Saturday, November 20, 2010

More of the Same Old Same

Well it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Even good ideas are turning out bad in this season of discontent in Deaconville.. Coach Jim Grobe chose to call timeout before Clemson’s punt with 2:33 remaining in the first half, and wouldn’t you know it, the decisin cost the Deacons dearly. Tanner Price fell down on the ensuing possession the Deacons were able to run just 58 seconds off the clock before punting, and the Tigers capitalized with Kyle Parker’s 40-yard strike to Jaron Brown—who went up and over Josh Bush to pull it it in the right corner of the endzone.

It’s tempting to say that was that for this game. Clemson’s defense stonewalled Wake in the first half, and the 13-0 lead looks sufficient for the Tigers. The Deacons gained
all of 49 yards in the first half for four first downs.They crossed midfield once, reacing the Tigers’ 46 before Tanner Price was promptely sacked for a nine-yard loss.

Speaking of the Tigers’ defense, there was one point in the first half when Da’Quan Bowers, with one more sack, would have had more than Wake Forest’s team. Bowers, the Tigers’ junior defensive end, came in with 13.5 sacks, and made two more in the game’s first 22 minutes for 15.5. The Deacons had a total of 16, but gave themselves some breathing room when A.J. Marshall blitzed off the right corner to bury Parker, and then Zack Thompson and Kevin Smith double-teamed Parker two plays before Parker connected with Brown for the touchdown pass.

More stats for your halftime pleasure.

The Deaconsm all seasonn, have found themselves trailing if not by the coin flip, then shortly thereafter. Opponents have scored on nine of 11 game-opening drives, converting five touchdowns and four field goals. Presbyterian punted and Florida State fumbled. Wake, conversely, has scored three touochdowns on opening drives, punted seven times and thrown an interception (agianst BC).
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Thursday, November 18, 2010

Straight From the Tiger Beat

I don’t know anyone who knows more about all things pertaining to Clemson athletics than Larry Williams, a good friend who happens to be the senior writer for Tigerillustrated.com. Larry checked in with me last week and suggested we do an information exchange, with me at least trying to answer his questions on Wake and him fielding questions on the Tigers.

I’m always up for giving you good folks in the Peanut Gallery the best info to be had, so we decided to give it a go. And if this collaboration is well-received, who knows? There may be more. Larry said he’s pretty handy around a drum kit, so maybe we’ll make some music as well.

Larry’s answers go a little something like this:

Q —The Tigers are struggling on offense, ranking 10th in the league in points per game? What have been the biggest problems?

Larry—The biggest problem has been a self-impaling inability to cash in with points on possessions that reach the red zone.

The Tigers rank 117th nationally in red-zone offense, scoring points on just 69 percent of their opportunities. When you’re walking away with no points 31 percent of the time, that is a huge, huge problem.

Clemson has been terrible on field goals. They have missed seven—SEVEN!—kicks from inside 40 yards on 12 attempts. Six of those misses have come in the last four games.

And consider this stat: Over the past four games, the offense has been inside the opponent’s 23-yard line 19 times and scored FOUR touchdowns. Add in five field goals, and that’s 10 possessions that have produced zero points. Given those stats, you wonder how they’ve managed to win two of the last four.

The Tigers have moved the ball fairly effectively this season, but they really bog down when they get close to the end zone.

Q—How much pressure will the defense be able to mount on Tanner Price?

Larry—A lot, I would think. Clemson’s front four has been absolutely dominant over the past 10 quarters. They thrashed N.C. State’s offensive line, and they did the same to Florida State’s front last week.

Da’Quan Bowers has been unstoppable. On the interior, Jarvis Jenkins and Brandon Thompson have consistently disrupted.

Given that Wake Forest has given up 17 sacks in seven conference games, I’d say the chances are good that Clemson gets pressure Saturday.

Q—What’s the local opinion of Kyle Parker’s season.

Larry—Most people expected better. Dabo Swinney has defended him at just about every turn, but the fact is Parker has been much more erratic than everyone envisioned.

To be fair, Parker has not been helped by the lack of proven guys at receiver. It was a lot easier last year when he had C.J. Spiller, Jacoby Ford and Michael Palmer. And it should also be pointed out that Parker suffered bruised ribs in the third game against Auburn, and it took a while for him to recover.

But he threw two completely inexplicable fourth-quarter interceptions in a six-point loss at Boston College. Against N.C. State, he fumbled twice and was lucky to have an interception return for a touchdown called back by a penalty. And last week, both of his interceptions were deep in Florida State territory—including one in the end zone.

Some folks have called for backup Tajh Boyd, but Parker gives the Tigers their best chance to win. He has not been awful, but he hasn’t been great.

Q—What is the local opinion of Dabo Swinney’s short run as head coach?

Larry—There’s some concern at this point, for sure. Swinney took over a program that didn’t need a vast overhaul.

Even though he brought the school its first division title last season, no one has patience for a 5-5 record through 10 games. Not with the kind of talent they have on hand here.

Swinney is the perfect fit at Clemson in a lot of ways. He says and does a lot of the right things, and he’s a genuine dude whom people can embrace. But he has to win, and right now the Tigers are flirting with a 6-6 season.

If South Carolina comes to Death Valley and wins its second consecutive game over the Tigers—that hasn’t happened since 1970—there will be major pressure on Swinney to win in 2011.

And if the Tigers manage to lose Saturday in Winston-Salem? There would be calls to fire him on the spot, though I don’t think anything will keep him from getting a third season.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Take a Load Off C.J.

For a number of years now the basketball locker room at Wake Forest has been closed to the media, as it is most places. The arrangement never bothered me as long as I could get access to those I needed to talk with. Besides, I’ve spent enough time in locker rooms, which are usually crowded, smelly, tight spaces where it’s as hard for you to get out of everyone else’s way as it is for everyone else to get out of yours’.

But one condition imposed by the NIT Preseason Shootout is that all locker rooms be open. So while we were waiting on Coach Bzdelik to address the media in the interview room, I took the opportunity to duck into the Wake locker room just for old-time’s sake if nothing else. And what I saw was C.J. Harris sitting low in a stuffed chair in the outer-room (the only area we were allowed to venture), where he was facing the music.

Harris, as you’ve probably heard by now, had an exceedingly rough night in the Deacons’ 90-69 loss to Virginia Commonwealth. Stripped time and time again in his efforts to get the ball upcourt against the Rams’ swarming press, he finished with 10 turnovers. His comments were included in my game story.

“In the second half we broke down a little bit and I’ll take a lot of blame for that,” Harris said. “I wasn’t as strong with the ball as you’re supposed to be as a point guard. I need to do a lot better job than I did.

“They did a great job getting up and into us. We’ve just got to execute better and a lot of that deals with my part at the point.”

My question was: Do you think people are making too much of the point guard situation on your team, or is that the story?

“I think that’s the story,’’ Harris said. “I have all the confidence in my skills at the point. My teammates and coaches do as well. We’ll just put it together.’‘

Life is about controlling what we can control and dealing with the rest as best we can. Harris, as was glaringly obvious last night, is not a natural point guard. He’s a wing guard, and from what we could see last year during his impressive freshman season, he’s a good one. But he can’t control the reality that Wake Forest has, at best, one scholarship point guard and that guy, freshman Tony Chennault, will miss at least the next eight to 10 weeks while recovering from a broken foot.

Later I asked Bzdelik to comment on the impact of point guard play in the game. Joey Rodriquez, a tough, savvy senior who has played tons of college basketball, committed only one turnover in 30 minutes and dictated the flow of the game in such a way the Rams, as a team, had only seven. Rodriquez also scored 15 of his 18 points in the second half while VCU was pulling away.

Bzdelik essentially declined to answer, which I understood. To do so would have been piling on a player that already had enough on him.

Bzdelik instead did his best to put Harris’ predicament in perspective.

“C.J. is playing his heart out,’’ Bzdelik said. “In fairness to him we’re asking him to do something he’s never done before.

“But this is a team game, and we all have to play our part in it. We, I as a coach, everybody on this team. We all have to be better. And we will. And we will get back to work.’‘

If Harris is going to settle into the position over the next couple of months, he’s going to need all the help he can get. Last night he got precious little, and his teammates were the first to know it.

“C.J. got hounded,’’ sophomore Ari Stewart said. “I don’t know how many times they took the ball from him.

“But it’s not C.J.’s fault. It’s the other four people’s fault. It’s a team game.”

Skeen No Longer a Teen

Grizzled is one of those great old-fashioned sportswriter words that has probably outlived its usefulness. But because it has a bit of punch to it, I always love to use it just the same. So thanks to Jamie Skeen for returning to Wake Forest with the Virginia Commonwealth basketball team and giving me the opportunity.

I kept trying to put my finger on what looked so different about Skeen from when he played at Wake in Skip Prosser’s last season of 2006-07 and Dino Gaudio’s first of 2007-08. What I remember was a big player with a nice shooting touch whose production never seemed to live up to his natural ability. He actually started 30 games, but 24 of them were as a freshman when he averaged 7.5 points and 4.6 rebounds. When he got off to a wobbly start as a sophomore, he was replaced by Chas McFarland in the starting lineup. Gaudio made the move against at Iowa on Nov. 22, and afterward I asked Skeen for his reaction to McFarland starting ahead of him. We were standing in the corridor outside the visiting locker room at Carver Hawkeye Arena. Skeen said McFarland should be starting because he’d been playing better than him in practice. I appreciated the honesty to no end. But another part of me wondered if Skeen wasn’t taking the demotion a little too well.

We are talking ultimate competitive, big-time college basketball here and if I were a coach trying to make a living in the ACC I might be looking for a little more fire in the belly of my power forward.

After averaging 5.6 points and 4.1 rebounds as a sophomore, Skeen began his junior season in limbo when he was suspended for the first semester for what was described as a violation of the university’s academic policy. He would have had to apply to be re-admitted to Wake, but chose instead to transfer. That’s how he ended up with the VCU team that showed up at Joel Coliseum for the NIT Season Tipoff.

All I knew about his time at VCU was his numbers from last year, which were remarkably similar in points (8.1 per game) and rebounds (4.5 per game) to what he averaged as a freshman. But he shot 52 percent from the floor for the Rams, after shooting 42 percent at Wake.

He was 19 when he last played for Wake, and he is 22 today. You could see a physical maturity as soon as the Rams came out for warm-ups. He looked stronger, and far more self-assured, like a player who had been up and down the court a time or two. Compared the Jamie Skeen I knew at Wake, he looked grizzled.

And once the game started, he definitely showed an assertiveness I never saw at Wake. The VCU press led by senior point guard Joey Rodriquez was really what flummoxed the Deacons and sent them reeling to an sound 90-69 thumping on their home court. But Skeen got in his licks too, hitting five of eight shots from the floor to score 15 points. He also had five rebounds and a block in 23 productive minutes.

“I couldn’t be happier for Jamie to come back at Wake and play as well as he did and get the win,’’ Coach Shaka Smart said. “It’s not easy to do what he did tonight, and I’m really, really proud of him. I think he showed a lot of toughness.’‘

Skeen’s performance looks even better in comparison to the players he was going against. Starter Ty Walker, in 13 minutes, contributed all of two points, one block and one steal. And that was it. There were no rebounds. And freshman Carson Desroisers played better, good enough in fact to block five shots. But otherwise he hardly lit up the stat sheet with five points and three rebounds in 22 minutes.

“We allowed Jamie Skeen to catch the ball constantly too deep as opposed to being on top of him and not allowing him that low-post position,’’ Coach Jeff Bzdelik of Wake said.

Skeen appears to have landed well. If you’ve got good, savvy, veteran guards in college basketball you sleep better as a coach and Smart ought to be sleeping just fine. I was really impressed with the senior point guard Joey Rodriquez, who has 31 assists now in three games, and guards Bradford Burgess (25 points) and Brandon Rozzell (17) showed against Wake they can’t be left alone on the perimeter. And the Rams swarmed Wake, knocking them out of the game with 31 points off turnovers.

“We played against a veteran team of mostly seniors and juniors, and maybe a freshman on the team,’’ sophomore Ari Stewart of Wake said. “That was just like an ACC team in the ACC Tournament for us. And that is definitely an NCAA Tournament team right there. They’ve got a veteran point guard, and they had a chip on their shoulders coming in here on top of that.’‘

Skeen suggested that he had moved on when asked about the extra motivation of playing a school he once attended.

“It was not a motivation,’’ Skeen said. “I was just trying to get a win. We were just trying to get to New York. That’s all we’ve been talking about this whole trip. We didn’t want to win just one game, we wanted to win them both.

“I was hyped, or whatever, to be here, but at the same time I just wanted to get to New York and advance.’‘

But then he revealed he had not moved on, at least not for good, when he was asked about his footwear for the game.

“Yeah, I wore my Wake shoes,’’ Skeen said. “But it’s got Skip Prosser’s name on the inside of them. 

“That’s who recruited me here, so I mean it was a special thing for me, may he rest in peace. But it was definitely for him.’‘

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Will Unpalatable Meal End With Just Desserts?

These next two weeks I won’t be the only one writing about how Wake, a team that has already played clinched a spot in the Atlantic Division cellar, will be looking to build some momentum to carry nto spring practices.

On the short drive over to today’s gathering to eat chicken and talk football, I began wondering if even that is possible. Can momentum off a season be carried through three months of relative inactivity into the start of spring practices, or is that too much to ask from any team? That was the last question I had for Coach Jim Grobe before we let him get to what was left of the chicken.

“I don’t think there’s any question that if we win it would be huge for us going forward,’’ Grobe said. “I told our team, we work hard enough to deserve to win. I’ve been on a million teams as an assistant and as a head coach. But just as a head coach in my 16th year, we’ve never pushed a team any harder than we’ve pushed this one, just trying everything we possibly can to find a way to win. So from a work standpoint of the 16 teams that I’ve had as head coach, there’s no more deserving team than this one—none, absolutely none. I’ve never had a team have as little success as this one’s had and continue every day to come to work and do what they’re asked to do.

“We’ve had very few issues with attitudes. We’ve had a couple of guys who were a little bit surly at times, but for the most part it’s just been a team that’s worked really hard that’s very deserving of winning. But that doesn’t do anything for you. You’ve got to go do it. You’ve got to perform on Saturday to make it happen. So we’ll see. It would be good for us. No question it would great for us to see a litlte bit of success from all the work we’ve put in. It’s been an amazing group, because as a coaching staff I’ve never had a staff work harder. We’ve tried every scheme, every thought we could come up with to try to find the right combination for these guys. And we’ve asked them to do a lot, and they’ve not backed down a second.

“So it would be really good going into spring if we could find a way to have some success here at the end of the year.’‘

Monday, November 15, 2010

No Hanging Crepe on Deacons’ Win

It’s tempting to call Wake Forest’s 63-56 victory over Hampton tonight in the first round of the Preseason NIT a bad win, given how the Deacons had to struggle to outlast a team from the MEAC ranked by the RPI No. 275 among 347 Division I teams.

But with this team, this year, I don’t really think there can be any such thing.

“I just told them winning is not easy,’’ Coach Jeff Bzdelik said. “You have to find a way to win refuse to lose. I believe in these young men. They are going to become a very special team in due time.’‘

That said, the Deacons have plenty of room for improvement going into tonight’s second-round game against VCU after committing 19 turnovers, shooting just 36 percent from the floor in the second half, giving up 18 offensive rebounds and losing all but three points of what had been a 15-point cushion early in the second half.

Positives were the improved ball movement in the first half and the more balanced shot distribution. In the 89-79 loss to Stetson, J.T. Terrell took 17 field-goal attempts, Ari Stewart took 15 and no other Deacon took more than eight. Last night Terrell attempted nine and Stewart took just three, while Travis McKie hit eight of his 11 attempts and C.J. Harris made four of 10. Hampton opened in a zone, a defense that stymied Wake Forest in the opener against Stetson, but was forced into a man-to-man after the Deacons’ interior passing produced open shots in the paint.

“Our emphasis in this game was to move the ball as much as possible,’’ Harris said. “When we got three, four or five passes, we always had a layup, a foul or a good open jump shot. That’s what we really worked on the past couple of days, is the move the ball.’‘

Another bright spot was the return of Melvin Tabb from a bout with mononucleosis that sidelined him in the opener. Tabb, a 6-8, 250-pound freshman forward from Raleigh, played 11 minutes and contributed 3 points and 4 rebounds. Tabb is not the biggest power forward in the ACC, but he’s considerably bigger than the other two players, McKie and Stewart, who played there against Stetson.

I told Tabb I was surprised to see him back so soon.

“I surpriseed myself,’’ Tabb said. “After the Stetson loss, I just felt like I needed to be out there giving people a break when they needed one.

“I’m not going to be in the best shape obviously, because I have been out two weeks. But I can just give them some solid minutes when they need it and bring some energy off the bench. So that was nice.’‘

Playing Like the ACC Team You Are

On Dec. 17, 1997 I found myself in Huntington, West Virginia, courtesy of Dave Odom. He’d scheduled an away game at Marshall as one of the “two-for-ones” he often came up with during his 12 seasons as Wake Forest’s head coach. The Thundering Herd has had some really good teams over the years, but the 1997-98 squad wasn’t one of them. Marshall was 3-3 when the Deacons arrived, having beaten such perennial powers as Bluefield State, Radford and Rio Grande to offset losses to Tennessee-Chattanooga, UMass and Morehead State. Marshall would finish 11-16 that season under Greg White. I expected the Deacons, even in their first season of the post-Tim Duncan era, to win handily.

So did the Deacons, and from the looks in their eyes, so did Marshall’s players. At least they expected that going into the game, before they saw what the likes of Tony Rutland and Jerry Braswell and Robert O’Kelley and Rafael Vidaurreta and Josh Shoemaker had to offer—which on this particular occasion wasn’t much. And as the game progressed, you could see how less-than-impressed the Marshall players were. You could also see their own confidence grow in leaps and bounds, until they took control of the game midway through the second half on the way to a relatively-easy 73-66 victory.

Wake Forest, like all ACC teams, has a name in basketball. And a name can be a powerful weapon against those teams that don’t have one. It’s a weapon that can, if used right, strike a bit of fear, if not intimidation in at least the lesser lights of the college game. But it’s also a weapon that can be squandered if not used properly. When a name team comes out against an underdog and plays stupid, uninspired basketball, then the underdog is going to eventually figure out that whatever fears it had were unfounded.

I saw that in Huntington in 1997 and I saw that last Friday in Wake’s 89-79 season-opening loss to Stetson. On the latter occasion, Coach Jeff Bzdelik saw it too.

“When you allow a team to come in here and get off to, I think it was a 9-2 start, all of a sudden they get confidence,’’ Bzdelik said. “(They’re) Like whoah, hey, we can get these cats—instead of us jumping up 9-2 and putting doubt in their minds. That’s where leadership comes in from our standpoint. Do we get sideways real quick? We took some quick bad shots that just bail out the defense.’‘

Wake clearly doesn’t have a lot going for it this season, but it is carrying the ACC brand. In the non-conference games such as tonight’s NIT opener against Hampton, that should mean something. On the other hand, a victory over an ACC team could make Hampton’s season, just as it went a long ways toward making Stetson’s.

The key, as anyone could see, is going to be shot selection. The Deacons are really hurting at basketball’s two most critical positions, point guard and center, but they do have some good shooters on the wings. But if at the first sign of resistance guys like J.T. Terrell and Ari Stewart start jacking up shots, then the offense is going to be the muddled mess it was against Stetson.

But why take my word for it when you can take that of Stewart?

“We’ve got take good shots—we’ve got to take good shots,’’ Stewart said. “Our shots are going to fall. Shooting is not something that anybody should worry about on our team. We’re going to make shots. It’s how you take the shots, you know? I know my freshman year, I used to come down and let her rip. Luckily I made some of them, and I missed some. But we can’t shoot like that all the time. We can’t do that because the longer the shots the longer the rebounds. Nobody is going to be consistent if we don’t rotate the ball.

“Coach Bzdelik all the time in practice is saying `The best thing you can do on offense is get the ball to the other side of the court.’ It’s move the ball, move it, move it, move it, and move the defense. If you don’t move the defense, you don’t want to take that shot. They’re going to let you take that shot all night. And that’s what we’ve got to learn.’’

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Eight More Than Enough For Deacons

There was a spark from Wake Forest in the first half at N.C. State today that I haven’t seen in awhile. But I had to look fast, because by early in the second half it was long gone.

The Deacons hit the ground in Carter-Finley Stadium running and they kept running until they controlled 21 of the first half’s 30 minutes. But they had only a short field goal from Jimmy Newman to show for it after Jim Grobe’s gamble on a fourth-and-one at the Wolfpack goal was stuffed for a two-yard loss. Then N.C. State took command, scoring touchdowns on three of its first five second-half possessions to send the Deacons reeling to their eighth straight loss.

The last time Wake Forest had lost eight games in a row was in 1978 when John Mackovic’s first of three teams lost its final 10.

The plays that worked in the first half—the draw, the shovel pass, the power off tackle—went nowhere in the second as the Deacons managed only 51 yards and three first downs.

“We probably relied too heavily on a couple of plays in the first half that were very successful,’’ Grobe said. “The power off tackle was really good to us. It was the play we ran on fourth down that didn’t get in. In the second half I think we needed to probably throw the football a little more. But we’d had success running in the first half, and typically you hang on to what’s good to you. And they pressured us quite a bit and didn’t give Tanner (Price) much breathing room back there.’‘

Michael Campanaro re-lived his high school days as a running back, and looked pretty good while carrying 19 times for 67 yards. But he gained 57 of them in the first half before the Wolfpack made the adjustments needed to shut down the Deacons run.

The Deacons’ biggest obstacle was Nate Irving, a senior linebacker who had a career game in his last appearance at Carter Finley Stadium. Campanaro got a good inroduction to the life of a college running back late in the third quarter when he was picked up by Irving and driven hard to the turf..

It was one of eight tackles for losses by Irving, a school record.

“He is definitely the real deal,’’ Campanaro said of Irving. “I saw him the hole all day, especially when he picked me up and slammed me. He gobbled me up and held me there, and I was waiting for the whistle when he slammed me into the ground. He’s a ball player. I can surely see him playing on Sundays.’‘

And when he does, he’ll remember that one play.

“I haven’t taken a hit like that in my lifetime,’’ Campanaro siad. “I went over and asked him `Is that all you’ve got?’ He started laughing at me.’‘

Grobe, by nature, is a conservative football coach, which he showed again today on the Deacons’ first possession. Faced with a fourth-and-one from the N.C. State 47, Grobe opted to punt.

I’m no coach, but given the fact the Deacons had lost seven straight and showed up at N.C. State with nothing to play for other than pride, I’d have gone for the first down. Grobe chose the other option.

I asked Grobe if he was at least tempted to go for the first down.

“A little bit,’’ he said. “But the thing we’ve done all year is the offense has put the defense in tough situations. We’re starting five freshmen on defense, and to allow a team right out of the blocks to start at their 50-yard line is not a good thing to do.’’

Deacons Bellyflop Into Season

There may have been more dismal ways for Wake Forest to begin its first season under new coach Jeff Bzdelik, but sitting here at home having absorbed the impact of the Deacons’ 89-79 loss to Stetson, I can’t really come up with one.

The Deacons come out all puffed up from their 40-point exhibition victory over Division III Guilford, fall behind 9-2 before breaking a sweat, hang around through halftime despite getting punished on the backboards and outhustled to pretty much every loose ball, and then just wither under the pressure applied by an Atlantic Sun team coming off a 7-22 campaign. But all that paled in comparison to the blow they took later when told that Tony Chennault, the freshman point guard from Philadelphia, broke his foot and will miss the next eight-to-10 weeks while recovering from surgery to put screws in his bones.

And after suffering through the worst football season since 2000, this is what everyone had to look forward to.

Throughout the debacle, the words of Bzdelik kept ringing in my ear, the same ones he told the team time and time again these past few days. The win over Guilford was fool’s gold. Make too much of it and you’ll pay. Afterward I asked if the fools’ gold accrued last Friday cost the Deacons’ dearly this Friday.

“Oh no question,’’ Bzdelik said. “Plain and simple, yes. The game started off and in the first half I think they were maybe plus-13 on the boards for example. We didn’t contain the ball. We didn’t rebound. A lot of those rebounds were about 10-feet away where they just stepped in there and outhustled us. 

“One of the emphases before the game was everybody needed to find a body. We didn’t do that. When I watch the film tonight I’ll see guys not blocking off. They outhustled us. They did. They wanted it more than we did. We didn’t share the ball the way we should have. We didn’t execute like we should have. I’ll take the blame for that. I’m the leader of this group.’‘

If nothing else, I thought the Deacons would have a good-shooting team this season after watching the likes of Ari Stewart, J.T. Terrell, C.J. Harris and Travis McKie draining jumpers throughout the preseason. I imagined it would be a team that was death to zones. I imagined wrong. Stetson played a zone throughout and the Deacons reacted as though they’d never seen one. They made eight of 26 from 3-point range, but half of those 3-pointers came late after the scrappy Hatters had full control of the proceedings.

The zone was a good one, but not good to do the kind of damage it did to Wake’s surprisingly disoriented and undisciplined attack. Bzdelik agreed.

“It was because we took bad shots,’’ Bzdelik said. “We didn’t execute. We get all sideways. See, as soon as someone gets up and into us, we’ve gotten sideways. We don’t understand you have to execute under duress and get to where you’re supposed to get to. We’re good shooters, but you know shooting is a variable. Defense and rebounding and effort are constants. You can always do that. I’ve seen the greatest shooters in the world not shoot well. We just want to outscore people, and we have to change our mentality.’‘

There may have been no one who looked more off his game than sophomore C.J. Harris. He did lead the Deacons with five assists, but offset that with four turnovers. And he got six shots from the floor, compared to J.T. Terrell’s 17 and the Ari Stewart’s 15. He looked ever more like a wing guard needing a point guard to set him up, and not the point guard he had to play for the 25 minutes he was on the court without Chennault.

And Chennault, lest we forget, is not expected back until mid-to-late January.

“As you can see, when Tony was in there, he had three assists and one turnover,’’ Bzdelik said. “He’s someone that’s willing to pass the ball. And defensively he does a real good job. I think C.J. got one of his field goals from Tony. We couldn’t get the ball back to C.J. So we need C.J. to get shots up, but he doesn’t get enough shots because he’s distributing the ball. And that’s where Tony would help immensely.’‘

Like me, you may have been wondering how Chennault’s broken foot related to the stress fracture that kept him out of the first three weeks of preseason practice.

“I don’t know,’’ Bzdelik said. “He was cleared to play, but I don’t know. Obviously I have never done anything that the doctors would not tell me what to do. He had three full days of practice.’‘

Friday, November 12, 2010

Missing Ken Crutchfield

The limits of love know no bounds, as Ken Crutchfield proved with his bottomless devotion to all things Wake Forest. I was lucky enough to get to know Ken, so I realize what a blow his passing yesterday at age 72 is to the school and its athletic programs he so steadfastly supported.

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/winstonsalem/obituary.aspx?n=kenneth-earl-crutchfield-ken&pid=146567405&fhid=12243

Ken proved that one doesn’t have to have a Wake Forest degree to be a true Deacon. His alma mater was High Point, class of 1961, but he grew up in Forsyth County and returned back across the county line upon graduation to adopt Wake Forest as his chosen team. He became and remained especially active in the Deacon Club, serving as president from 1981 through 1983 and was a valued friend to many who played and coached football and basketball for the Deacons.

He also taught his son, Chip, to love Wake Forest as much as he did and in that endeavor, he clearly succeeded. I know you’ll miss you Dad, Chip, but take heart in knowing you’re not alone.