Thursday, April 09, 2009

Teague Discusses His Decision

On my way from the ranch to BB&T Field for today’s football scrimmage, I swung through Wake Forest to stalk Jeff Teague.

Actually I’d gotten word that the Deacons were going to run today in a pickup game at the Miller Center, so I hung around the Miller Center. And sure enough, along comes Teague on his way to the locker room.

I felt like a producer of the Bill O’Reilly Show or something, ambushing him like that, but Teague said he had no problem answering a couple of questions about his decision to submit his name to the NBA draft without hiring an agent. Teague will retain his eligibility if he removes his name by June 15.

What follows is our little Q&A.

DC: Why did you submit your name?
JT: I had a pretty good year this year and I just want to see where I’m at. I mean I think people think highly of me right now but you don’t ever know. That’s what the workouts are for, to see what it’s like.

DC: And why did you not hire an agent?
JT: I always wanted to have a chance to come back, just in case things don’t go right. And even if I don’t feel like I’m ready, if I go to the workouts and I know this is not the year for me, then I can always come back.

DC: What are you looking to achieve by going to the camps?
JT: To show people that I can play point guard. I had to score the ball for our team to be successful. But I really can play the point guard point position. I just want to see what everybody thinks of me, what I need to work on and what I can get better at.

DC: What specifically do you want to know?
JT: Just what they think of me really, if coming back for another year would be better for me or if they thought I would drop off or anything like that. I just want to see what they think of me and what they think I can do.

DC: You and Ish Smith split time at point guard last year. If you come back you’ll be splitting time and playing a lot of off-guard. Will that affect your decision?
JT: Not really. Me and Coach Gaudio talked about that. He tells me if I came back he’d give me the same opportunity I had this year. It’s just what I do with it. We’ll see what happens.

DC: Turnovers are a big deal with point guards. Is that one problem they might have with your game?
JT: Turnovers are big. I was trying to force a lot of things. I’ve taken a lot of time since we’ve been off, watching a couple of tapes. I just realized if I just get the ball to the post more it makes a lot of things easier. I’ve been watching a lot of NBA games and I noticed that they like to throw the ball to the post and pick and roll. It makes the game more simple.

Wednesday, April 08, 2009

Teague Enters Draft, but Leaves Door Ajar

It appears all three Wake Forest basketball players with apparent NBA futures are going to get what they want.

Just got word that Jeff Teague will submit his name to the NBA draft, but will not hire an agent.That way he will retain his eligibility if he removes his name from consideration before the June 15 deadline. We’ve got a story that is either up on our Journalnow.com website or will be shortly.

So barring any unforeseen development, the last Nike has dropped—at least for now. James Johnson has entered the draft and, according to Coach Dino Gaudio, has already hired an agent. He is represented by Dan Tobin of the Wasserman Media Group, one of the heavyweights in the field. Freshman Al-Farouq Aminu has stated repeatedly that he won’t even make himself available for the pros, though why should one take his word over a website titled draftexpress.com that keeps insisting he’s ready to bolt?

It’s all working out the way Gaudio thought would, and the way it probably should. As is, Johnson gets to go ahead and launch his professional career before he turns 23, Teague gets to work out for NBA teams and determine his prospects without closing the door behind him, and Farouq gets to spend another season improving his basketball skills and pursuing a degree he hopes to attain someday, before or after he begins his professional career.

Good for all three.

Getting on the Ball on Football

Chasing that bouncing ball can be such an all-consuming endeavor that there’s just too much to do once it stops bouncing.

I can’t count the number of tasks, chores, details and personal matters I promised I would get right on as soon as basketball was over and I got a semblance of my life back. But it has been that way for years, so I was braced for the deluge.

One regret is I haven’t spent as much time on spring football as I would like. I did make it by the scrimmage Saturday, and that was great fun. And I’ve gotten by a number of practices, and talked with Coach Jim Grobe and some players. There’s another scrimmage scheduled for Thursday, this one at BB&T Field. The times for these practices and scrimmages can be moving targets, but as of five minutes ago it was set for either 4:30 or 5.

Something you might want to watch for if you make it.

There’s a battle royale being waged for second-team quarterback behind Riley Skinner, the result of Brett Hodge deciding not to return for a fifth season. Grobe said it’s a three-way scrap, among Ryan McManus, Skylar Jones and Ted Stachitas. Jones is a fleet-footed rising sophomore whose running ability remains ahead of his arm. Stachitas is a freshman who redshirted last season while recovering from shoulder surgery. He’s being nursed along some this spring, and Grobe said Saturday that he was feeling pain after a practice last week but felt much better the next day. McManus is one of the most fascinating stories on the team. His father, Jerry, played quarterback for Wake in the mid-70s, and is an assistant coach at Kent State. I got to know him when he was an assistant at Wake from 1987 through 1995, and he’s one of the good guys in the business. Ryan walked on at Wake and immediately made himself handy in any way needed. He has held for kicks the past two seasons, has been on the punt team and even got in at quarterback in last season’s opener at Baylor. Along the way he has grown into a well-toned, sharp young man who knows what he’s doing on the football field. He actually played last season as a senior, but because he had never taken a redshirt he decided to return for one more fling.

If Wake should need a backup at quarterback, I believe it could do worse than Ryan McManus.

Tuesday, April 07, 2009

John Dell: Live With Color From the Masters

As an old dog, I was worried a bit about having to learn a new trick when I began this blog last fall. But that young whippersnapper and occasional guest blogger John Dell, who has only been at the Journal for half my 30 years, is making better speed down the information highway than I am.

John is not only going to cover the Masters for the Winston-Salem Journal this weekend, he’s going to be twittering. He also has a live chat from Augusta National planned for Thursday at 1 p.m.

Between the two of us, John is the better golfer His handicap is 14. My goal whenever I hit the links was to score in double figures. I did once or twice, on ridiculously easy courses. I gave up the game when we had Rebecca, our second child, in 1990. John has sacrificed five strokes on his handicap since Allison and Jeffrey came along, but not the game altogether.

Check out his coverage. He knows his golf. He just missed the historic 1997 Masters when Tiger Woods won his first major by a record 12 strokes. But he has covered every one since, starting with Mark O’Meara’s victory in 1998.He has also covered several U.S. Opens, and 15 straight Forsyth Invitationals. If that’s not some kind of record, it should be.

Farouq’s Second Verse Same as First

Al-Farouq Aminu, just this afternoon, told someone who knows him far better than I do that there’s nothing to the swirling rumor about him leaving Wake Forest for the NBA this spring. He said he’s not going anywhere, at least not before next season. He left no wiggle room. And he has been in classes, and study hall. He has begun arranging a room assignment for next fall. He has been consistent throughout. He told Coach Dino Gaudio he wasn’t even going to test the waters, and that’s what he told me Saturday.

Despite all that, even his mom was calling to ask him what was going on after a blog titled draftexpress.com, attributed multiple unnamed sources to a report that Farouq was entering the draft, for good. I don’t know Jonathan Givony, the president of the blogsite who apparently wrote the piece. So I certainly don’t know who his sources are. My suspicions are they are agents, possibly from the same operation that Givony is saying will represent Alade Aminu, Farouq’s big brother who just finished his senior season at Georgia Tech. Maybe they wanted to float the balloon and see where it would land. I don’t know.

And I can’t say for sure that Aminu will be at Wake Forest next season. We’re swimming in murky waters when analyzing the decisions of young men trying to decide their immediate futures. You can see only so far, and no one ever knows everything about anything. Farouq told me back in February that he had two good reasons for wanting to return next season. One was to become a better basketball player. The other was to get closer to earning a degree. Both of his parents are educators. The value of education is highly prized in his family. He’s a good student with more than a modicum of intellectual curiosity. He said the only reason he would even entertain the notion of leaving would be for the financial well-being of his single-parent family, which includes Alade and Al-Wajid, his 10-year-old brother. But he said with Alade graduating and getting a job, possibly even in professional basketball, then he didn’t think money would be the deciding issue.

Things can, and do, change all the time. Just because something is true today doesn’t mean it will be tomorrow. I can’t tell you what’s going to happen with Farouq or Jeff Teague before the April 26 deadline to declare. But I can tell you that as of 5 o’clock this afternoon, Farouq was adamant that he was staying at Wake Forest.

Saturday, April 04, 2009

Hanging Out With Grobe on a Sunny Spring Day

Having never been a cold-weather kind of guy, I don’t know how I could make it through winter without ACC basketball. And there are certain days, when I’m sliding on ice all the way home and I’m bundled up in layers and it’s pitch black outside and not even 6 o’clock, when I wonder if even ACC basketball can do the trick.

On those bleakest days in the deadest of winter, I have a tried and true method of getting by. I envision days like today.

Few things of my experience are more glorious than a spring in North Carolina. Take today for example. I bolt out of bed to the sight of a sunshine streaming through the window and the sound of birds chirping their springtime rhapsody and hustle over to Wake Forest to watch Jim Grobe put his football team through its first controlled scrimmage of spring practice. It’s a festive scene, with at least 150 spectators either holding up the wall or scattered throughout the three practice fields. I see a bunch of good friends, super-fans Ashby Cook. Gene Overby and Sterling Carter, Mike Jennings of Scout.com., Zach Smith of Old Gold and Blog, Dr. Gene Hooks, the former athletics director of Wake Forest, Brian DeGeare, the father of offensive tackle Chris DeGeare, Chris’s uncle Mark and meet several new ones. The last person I saw was actually Al-Farouq Aminu, the 6-9 freshman basketball player who was standing head and shoulders over the crowd, decked out in a bright red sweat suit and listening to a walk-man or some such device. I asked him if he was going to put his name in for the NBA draft, and he said no. I told him that’s what his coach, Dino Gaudio, had suspected. I also told him I’m glad I’ll get to cover him playing basketball at least one more season.

But the highlight of any trip to Wake Forest is talking with Grobe, who was his usual bright and sunny self. He said he really enjoyed watching his players fly around having fun playing football, though, as is to be expected this early, they made far more mistakes than he would have liked. The question I had was why Chris DeGeare and Jeff Griffin had flipped positions, with DeGeare now at left tackle and Griffin at right guard. The starting line during the scrimmage was DeGeare at left tackle, Barrett McMillin at left guard, Russell Nenon at center, Griffin at right guard and Joe Birdsong at right tackle.

“We’re trying to get our best five guys on the field,’’ Grobe said. “The biggest move, I think, that changed things was putting Chris DeGeare at left tackle. As soon as we moved DeGeare to tackle from guard, then it gave us some flexibility shuffling people around. Our best thought, more than anything else was `Let’s leave spring with a pretty good thought of who the best five guys are.’ There are a couple of guys in there that are battling hard to be starters. The nice thing is we’ve got enough depth right now we don’t have to stop scrimmages early because of the offensive line. Now we’ve got some numbers.’‘

I mentioned that previously he had played his larger linemen at guard.

“We don’t really have any small guys anymore,’’ Grobe said. “Most of our guys are 290, 300 and you’ve got a couple of big guys out there. Guys like DeGeare and (Dennis) Godfrey are 325-330 kind of guys. But there’s not much of a thought anymore as far as big and small.’’

Friday, April 03, 2009

Filling the Gaps in Deacons’ Defense

Wake Forest’s defense resembles a granite outcrop abutting a field of clover. The Deacons are rock solid at three of the four defensive line positions and pretty much green everywhere else.

As Boston College proved last season, the interior line is a great spot to build a defense around. And in John Russell and Boo Robinson, two rising seniors, the Deacons have a pair of strong, skilled and highly-motivated defensive tackles who, between them, have started 43 games. Robinson is sidelined this spring while nursing a herniated disc, but Coach Jim Grobe is not concerned.

Kyle Wilber, who barged his way into the lineup last season as a redshirt freshman, showed enough in his seven starts to get everyone excited. He was good by the end of last season, and should be better by the start of 2009.

The other defensive end position, though, is there for the taking. If Tristan Dorty turns out to be the player the Deacons’ coaching staff thought he might be coming out of West Rowan High School after the 2006 season, then the defensive front could be as athletic as any in school history. Dorty, who is 6-2, 249 pounds, chose the Deacons over North Carolina, N.C. State, Clemson, Georgia Tech, Virginia, Virginia Tech and Ole Miss. He played sparingly last season, missing stretches with an elbow injury.

“Tristan Dorty is the guy right now,’’ Grobe said this week. “I thought Tristan was on track to really be something special and then he hurt his elbow. Remember he got his elbow hyper-extended. That set him back a little bit. He’s a really tough kid. He played a little bit as a redshirt freshman. That’s not all bad. But I think that guy can be really good.’‘

One of the most intriguing players on the roster is Kevin Smith, a 6-4, 210-pound freshman who was good enough in basketball at East Plano High School in Texas to be nominated for the McDonald’s All-American High School basketball game. He’s still light, and he has missed some practices this spring with what Grobe described as typical knot-head behavior. But if he ever grows up, and grows into the position, he might be playing football for many years to come.

If he doesn’t get there this season, then Will Wright will probably be Dorty’s main competition. Wright never cracked the depth chart last season as a 6-4, 232-pound redshirt freshman. Wright, who played at Hoggard High in Wilmington, picked Wake over South Carolina, N.C. State and East Carolina.

“Will Wright has grown up quite a bit,’’ Grobe said. “He’s more dependable now, and we’ll see how that goes. But I’m optimistic about Will.’‘

Grobe said that Tripp Russell, a converted linebacker from Mount Tabor High School in Winston-Salem, will probably swing back and forth from defensive end to defensive tackle, much like Michael Lockett, who played in all 13 games last season as a redshirt junior. Russell will enter his redshirt junior season still looking to make a contribution.

“We’ve got him playing some down inside,’’ Grobe said. “I’m hoping he can be a little bit like John Russell, can be undersized, but play good. But we’ll move him around in there. With Boo out this spring, that’s giving us some depth issues in there. And Mike Carter has got a little bit of a knee injury (sprain), so we’re really thin down inside.’‘

Thursday, April 02, 2009

Take a Load Off Dino, Take a Load for Free

Whenever asked for a favorite song, I have a standard reply. Anything by Hank Williams. Anything. And if the person wants to know if I’m talking about Jr., or even Hank III, my legendary dander is prone to rise, because, in my book when you’ve said Hank Williams hoss, you’ve said all that needs to be said.

When pressed for my favorite non-Hank song, that takes an investment in brain matter. But if held down and threatened with an ice pick into one ear drum and out the other if I didn’t provide an answer, I’d probably go with The Weight by the Band. I’m sure you’ve heard it.

I pulled into Nazareth, I was feeling about half-past dead.
I just need some place where I could lay my head.
Hey Mister can you tell me where a man might find a bed?
He just grinned and shook my hand, `No’ was all he said.

Take a load off fanny.

I can remember the exact moment I first heard that song, and where I was and who I was with. I had already been turned onto the Band by my buddy Denton “Raunchy’’ Higdon. Raunchy had the plum job of part-time, after-school handyman at Perry’s Drug Store on Main Street of my hometown of Franklin. What made it such a cushy gig was Perry’s Drug Store was where we all headed after school anyway, to first off, check out any new albums or comic books that might have been added to the racks up front and then to wedge into the booths at the back to wolf down ice cream and act really stupid around the girls. The job description was pretty light—sweep up, mop occasionally and head down to the cellar for any baby formula that needed to be brought up. The pay was $2 a day. Whenever Raunchy was detained or indisposed, I eagerly filled in. So there was one time he was owing me for a day’s salary when he mentioned a new album he had bought recently, but didn’t like. We walked over for a listen at his house, where he told me he’d give me the album instead of the two bucks. The album was The Band, with The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, Up on Cripple Creek, Across the Great Divide and Rag Mama Rag. It’s also known as the Brown Album. Raunchy’s taste in music has hopefully improved over the years, and maybe, like a lot of people of the time, he just couldn’t get his head around a bunch of (mostly) Canadian hipsters melding bedrock country music with the more innovative elements of rock and roll in new and exciting ways that simply blew the mind of a 17-year-old country boy from backwater North Carolina. His loss was my gain. I took the album, and began devouring it from the moment I got back home.

But The Weight wasn’t on The Brown Album. Instead, it was the showpiece tune of the Band’s earlier album, Music From Big Pink, which hadn’t made it as far back into the mountains as Franklin. So my buddy Bruce Young and I were sitting in the Movie Theatre, about six or eight doors down on Main Street from Perry’s, watching the hippie film that caused all the stir that summer, Easy Rider. And I’ll never forget the scene where Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda and Jack Nicholson (riding on the back of Fonda’s Hog) crank up their Harleys and start slicing through the desert to the sound of Robbie Robertson’s acoustic intro followed by Levon Helm’s smoking cornfield vocals. Nobody gets better traction on a song than Good Ol’ Levon.

Take a Load Off Fanny,
Take a Load For Free,
Take a Load Off Fanny,
And you can put the load right on me.

I was transfixed. Some might call it poleaxed. From that day on, my whole sense of music and what it was and could be when various threads and influences are intertwined and enhanced changed. I was already dabbling in songwriting at the time and the Band, to put it lightly, was a huge influence.

The lyric always seemed awfully cryptic (which to me is OK, I’d rather have something worth interpreting than being spoon-fed pap) until I read an interview with Robertson. He said the song was influenced by the film maker Luis Bunuel, and Bunuel’s recurring theme on the impossibility of sainthood. The old No-Good-Deed-Is-Ever-Left-Unpunished storyline. Here’s the traveler passing through Nazareth, Pa, which just happens to be where Martin Guitars are made. And he’s been asked by Miss Annie to send everyone there her regards. But along the way he has to deal with Miss Carmen trying to ditch the Devil off on him, he has to keep Miss Anna Lee company and he has to feed Jack the Dog whenever he can. So no matter how hard you try, sometimes you can’t win.

Dino Gaudio was in that situation here recently. The post-season at Wake didn’t come down the way anyone wanted and there was a clamor for Gaudio to explain what happened. He was good enough to sit down with me for a Q&A interview that if published verbatim would have absorbed more than 100 column inches. He answered every question I posed, and never once turned defensive or contentious. There were times he was more general than I would have preferred, but at other times he was quite candid about what happened and his reaction to all the criticism he and his program received. If he hadn’t bothered, people would have been all over him for dodging the media and refusing to address the situation. On the other side, there were so many people demanding a pound of flesh who wouldn’t have been satisfied whatever he said.

He gave his take on the season, in both honest and forthright fashion. I appreciate his time and consideration.

Catch a Cannonball, to take me on down the line,
My bag is sinking low and I do believe it’s time.
To get back to Miss Annie, you know she’s the only one.
Who sent me here with her regards for everyone.

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Robinson: The Man Wake Wouldn’t Let Get Away

One night in mid-December, when it was already dark before 6, I was leaving the Miller Center after watching basketball practice when I noticed someone coming in from outside through the outer set of double doors. Having been raised right, I was holding an inner door open when I recognized it to be none other than Matt Robinson, who had one game remaining in his sixth and final season. I don’t know of any football player I’d rather bump into. Matt and I share a nickname, Country, and I had gotten to know and like him quite a bit in his half-dozen years at Wake. He said he had one more paper to turn in for his advanced degree (I believe he said business) and that he would probably be pulling an all-nighter. He looked a bit worn down, so I wished him luck.

It was a different Matt Robinson standing outside the Manchester Athletics Center Tuesday when I showed up for spring football practice. For one thing, he was 25 pounds lighter than his playing weight of 245, and looked great. And he had a huge smile on his face. Said his knees—including the one that had to be surgically repaired to mend a broken kneecap—felt much better. Knowing he had his heart set on a career in coaching, I asked him if he had any leads. He said he wasn’t looking, that he liked his new job. That’s when I found he had been added to the Wake Forest staff as recruiting assistant.

The job opened after Brad White, a graduate assistant the past two seasons, accepted a full-time job as assistant to head coach Matt Griffin at Murray State. White, a linebacker at Wake from 2002-04, will coach the safeties at MSU. When White left, James Adams was promoted from recruiting assistant to graduate assistant. He’ll work with the offense this season and Napoleon Sykes, the offensive graduate assistant last season, will slide over to defense.

Wake lost one of the sharpest people the program has ever produced in White, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see him back at some point over his career. And head coach Jim Grobe has three good ones, Sykes, Adams and Robinson, in the early stages of their coaching careers. All played at Wake under Grobe, and all should be at least as good at coaching as they were playing.

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Peanut Gallery Saves My Behind

I deserve a lot of grief today, a lot more than I got from the alert and exceedingly civil reader who pointed out the mistake I made in the spring football report I filed for today’s paper. In it, some knothead (don’t want to mention any names, but he goes by such various aliases as Disco, Sarge and Country Dan) had the spring scrimmage set for April 11. That’s dead wrong. The scrimmage is set for the next Saturday after that, April 18. It will be at noon, on the campus practice fields.

The reader would have been justified to write: “Hey knothead, get it right.’’ Again I would have had it coming. But the reader, my buddy Chris King from Baltimore, isn’t that kind of guy. He simply slipped me an email titled “one minor correction’’ and pointed out the erroneous information. So if you’re reading this, and it saved you the trouble of making it from, say, Timbuktu to Winston to see a spring game that wasn’t going to be played that day, then you’ve got Chris to thank.

And so do I.