prosser steadfastly declined to acknowledge that he had even been contacted by Pittsburgh after Ben Howland left for UCLA.

But he had, and we all knew it. It was too much of a natural for it not the be true.

It often took only two or three minutes of being around Prosser to learn how deep and abiding his love for his hometown truly was. He would tell you all about seeing Roberto Clemente gun runners down from right field in old Forbes Field, or being in Three Rivers Stadium on the miraculous day of Franco Harris’ Immaculate Reception. He was born in raised in nearby Carnegie, and considered himself a Pittsburgh guy through a through.

“It’s my hometown,’’ Prosser said. “I have a lifelong love affair with the city of Pittsburgh. It’s my home.’‘

Another time he waxed poetically about Pittsburgh to Joe Posnanski, who was at the time a sports columnist with the Cincinnati Post in the mid-1990s while Prosser was coaching at Xavier.

“It’s the most beautiful sight in the world,’’ Prosser declared.

Posnanski demurred, mentioning “You know, there’s Paris in the springtime, there’s 17 Mile Drive in Monterrey, there’s the Sydney Opera House overlooking the water. . . ‘’

Prosser cut him off with ``Give me Pittsburgh at night.’‘

In the spring of 2003 Prosser had Pittsburgh for his taking. All he had to do was say yes, and his dream job of coaching the Panthers of the Big East in their new, rocking 12,508-seat, on-campus arena, the Petersen Events Center, would have been realized. The case can be made that he wouldn’t have done as well as Dixon, in that Prosser never proved he could instill a team with the kind of defensive focus and intensity (the trademark of Dixon’s best teams) needed to advance deep in tournaments. But the question is moot because Prosser turned his dream job down.

Again, he never acknowledged an offer, much less discussed why he said no. But I was lucky to get to know Prosser well enough to come up with a couple of educated guesses.

Prosser, in the spring of 2003, was as fired up about the prospects for Wake Forest basketball as a coach can be. The Deacons had just won the ACC regular season behind the remarkable talents of senior Josh Howard. And though Howard was on his way out the door to the NBA, his supporting cast of sophomores Vytas Danelius, Jamaal Levy and Taron Downey and freshmen Justin Gray, Eric Williams and Trent Strickland was returning virtually intact. Plus Prosser had just recruited a pretty decent point guard from just down the road at West Forsyth, and Chris Paul is not an easy player to walk away from.

He’d spent two years building Wake into a conference, if not national, power, and he wanted to see the fruits of his labor.

But that’s Prosser the coach. My own sense was that Prosser, the man, couldn’t make himself leave Wake Forest after just two seasons. If it had been four or five, he could have convinced himself he had filled enough of whatever commitment he felt toward Wake to leave for his dream job. But if he’d left after two, people could have said that he left Wake hanging, and they might have been right.

Prosser was very much about doing not what was easy, but what was right. So while one might say that Prosser’s love affair with his hometown was star-crossed, the other way of looking at is Prosser couldn’t return to Pittsburgh because, in his heart, he never left.

And that’s what I’ll see when I watch Pittsburgh march to the 2011 national championship.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

As Promised

There are not enough heaping spoonfuls of sugar in Brazil to help Wake’s pungent season go down any easier for those who sat through it.

By any measure or dosage—the RPI ranking of 258, the Kenpom ranking of 251, the school-record 24 losses, the ACC-record 15 conference losses, the eight ACC losses by more than 21 points and 15 by at least 14, the 20 losses in the final 22 games, the 11 straight losses since the last victory against Virginia on Jan 29—Jeff Bzedlik’s first season as the Deacons’ head coach was about as palatable as battery acid. We all suspected it would be challenging, especially after Tony Woods was kicked of the team and Tony Chennault broke his foot, but I, for one, had no frame of reference for the foul brew served up.

Making it all the harder to swallow is the history of Wake as a proud member of the ACC, a school that has been giving and taking with its sister schools ever since the conference was formed at Greensboro’s Sedgefield Country Club in the spring of 1953. Fifty-eight seasons later, Wake Forest was an ACC team in name only. Other than the aforementioned conference victory over Virginia, I just can’t imagine how the season could have gone any worse.

And it bears noting once again that I’m blessed/cursed with an extremely vivid imagination.

So all things considered, I was braced for the question I knew I would get from pretty much everybody this week at the ACC Tournament. Dick Vitale used to hang around Wake quite often during the halycon days of Tim Duncan and I got to know him from sitting across the pregame media spread back when there was a pregame media spread. I saw him once this weekend and he had only one thing to ask me.

“Can he get it done?’‘

I didn’t have to ask to whom he was referring.

Not having the time to really engage him as he was flitting down press row shaking hands, I just shrugged. If we had talked, I would have told him the two points I made to everyone who asked.

Point 1—I saw no evidence that Jeff Bzdelik is an ACC coach. There was no noticeable development of any of the players that I would attribute to anything other than the normal and expected improvement that comes from practicing hundreds of times and playing 30 games under constant and diligent coaching.

Point 2—But before I conclude Jeff Bzdelik is not an ACC coach, I’d prefer to see him coach an ACC team. The 2010-11 Deacons had two players—C.J. Harris and Travis McKie—who would have played any meaningful role for any ACC team other than maybe Virginia. And given the way Harris faded down the stretch, even he would have had trouble getting off the bench for anybody. Carson Desrosiers, J.T. Terrell, Tony Chennault could have probably made most rosters, but their inclusion would be based on what they might someday become and not what they are. And there are always teams around who will take a 7-0 center with a condor’s wing span, regardless of how little Ty Walker has produced in his first three seasons of college basketball.

Bum Phillips’ classic description of a great coach is one who can take your’n and beat his’n and then take his’n and beat your’n. It’s my strong belief that there’s not a coach in college basketball who could have taken the team that Bzdelik inherited and beaten any team on Wake’s ACC schedule other than Virginia and Miami in Joel Coliseum. Bzdelik beat Virginia by five and lost to Miami by one.

A compelling case can be made that the Deacons, under a different coach, could have at least been more competitive than they were. But then we wouldn’t be talking about the overall state of the program under Bzdelik, just the degree of disarray.

And I know full well from reading the comments that there are many of you who feel you’ve seen enough to answer Vitale’s question uncategorically, and that as the Wake beat guy I have as well. As one who has witnessed countless events in my life I never thought I’d see, I respectfully disagree.

I also know there are those among you who feel that if enough pressure can be brought to bear on Ron Wellman for his decision to replace Dino Gaudio with Bzdelik, then it will force Wellman to own up to his mistake and change coaches again this spring. And I don’t deny that many of you who feel that way are well-meaning,  dyed in black-and-gold wool Wake fans who want nothing other than what’s best for the program. But that doesn’t stop me from asserting, as I have earlier, that demanding Wellman fire Bzdelik after one season is like spitting in the ocean and expecting the sea level to rise.

It’s not going to happen, so you’re wasting breath along with bandwidth. But as one who enjoys a good rant every once in awhile, I certainly understand where you’re coming from.

Again, I’m far from convinced Jeff Bzdelik is the right guy for the job. I do know it’s going to take some seriously heavy lifting to get out from under the rubble of this season, and it’s not going to happen anytime soon. Wake should be better next year if for no other reason than the freshmen will be sophomores and sophomore C.J. Harris will be a junior. Experience is a priceless commodity in college basketball as we saw again today when Duke’s seniors made North Carolina’s freshmen look like freshmen in the ACC championship.

In the Why Wait? Age I referenced last week all gratification has to be immediate, or else its possibility is dismissed. Arriving at a conclusion is not nearly as important as being the first one there.

Personally I’m willing to give Jeff Bzdelik something he really didn’t have this season.

I’m willing to give him a chance.

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?