Monday, February 14, 2011

A Side of Bzdelik You Don’t See

From the day he arrived at Wake Forest, Jeff Bzdelik has been compared to Herb Sendek. I don’t see it, and I don’t think you would either if you were around him much. There is somewhat of a physical resemblance, and both come off as calm and collected during games.

But Bzdelik wears his emotions on his sleeve in a way I never saw Sendek do in his 10 years at N.C. State. Sometimes that causes him to ball up, like he did in the Miami post-game that almost didn’t happen. But other times, all it takes is the right question asked in the right way in the right venue and the dam breaks like fine china thrown from a fifth-story window.

Andrew Jones of Foxsports.com asked the right question in today’s ACC coaches teleconference, and he asked the right follow-up as well. I thought you might want to check out the torrent that resulted.

AJ: “Regarding the baseball kidney story that got so much fanfare last week, was there a way that you were able to use a story like that with your players to maybe teach them some lessons that at this time of year, maybe when you’re going through some struggles, could turn out to be beneficial in any way?’‘

J.B.: “I’ll tell you what. We not only use that story. We use a story a day. Really. I think this. I think it’s easy with the public and the media and all you have to do every time you turn the TV on and see the standings, it’s easy for a young team to feel sorry for themselves and say `Well, we’ll be better next year, we’re just really young,’ and use that as an excuse. It’s easy to feel sorry for yourself. True champions, when they get knocked down they get back up. And if they get knocked down again, they get back up. And if they get knocked down again, they get back up. And they keep getting back up and they keep getting back up. And sooner of later you’ll throw the knock-out punch. Life is full. . . every time you turn around you see a story that’s inspirational to you. And we constantly let them know on a daily basis how blessed they are to be a school like Wake Forest, how blessed they are to be playing in the ACC, how blessed they are to be able to have all the wonderful things that they’re able to have, and the opportunities they’re able to have, and how many people would love these opportunities. You need to embrace that and play with a passion and a fire, that unbridled effort. It’s like, what’s the most dangerous animal in the woods? The wounded one. I don’t care how big or whatever, it’s an animal fighting to survive. And you know, if they embrace that, what is defense? What is rebounding? What is defensive transition? It’s just effort. And it can’t be three guys doing that and two guys feeling sorry for themselves. It’s got to be everybody. So no, we use every story imaginable to let them know how fortunate they are and to embrace this opportunity and to leave it all out there on the court. And you know, as a young player, if you’re going to just say `Hey I’m going to be better next year because I’m young,’ you know what, you’re not going to get any better. Because you need to take each day and get better. So right now it’s as much mental as anything. And I think it’s not just true of our team, but any team, that maybe hasn’t. . . every team is going through some tough times, and the ones that fight through it are the ones that succeed.”

A.J. “What has been the bigger challenge, that aspect of things or getting them to deal with the Xs and Os better and their individual skills?’‘

J.B. “I think personally it’s 50-50. Half of this game is mental. Half of this game is mental. It really is. It’s interesting. There’s a program in the Big East, for example, Pittsburgh I think it is. I think they might have one of the best winning percentages in the last decade and I’m not sure they’ve had a McDonald’s All-American on their team. There’s teams that win and they don’t have a first-round or second-round pick, or maybe even a draft pick on their team. My Air Force team that got up to 11th in the nation, there wasn’t even more than a two-star recruited player on that team. And so, it’s not about what your high-school ranking is coming out of high school. It’s how you develop. It’s your mindset. It’s your toughness. It’s buying into a team concept. That’s what a team is all about and that’s how players get better. We could talk for an hour about players who had no stars or one star that are playing in the NBA right now. So half of this game is in your heart and in your mind. I believe that.’‘

Bzdelik is no Dave Odom the former Wake coach who could talk any room of reporters into exhaustion, but he’s no Herb Sendek either.

There’s a passionate side to him that I really wish he showed more often.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Jelling Time For J.T. Terrell

The J.T. Terrell I’ve seen in this last brace of games and practices is not the same player who was as maddening as he was captivating over the first two months of the season.

At the risk of being accused of obsessing over Terrell—who, you have to admit, has provided plenty of blog fodder throughout his freshman season—I want to make mention of how impressed I was by the way he played against Miami. His statistics (10 points, three rebounds, four assists, three turnovers) were relatively modest, but other than the turnovers, almost everything he did helped his team have a real chance at pulling out the win. He didn’t come out gunning, but instead let the game come to him. But when it did, he had the brass to take the big shot that needed to be taken.

His clutch 3-pointer with three minutes remaining tied the game at 70. And even though he missed the 3-pointer at the buzzer, he was able to handle a tough low pass and get off an attempt that didn’t just have a great chance, but actually circumnavigated the rim before spinning out. He finished with three field goals on nine attempts, making it the sixth straight game he has taken fewer than 10 field-goal attempts.

Terrell has great quickness and long arms.  When he’s locked in and putting it on the line, he can be a tough defender. But what was most impressive in his game against Miami was his passing. Coach Jeff Bzdelik said the game tapes revealed that of his four assists, three came on passes worth running back and watching again.

“They’re growing,’’ Bzdelik said. “For example, J.T. Terrell had four assists and three of them were outstanding passes, where he read the defender.

“One was to C.J. Harris, whose man had stunted off of him to help. He read that perfectly and hit C.J. Also, against a zone, he read Travis McKie perfectly when Travis set a screen for Gary running the baseline and the bottom defender in the zone stepped out – Travis read it perfectly, which was another great sign, and stepped right in there. J.T. saw that and read the defense.

“It’s not just about passing the ball. You need to be able to read the defender and understand how your teammate is being played. J.T. made three wonderful passes that led to baskets, easy baskets, for us by simply reading the defender. That’s the sign of somebody with a very high basketball I.Q., and who now is taking to coaching and understanding.’‘

Friday, February 11, 2011

A Friday Night Morsel

Made practice today, and it was a good one. I’ll write about it tomorrow.

Tonight my bride and I are going to eat some pulled pig and watch Social Network.

But just to let you know I’m thinking about you, here’s a video I stumbled across featuring one of my all-time heroes. Stevie Winwood was 14 when he joined his older brother Mutt (they know how to name them in England) in the Spencer Davis Group. He was 18 when a song he co-wrote, Gimme Some Loving, made #2 in the UK and #7 Stateside. Here he’s playing with Blind Faith, which would have been a pretty good band with a decent lead guitar.

The grafitto of the Islington Underground in London proclaimed “Clapton is God.’’ Regardless, he was hanging around with some pretty well-connected company

Hope you enjoy. In the Presence of the Lord

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Staying Away in Droves

The longer I hang around on this planet, the harder I try not to be judgmental.

Derision can be a great tool. My forebears on my mother’s side, the Cherokee, used it to discipline their young. A child would break bad and they usually weren’t spanked and they certainly weren’t put in time out. Instead they faced pretty much universal grief and condemnation from their elders—especially their fathers,  maternal uncles and grandfathers, who in their matrilocal system were charged with turning a young boy into a brave—and made to feel like a fool. Those kids who didn’t like feeling like a fool quit breaking bad. Those who remained fools continued to be treated as such.

But derision, more often, reduces both the giver and the receiver. And when both sides feel they’re right, and all that shrill rancor and animosity gets to flowing back and forth, well then it’s time to switch the channels from Hardball or Bill O’Reilly, or maybe surf away from the message board or blog. There are enough people out there telling others how to feel, act or think without me having to give my two-cents worth. And that is usually about what it’s worth.

So, the older, wiser and more understanding Country Dan Collins is not going to slam the Wake Forest fan base for the shockingly small crowds that are showing up for games these days. For the record, the announced attendance for last night’s Miami game was given at 9,249, and if there were more than three or four dozen students other than those playing in the band, then I didn’t see them.

Instead of lambasting the following, I will offer up some mitigating factors.

1) Attendance is down all around college basketball, at least at the arenas I frequent. And I can see why, given the over-saturation of television coverage and the obvious fact that the product is not as good these days as it used to be. Also it costs a lot of money to attend these games and given the state of the economy, not as many people have that kind of stray cash laying around.

2) Wake Forest is the smallest school playing basketball in a major conference. As such it has to rely more on non-alums for support. Ron Wellman and I have discussed this several times about how many of the fans who root for the Deacons are transplants whose deepest allegiances usually belong to their own alma mater or maybe a team—say Connecticut, Kentucky, Notre Dame, Florida, Syracuse or Kansas or even a North Carolina or Maryland or Clemson—they grew up on. They’re the fans who, because they now live in this area, have picked Wake to be their favorite as long as the Deacons aren’t playing their real favorite. That attachment doesn’t run as deep, and is the first to lose its adhesion in tough times.

3) These are tough times for Wake basketball, as tough as they’ve been in decades. Winning teams draw more than losing team. Simple fact.

But what the older, wiser and understanding Country Dan Collins is going to do is make a point that needs to be made.

You are what you are.

And as Dear Abby put it so eloquently through the abundant talents of John Prine, Dear Abby You Ain’t What You Ain’t.

What we saw at Joel Coliseum last night is what the Wake program is at this particular moment in time. I don’t want to hear how Wake Forest has a rabid, steadfastly loyal fan base. There are rabid and steadfastly loyal fans among the fan base, but any notion that Joel Coliseum is a pulsating, intimidating hotbed of college basketball in times good or bad has been roundly put to rest game after game this season.

If you’re a Wake fan and that’s all right with you, then it’s all right with me. Why shouldn’t it be? But if you’re one who feels the team and program deserves better, then one recourse would be to expend whatever energy and drive and money and commitment you have available to see the Deacons get that support.

Because just because you are what you are, that doesn’t mean that’s what you always have to be.

The Post-Game That Almost Wasn’t

C.J. Harris preceded Coach Jeff Bzdelik into the post-game interview room tonight, so I strolled over to chat him up before the formal address. The 74-73 loss to Miami was a crusher, considering how hard and—in certain areas—how well the Deacons played. If you want to add the disclaimer, ``For a team that’s 8-16,’’ I won’t quibble. But I do think Wake played with more energy and passion than I’d seen on most occasions this season, and I told Harris so.

“I think we played extremely hard,’’ Harris said. “We did the little things, took charges—all types of stuff.’‘

Bzdelik entered, so I told Harris I’d be back to see him later and took my seat. Bzdelik sat down, and asked ``Questions?’‘

I just ran my tape back and counted to three and heard Bzdelik say `None? OK.’’

And he got up to leave.

There was chuckles from those who thought he surely couldn’t be serious. But he was.

“Seriously,’’ he said. “Do you have questions?’‘

Sam Walker, a long-time buddy who writes for the Gold Rush, saved the day.

Walker: “Talk a little bit about Ty Walker and him raising his level a little bit tonight playing against a good player from Miami, Reggie Johnson playing in front of his home fans. He got nine points, five boards, four blocks—much above his average.’‘

Bzdelik: “Yes. He did a great job.’‘

It was not the man’s finest moment.

I recount this vignette (and for the record, he did answer later questions in actual detail) not to slam Jeff Bzdelik. There’s enough other people doing that. They have their reasons, some of them good people with good reasons. Nor do I want to suggest tonight’s post-game episode was the norm. It wasn’t.

He’s not a song and dance man. He’s never going to pass for another Jim Valvano, or, for that matter, another Skip Prosser. Few do. But I’ve invariably found him accommodating, analytical, forthcoming and at times brutally candid. And his sense of humor is one that if he’s going to poke fun at anybody it’s going to be himself. I’ve enjoyed getting to know him.

What I saw tonight was a man who was mad, really mad, because he hates losing. He’s lost enough this year for a lifetime and on this night, he had a chance, a really good chance, at winning. He designed the right full-court play that gets the right shot off in four seconds and the ball takes the grand tour all 360-degrees and then some around the rim before spinning out. And it was chewing on his insides, as it would have been our own.

And tonight he showed it.

Given all he’s been through this season, I can’t really blame him.

Wednesday, February 09, 2011

Catching Up With Walter, Jordan

We have a piece Walter, Jordan Recovering on the Journalnow.com website that follows up how Coach Tom Walter and Kevin Jordan are doing following Monday’s kidney transplant in Atlanta. In some ways it was more fun to write than the original story itself. If nothing else I got my first chance to ask Jordan a question on the teleconference conducted this morning. I can tell I’m going to enjoy getting to know him.

The short version is that both are doing great. Walter said he expects to be released Thursday and should be headed back to Winston-Salem in a car with his a parents by late Thursday afternoon. Jordan said he thinks he be out and back home in Columbus by Friday.

There were several light-hearted moments during the teleconference. My favorite might have been when Jordan was asked what he expects it to be like playing for a man who gave him a kidney. He said he didn’t think he’d be shaking off many bunt signs.

Also to come up was a topic that has been discussed on this blog and on message boards that I frequent—the almost sub-human question of whether Walter’s act could be seen by the NCAA as a violation for improper benefits. Walter said today that Ron Wellman, Wake’s AD, nipped that issue in the bud.

“This was brought up by our compliance person just to make sure there weren’t any quote-unquote extra benefits,’’ Walter said Wednesday. “That’s always the big catch phrase with the NCAA.

“And our athletic director said it best when he said `We’re answering to a higher call.’ ‘’

Tuesday, February 08, 2011

When the Unbelievable Turns Out to the True

One question I’ve learned over the years not to ask an interview subject is ``Were you surprised?’’ I guess it might be human nature, but for whatever reason, there are many people who don’t like to own up to getting caught unaware, whether they were aware or not. If you ask instead, ``What was your reaction to (whatever)?’’ the response is usually less-guarded and more forthcoming.

While putting the finishing touches on my favorite story in years—and one of the favorite of my career—I put in a call to Ron Wellman. I wanted to find out the latest news from Atlanta, and to ask of him his reaction when his baseball coach, Tom Walter, walked into his office to mention that he wanted to donate a kidney to a freshman baseball player, one who because of his illness had never played a game for the Deacons.

Wellman said he was surprised.

“It was a surprise for sure, because it’s not a routine part of the day getting news like this,” Wellman said.

But then he admitted his reaction had not done service to Walter.

“But in reflecting upon it after we had the initial conversation, it shouldn’t have been a surprise because that’s the type of person he is, and he really does believe in his team being a family,’’ Wellman explained.

I also had trouble believing the story when I first heard it was to unfold yesterday in Atlanta, but that was until I remembered maybe the biggest reason Walter got the job at Wake Forest. Wellman, upon announcing the hire in June o 2009, recounted the amazing story of how Walter held the University of New Orleans baseball program together in 2005-06 in the horrific aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and how the team had to actually re-locate several times before returning home in March.

The Privateers finished 30-28 that season and a year later won the Sun Belt Conference championship.

Wellman clearly hired Walter for who he was as much as for what he had done as a college baseball coach—as if the two could be inseparable.

My story in today’s Journal Coach’s Sacrifice ran too long. I told our Managing Editor Carol Hanner I could have written 5,000 words and not told the story the way I wanted to. She hated cutting it for length, but the constraints of print required it. I took it better than I used to, knowing that I could always pick up the cutting room floor and serve it up here in my blog.

A section pared dealt with Walter’s ordeal at UNO and how it came into play five years later.

It was Walter’s commitment to his players and program at the University of New Orleans that convinced Wellman he was the right person to be Wake Forest’s baseball coach. Chased out of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina in August of 2005, the Privateers evacuated to Las Cruces, N.M., Mobile, Ala., and Westwego, La., before finally returning home in March of 2006.

“Also when we went to the Internet and looked at some of the things that had happened down in New Orleans and how he worked with the team and the players and the comments that were coming back from some of the people.’’

A university, or a business for that matter, is bricks and mortar, a folksy way of saying infrastructure. And it’s what is learned, or produced. But mostly it’s about the people who work there who make it what it really is.

Wake Forest has been a great university for years. It became a better university the day Tom Walter became the head baseball coach.

With his selfless act, he did himself and his university proud.

Saturday, February 05, 2011

Deacons Get Bullied Again

Al Groh made an observation 30 years ago that kept ringing in my head as I watched Maryland cuff the Deacons 91-70 in basketball today in College Park.

It was right after Clemson’s football team had laid four score and two points on the Deacons in the infamous 82-24 game in Death Valley that Groh, upon meeting with the media afterward, said it was like big strong men playing against young boys. That’s what I’ve been watching in basketball all season and I saw it again today. The Deacons are simply too weak physically to compete against the best teams in the ACC.

The term ``Ball Strong,’’ is one Coach Jeff Bzdelik uses constantly in practice. And yet I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a team weaker with the ball than Bzdelik’s first at Wake Forest. Opponents just take the ball away for the same reason a big guy takes a little guy’s lunch money—because they can. And until the Deacons get big and strong enough to do something about it, they’re going to continue to take the kind of lumps they took again today.

Way back when I read about basketball legend Bob Petitt, and how when he first showed up at LSU he had trouble with people knocking the ball out of his hands. How true that was I don’t know, especially considering he averaged 25.6 points and 13.7 as a sophomore, the first season he was eligible. But it made for a good story anyhow, the way he got a set of hand grips and squeezed them constantly for a year until he developed a pair of hands strong enough to score 20,880 points and grab 12,849 rebounds in the NBA and, in 1970, be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Maybe modern physical science has developed a better way to strength hands and forearms, I don’t know.  I do know that until the Deacons are able to hold on to what should be theirs’, they’re going to keep getting pushed around.

An ugly second half got even uglier when freshman J.T. Terrell picked up his third technical of the season. Terrell drew his first against Xavier and his second three games ago against Duke when right as a little skirmish was getting sorted out, he walked up and pushed Kyle Singler in the back. Bzdelik, as I was to learn, was not pleased. And he didn’t look pleased today when Terrell, after getting his shot blocked and landing on the court, kicked at Dino Gregory’s private area as Gregory ran past him downcourt.

I realize Terrell got kicked in the head himself as he was on the court, but it didn’t look intentional. What Terrell did clearly was. That’s two technicals in four games now for behavior for which there’s no place in a game of college basketball. Bzdelik took Terrell out of the game, as he should have. The word has a way of getting the ACC which players the referees should be watching out for, and I have to think that Terrell is not at the top of the list then he’s close. That’s not good for Terrell, and that’s not good for his team.

Terrell is 19, to turn 20 on Nov. 24. He’s old enough to know better.

Friday, February 04, 2011

String Music

One of the things that makes life worth living is if something really means enough to you then you always find people to help you enjoy it. They just show up, knowing you for who you are and who you’re supposed to be.

Readers of this blog know my thing is music. At 11, about the time the Beatles hit our shores, I realized that writing songs was the absolute most extraordinarily awesome thing a person on this planet could do. By 15 or 16 I was making attempts to do just that. Forty-plus years later I’m still making those attempts, which have piled up in the dozens. I really like writing about Wake Forest for the Journal and this blog, but I have to tell you that as soon as Willie Nelson covers one of my songs and it goes platinum, I’m on to that other gig.

But along the way all these wonderful people have materialized to help me along. Bruce Winkworth, the baseball media relations director extraordinaire at N.C. State has showered me with tapes and CDs over the years, turning me on to many of the artists who I consider among my very favorite. Bruce really steeped me in that Texas Singer Songwriter crowd, the Steve Earles and Guy Clarks and Townes Van Zandts and James McMurtrys (I’m really, really big on James McMurtry), Billy Joe Shavers and Joe Elys and Jimmy Dale Gilmores and even the late great Blaze Foley.

And then there’s Bill Armour, one of the first real Wake Forest people I got to know well when I landed in Winston in 1978. Billy A is a recovering sportswriter who worked for the Winston-Salem Sentinel back when there was a Winston-Salem Sentinel, but who was smart enough to go out and get a real job. Billy A, who like me was lucky enough to see the Dead back when Pigpen was still on harmonica and singing Turn On Your Lovelight and Jerry was actually skinny,  has also been a big-time musical benefactor over the year, always seeming to know just who I needed to hear next to get where I needed to go. Billy A outdid himself a couple of months ago, presenting to me an external hard drive with a terabyte of capacity absolutely filled with recordings, mostly audio but a fair share of video of pretty much anyone and everyone you would ever want to hear. He said if I did nothing else but listen to music 24 hours a day—and I’m tempted to take him up on it—I’d need six years to hear everything in the library. My Christmas present from Nate, my son/technical adviser, was a plug attachment that allowed me to hook up my computer to my stereo and thus get the sound out of my much, much better speakers.

And that’s how I’m able to listen to a Clash concert from the London Lyceum on Jan. 3, 1979 London’s Calling while I write this post about Gary Clark’s 3-point percentage.

Clark, Wake’s only senior, is burning it up from outside this season, as you’ve probably heard. After shooting 32.4 percent from beyond the arc his first three seasons, Clark has made 41 of 65 this season for a whopping 63.1 percent. There’s red hot, there’s white hot and then there’s whatever Clark is doing this season. But the reason he doesn’t show up in the NCAA or ACC statistics is he hasn’t made enough 3-pointers to qualify for the rankings.

The NCAA requires 2.5 made 3-pointers a game, the ACC two. The only two times Clark popped up in the ACC stats was after he made five against Winthrop to give him 11 (out of 14 for 71.4 percent) in five games and after he made four against UNC Wilmington to give him 19 (out of 27 for 66.7 percent) in nine games. Then he made one against UNC Greensboro, one against Xavier and none against Presbyterian to fall off the pace. He really fell behind when he hit a stretch of only one over the three games against High Point, N.C. State and Maryland to find himself with only 28 over 17 games. Clark has picked it up since, drilling 13 over the past five games but still goes into tomorrow’s game at Maryland with 41 in 22 games. So if he makes five against Maryland like he did against Winthrop, then he’s back in the ACC rankings so far ahead that he can’t even been seen by the pack.

Malcolm Grant of Miami currently leads with 44.4 percent.

Enough of this work. It’s Friday night, my bride and I ordering popcorn shrimp takeout and watching Nowhere Boy, the biopic of a young English spud named Lennon. I’ll let you know if it’s worth your time.

Where’s the Beef?

There has been some concern voiced out there in the Peanut Gallery that Jim Grobe and his staff whiffed this recruiting period on one of the great needs of the program, more size in the defensive line. Both DC and Jim were especially concerned about the nose guard position in the 3-4 defense, which redshirt freshman Nikita Whitlock played this past season at 235 pounds. So let’s assess what Coach Ray McCartney will have to work with starting with spring drills.

I see on the roster 10 candidates for playing time at one of the defensive line positions, and that’s not counting Kyle Wilber or Tristan Dorty, both of whom are expected to be at outside linebacker. It also doesn’t include Gelo Orange, who I imagine at 6-1, 230 pounds will get his best shot at playing time at linebacker. The 10, in descending order of size according to their 2010 weight are:

Sophomore Ramon Booi—6-6, 300 pounds.
Freshman Duke Mosby—6-2, 290 pounds.
Redshirt freshman Frank Souza—6-4, 285 pounds.
Redshirt freshman John Gallagher—6-4, 255 pounds.
Redshirt freshman Kris Redding—6-4, 255 pounds.
Redshirt freshman Zach Thompson—6-5, 255 pounds.
Sophomore Derricus Ellis—6-2, 245 pounds.
Redshirt freshman Nikita Whitlock—5-11, 235 pounds.
Freshman Daniel Vogelsang—6-3, 235 pounds.
Sophomore Kevin Smith—6-4, 230 pounds.

So, at least on the face of it, the concern appears valid. I can buy the argument that a defensive lineman in a 3-4 needs more lead in the britches, so to speak, than one playing in a 4-3. I guess the main thing I could say to assuage that concern (which as far as I can tell is one that neither Grobe nor McCartney seem to share) is that so many of these players are young, and thus more apt to put on weight before the start of the 2011 season. I remember one Tuesday gathering to eat chicken and talk football late in the season when Grobe talked about how both Thompson and Gallagher were already considerably heavier than the weight listed in the roster. I do plan to make it a point to ask Ethan Reeve, the strength and conditioning coach, for updated weights at the outset of spring practices. If I forget, please jog my feeble memory.

Another option would be to move an offensive lineman or two over to provide ballast. Two that have been mentioned as capable of playing either side are redshirt freshman Devin Bolling (6-5, 290 pounds) and freshman Antonio Ford (6-3, 285 pounds).

I did ask Grobe on Wednesday if both of the defensive linemen signed this week were seen as bona fide, knuckles in the ground defensive linemen and weren’t being looked at as possible outside linebackers. The two I had in mind were Desmond Floyd (6-3, 235 pounds) and Gods-Power Offor (6-2, 220 pounds).

“They could do both, I think,’’ Grobe said. “I think when you look at Desmond Floyd, he has potential to be a real, real big guy. I think he could really blow up. And Gods-Power, you have the same thoughts because he’s big and physical enough to play defensive end. But both of these can run really well.’‘