So let’s have a show of hands. How many thought when Mfon Udofia of Georgia Tech drained a 3-pointer for the first basket of the game tonight that the Deacons were destined to lose their seventh straight? This is the same Mfon Udofia, after all, who had gone scoreless the last two games while missing all 16 of his shots from the floor. And he didn’t just make the shot over the Deacons’ zone he nailed it. Woe is me, woe is us. Why does everybody have to do it against the Deacons?
And if you felt that way, and I felt that way, then how do you think the Deacons felt? The Wake Forest fans have suffered through this season, but the coaches and players have lived it. And for them to rise above all the doubt and frustration and slings and arrows hurled their way to find the wherewithal to pull out a 59-50 victory was something worth watching—regardless of the level of play and the limitations of the opponent.
The missing ingredient all along, besides talent, has been confidence. And somewhere along the way the Deacons found enough to score on 10 of their final 14 possessions and put away their first victory since Jan. 21, and their first in February since Jeff Bzdelik became head coach before last season. The obvious place to look was Travis McKie, whose seven straight points gave Wake the lead for good with around six minutes to go.
“I thought he willed us, in a lot of ways, when we needed some timely shots,’’ Bzdelik said.
But one could also point to the 3-pointer from Chase Fischer—whose night up to that point had consisted of missing his first eight shots, turning his ankle and repairing to the locker room to have it re-taped—that cut the Yellow Jackets lead from four to one. Or the 17-footer by Ty Walker with the shot clock about to expire on the Deacons once again. Or Tony Chennault’s steal from Glen Rice, Jr. that resulted in a fast-break layup. Or the eight straight free throws in the final minute by Chennault, McKie and Harris.
The Deacons played well enough on this occasion to give the other team a chance to fold, which Jason Morris did his share to help Tech do by missing a dunk and throwing a pass directly to his coach, Brian Gregory. For the last three weeks, I’d been watching Wake make those kinds of plays.
All of which leads us to a conversation I had afterward with C.J. Harris, who was all smiles despite the fact he failed to score at least 10 points for the first time this season. I asked Harris, who finished with eight, if he was worried a little bit that the team had packed it in when they lost at Virginia by 24 and at home to Clemson to 20. It was, to be sure, a question I’ve gotten quite often this past week.
“On the court it might have looked like we were giving up,’’ Harris conceded. “But in practice the next day, and in the locker room, you could see people and they were hurting. So I knew we hadn’t packed it in.’‘
I mentioned that’s also what I’d seen at practice, a team that was still intact. Lack of unity or cohesiveness hasn’t been the root cause. Lack of talent has been telling. And lack of confidence, at times, has been fatal.
“We just had to play hard for 40 minutes,’’ McKie offered. ” We’d play hard for 20 or 25 and then in the last 15 we’d get lackadaisical or we’d get tired and we were going through the motions.
“I think we wanted this win. We smelled it and we took it from them at the end of the game.’‘
And let’s not overlook the moves made by Bzdelik. He shuffled his starting lineup, pulling 7-0 Ty Walker for 6-3 Fischer and watched his team overcome a horrific shooting night (33 percent) by out-rebounding Tech 42-32 and committing only 11 turnovers. Walker, by the way, expressed no qualms afterward.
“I’m not flustered about it,’’ Walker said. ” I just have to do whatever I can, whatever my role, whatever my job is. If it’s protecting the rim, blocking shots, rebounding.
“So I’m not flustered by it at all. This isn’t about me. This is about Wake Forest.’‘
An even bigger contribution was his decision to go zone, and stay with it even after Udofia drained the first three. The Yellow Jackets made seven of 18 3-pointers, but scored only 20 points in the paint and 11 off the offensive boards.
“Give Jeff credit,’’ Gregory said. “Their zone was effective. They have good length, and their guards worked pretty hard in it. What they did a good job with was they rebounded well out of it.
“Our 14 turnovers didn’t hurt, either.’‘
Bzdelik’s finest moment, though, might have been when he called timeout after Tech scored the first 10 points of the second half to erase Wake’s seven-point halftime lead. Ben Doster of Rivals.com. asked about the conversation that took place in the huddle.
“Nothing but positive,’’ Bzdelik said. “We’re going to win this game, and just stick to the game plan and just be solid.’‘
And on this night, against this opponent, that was enough.
One of the first rules of sportswriting, or even more respectable forms of journalism for that matter, is to not get emotionally involved with the subject matter. A certain detachment is paramount.
Unfortunately, that’s at times easier said than done, and one of the times I found it extremely hard to adhere to the principal was after Wake’s 78-58 loss to Clemson on Saturday. Travis McKie is a player I’ve gotten to know well enough to really like, as well as respect. And when I asked him how old it was getting to lose, he didn’t lose control of his emotions.
But I could tell he was fighting hard not to.
“Very old,’’ McKie said. “I can’t put into words how I feel every night, or just walking around campus or going to practice every day knowing that you just lost by 20 on national television. That’s something that nobody will ever know. In basketball, in high school you see basketball and you see the Top 5 teams and you see them all on SportsCenter and you don’t see stuff like this.
“We’re on the bottom now and we’re just trying to climb to get out of it, and it’s going to take everybody pulling together one by one. We all believe in each other. We’ve just got to keep fighting.’‘
Coach Jeff Bzdelik addressed earlier in his post-game comments the emotional toll the losing is taking on his team.
“Listen, I’m going to be very honest,’’ Bzdelik said. “Yeah, confidence always needs success at some point. It does. And so, we’ve gone through a tough stretch here and confidence has been rattled and we need to rise above that and stay confident as best we can. That’s the challenge, no question.
“Mental toughness—because the physical toughness is physical. It is what it is. And that’s what we’re referring to, the mental toughness. It takes an extremely mentally tough person to persevere through some rough difficult times couple with some limitations.’‘
It’ll be really interesting to see how many show up for tomorrow’s game with Georgia Tech, considering the two teams have combined for four ACC wins against 17 losses. You won’t see me taking any shots at those who aren’t at Joel Coliseum. You won’t hear of Bzdelik doing so either.
I made mention before today’s practice that I thought a pretty decent crowd was on hand Saturday for the Clemson game. I know there were some discount tickets handed out, but the 10,076 announced, in my eyes, actually looked light. And I thought the crowd was there to provide what help it could, at least as long as it mattered.
Bzdelik agreed.
“Our fans have been there for us,’’ Bzdelik said. “Unfortunately, we just haven’t been there for our fans.’’
On the few occasions someone accuses me of being overly harsh on Wake basketball—which I hasten to add are getting fewer with every passing fiasco—my response is standard.
Let them give me something else to write and I’d be glad, overjoyed even, to write it. To chronicle how Jeff Bzdelik pulled the proud Deacon program out of the deepest realms of despair and restored it to relevance, if not glory, would be one of the great stories of my career. Besides, you think it’s easy coming up with new ways to say the same thing debacle after debacle after debacle?
By midway through the second half of yesterday’s mind-numbing 20-point loss to a Clemson team that had lost six of its last eight, I’d already determined that I had no questions for anybody after the game—at least not any I hadn’t asked countless times before. I’d heard how this or that performance was unacceptable, but if that’s true then why does it keep recurring?
But it’s my job to come up with something, and being that my job is one of the few things in life that I take seriously, I did indeed participate in Bzdelik’s post-game conference. You can check out my question, and Bzdelik’s answer, here.
As promised I saddled up to the three players who came in afterward and asked them the question. If you’re being told the same thing after every game, is the message not sinking in or is there another reason nothing changes.
Chase Fischer’s response:.
“I’m pretty sure it’s sinking in with all of us. No one on our team likes to lose like this repeatedly. For me personally, and I can’t speak for anybody else, it has definitely sunk in for me. It hurts after every one of these losses. It’s one thing to compete and lose to a team in a good game. But sometimes at the start of the second half it seems like we come out flat and the other team gets on top of us, and when the going gets tough we kind of lay down. So I think we’ve got to be a lot more mentally tough.
“It’s just a matter of will and want-to. I think it’s got to start at the easiest things to do, like coach says, like rebounding, defense and playing together. And sometimes I think we lack some chemistry, and we’ve got to start playing together and playing as a unit and playing hard. If you play hard it covers up a lot of mistakes. I don’t think anyone cares if you make mistakes if you play hard, and that’s what we’ve got to do.’‘
Travis McKie’s response:
“I don’t know how to answer that. It’s a combination of a lot of things. He wants us to play defense the same way and we haven’t been doing it. It’s just some of the stuff we have to learn and pick up on. We haven’t done it yet. We have a young team. We make defensive mistakes, but that’s basketball. Everybody makes mistakes in this game and we just haven’t covered it up yet. We go on scoring droughts and teams do shoot well against us. That’s something we’ve got to take pride in defensively.’‘
C.J. Harris’ response:
“Our defensive effort just isn’t there. It’s as simple as that.’‘
If the whole is greater than the sum of the parts is called synergy, that what is the whole is less than the sum of the parts?
Based on what I’ve seen lately, it’s Wake Forest.
And when the sum of the parts is as modest as it is these days at Wake, then what you get is a loss at Virginia by only 24 only because the coach of the other team pulled his starters midway through the second half and a 20-point home loss to Clemson, a team that hadn’t beaten Wake in Joel Coliseum since 1990, before Dave Odom got the program back up and running. Last time the Tigers won in Joel Coliseum, George Bush was in his second year as president. The first George Bush.
Otherwise folks, that’s all I’ve got tonight, other than a pizza going cold in the kitchen, a Bud Lite or two on ice, and both Xavier/Temple and UK/Vandy on our new flat-screen HD 47-incher. I survived this afternoon, I’ll enjoy myself tonight.
But I do invite your take on the state of Wake Forest basketball 2/11/12 in the comments section, which I’m now officially dubbing The Ventilator, without prejudice or snark. If I’d just seen my team get clubbed at home by a 12-12 team that had lost six of its previous eight, I’d want to vent as well. Have at it. As long as it’s not personal, or overly malicious, I’ll be glad to share your thoughts.
And by tomorrow I’ll have my own take. Surely by then I came come up with something.
ACC point guards are getting off on playing against Tony Chennault.
Andre Young got off for 19 points, five assists and no turnovers. Kendall Marshall got off for 14 points, six assists and one turnover. Lorenzo Brown got off for 15 points, eight assists and two turnovers. Jontel Evans, averaging 6.2 points a game, got off for 10 points, four assists and no turnovers.
In the four games against Clemson, North Carolina, N.C. State and Virginia, meanwhile, Chennault scored a total of 17 points with 15 assists and 14 turnovers. And, by the way, he made seven of 24 shots from the floor, for 29 percent.
I take absolutely no joy from pointing out Chennault’s recent performances. And I hasten to add that Chennault is making his first pass through the ACC while not coming off a broken foot. As I’ve written before, Chennault is an upbeat guy who plays hard. I’d much rather be writing about what a great sophomore season he’s having. But for anyone wondering why the Deacons have been struggling so much of late, the first place to look would be at the position designated No. 1, the most indispensable position in college basketball.
It’s not all Chennault’s fault, as coach Jeff Bzdelik took pains to point out during our conversation at today’s practice. But if the Deacons have any chance of breaking their five-game skid against Clemson tomorrow, Chennault is going to have to play better than he did two weeks ago in Wake’s 71-60 loss at Littlejohn Coliseum.
What, I asked Chennault, did he learn about Young from that game?
“I learned a lot because I watched the game after the game,’’ Chennault said. “He plays at his own speed. I guess he’s learned that over the years of being in this league, that you’ve got to find your speed and play at it. And he perfected that. The way he comes off the screen he’s always low and he knows when to attack and when to set his teammates up.’‘
So what’s Young’s speed?
“It’s a deliberate speed,’’ Chennault said. “One time he’ll move fast, and then he’ll slow it down. It’s more of a change of speed.’‘
Bob Gibbons, the respected recruiting analyst, has incoming point guard Codi Miller-McIntyre ranked as the 19th best player in the nation, regardless of position. If he’s that good, then he’ll be the starting point guard the day he arrives. But it will be up to Chennault, who will be a junior, to make it as hard on Miller-McIntyre as possible to take the position. Competition should make everybody better.
Chennault will have the experience, but it hasn’t exactly been good experience.
“You can watch all the film you want and you can teach all that you want, and we do that,’’ Bzdelik said when I asked about Chennault. “But there’s nothing like experience. Again, it’s everybody. We want him to pass the ball ahead on the break, but guys have to get ahead of him on the break, so he’s got somebody to throw it to. On offense, people have to move and have proper spacing and execution and cutting.
“I think the biggest adjustment young players have at that position is seeing the game in a slower way. It’s like a quarterback that has his eyes fixed on only one receiver. It doesn’t work that way. A quarterback has to know what his second and third and maybe perhaps his fourth option are.
“And things he was able to do in high school, driving the ball and overpowering people at the rim, it no longer happens anymore. His ability to penetrate is very good, but he can’t penetrate too deep and he’s got to make good decisions when he gets into the lane. That all is a learning curve for him, and it’s a work in progress right now.’‘
If it wasn’t Wake Forest on the court against Virginia tonight, then coach Jeff Bzdelik of the Deacons spent a long time in the locker room after a demoralizing 68-44 setback talking with somebody.
The game, if it could be called that, was over for more than 20 minutes tonight before Bzdelik emerged to say that he didn’t recognize the team that allowed the Cavaliers to chase Wake Forest out of John Paul Jones Arena and halfway back down 1-29 to Winston-Salem.
“That’s not us,’’ Bzdelik said. “That’s not how we’ve been playing lately.
“So we’re just going to get back on that bus and go back home and know that we’re much better than this.’‘
When I asked about the extended address to his team had been afterward, Bzdelik, fairly enough, said he would respect the sanctity of the locker room. But from the red-rimmed eyes and hushed tones, it was obvious the Deacons hadn’t been discussing the fun they’re going to have at this year’s senior banquet.
“Everyone is disappointed,’’ Ty Walker said. “We weren’t ourselves out there.’‘
When I asked Walker if this was the low point of the season, he said probably. C.J. Harris wouldn’t touch the question with a 10-foot pole.
“It happens,’’ Harris replied. “You’ve got to have a short-term memory in basketball.’‘
Maybe so, but it’ll be many moons before I forget the performance of Mike Scott and how he scored his 19 points before coach Tony Bennett pulled him with 12 1/2 minutes remaining. Wake has been playing basketball since 1906, and for the first time in recorded history a player made nine shots against the Deacons without a miss. Reggie Johnson of Miami had the record from his 8-for-8 accuracy in the first round of the fateful 2010 ACC Tournament, and tonight Scott did Big Reggie one better.
The strategy was to make Scott shoot over the length of 7-0 Walker or 7-0 Carson Desrosiers. From the way he was swishing the nets, he might as well have been shooting over walk-on guards Aaron Ingle and Spencer Jennings.
Making a bad night all the worse was the score that flashed up on the John Paul Jones Arena of upstart Boston College, in a death race with Wake and Georgia Tech for the ACC cellar, knocking off FSU 64-60. Now if Leonard Hamilton wants to say he didn’t recognize his Seminoles in that game, that’s one thing. It’s a little harder for Bzdelik, whose Deacons had lost seven of their previous eight—and had allowed N.C. State to shoot 53 percent just four days ago—to make that case.
There was a time when I would watch pretty much every college basketball game that was televised. Of course it was a better product then. I even kept a notebook on personnel and tendencies to which I would refer when making out my brackets for the office NCAA Tournament pool. Then my bride Tybee would come behind me and make out her’s according to the teams’ mascots or colors. And she trounced me year after year after year.
These Days, to steal a line from Jackson Browne, I don’t watch so much college basketball on TV, unless it’s ACC. The older I get the more diverse my interests become. The music thing takes up a lot of my time, of which I don’t regret one second. And I’ve always loved to read. I’m on about my fourth or fifth pass through the tale of a young man from the mountains of North Carolina going to the state university to make good. I don’t know how much good I’ve made, but I’ve always related to Thomas Wolfe’sLook Homeward Angel. But I’m always more than ready to set down my Gibson or my book whenever my newest favorite college team, the Missouri Tigers, is playing on TV.
What a fabulous story to see four former coaches and staff members at Wake Forest leading the Tigers to a 22-2 record and No. 4 ranking in the nation. I’m sure there are others in the Macadamia Nut Gallery who also knew Frank Haith, Ernie Nestor, Tim Fuller and Tony Hanson during their time at Wake and can attest to what special people they are.
Frank was at Wake twice, but the first stay was for only a year. Dave Odom, in one of his first acts after taking over as coach in 1989-90, hired Haith as graduate assistant. Haith left the next season to become a full-fledged coach at UNC Wilmington, but returned in 1998 when assistant Ricky Stokes left to return to Virginia. Haith remained until Odom left for South Carolina after the 2001 season, and was briefly on Odom’s Gamecocks staff before heading west to join Rick Barnes at Texas. I got to know his wife Pam, a fetching, vivacious woman who some may remember as assistant director of the Deacon Club, as well as their son Corey. As unfathomable as it seems, Corey is 17 now. My how they grow up. I didn’t know their daughter Brianna, who is six.
I had the extended pleasure of covering Haith as head coach at Miami and it was always good to run into him and catch up on things.
Ernie Nestor is probably as good a friend as I have in coaching. Most in the business are what I consider coaches who might be interesting people. I always consider Nestor to be an interesting person who happens to be a coach. Many hours were spent in his office talking about everything under the sun, and I always came away smarter and better informed for my trouble. Thankfully I had plenty of opportunity to hang out with Nestor because no assistant—not even Jeff Battle—has ever been at Wake longer. Nestor, who has been a head coach at George Mason and Elon, spent 14 seasons on the Wake bench. Like Haith, he made two stops. He was on Carl Tacy’s staff from 1980 through 1985, and Odom’s right-hand man from 1994 through 2001.
Nestor is from Philippi, West Va., so he was the one who tipped me off about the Highway 19 shortcut that connects Interstate 77 to Interstate 79 in his home state, thus staying clear of Charleston. Our family took that trip about a dozen times when Nate was an undergraduate at Eastman in Rochester, and we always called 19 the Ernie Nestor Highway.
Fuller was a walk-on at Wake, and was later an assistant coach across town at West Forsyth High School when a budding star named Chris Paul was playing for the Titans. He returned to his alma mater in 2005 to spend two seasons at director of basketball operations under Skip Prosser.
And Hanson was video coordinator for five seasons under Prosser. Like me, he went to North Carolina, though neither of us said much about it to anyone else in the Deacons’ program. You probably can guess why.
Even without the strong Wake connections, it would be hard not to like the Missouri Tigers. I’ve been lucky enough to see recent victories over Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma, and all were great games. They’re maybe the smallest elite team in the nation, with three small guards, 5-8 Phil Pressey, 6-2 Matt Pressey and 6-1 Michael Dixon and a frontcourt of 6-6 Kim English and 6-8 Ricardo Ratliffe. The guy who has been hot for them recently is Marcus Denmon, a 6-3 guard who scored 29 against Kansas and 25 last night against the Sooners.
They have a big game at home against Baylor Saturday.
They’re small but they will fight you tooth and nail and they have big hearts. They’re not a bit afraid of anyone. I love the abandon with which they play, and they’re always, of course, impeccably well-coached.
I’ve been to Missouri to cover Wake’s 73-65 victory there in Tim Duncan’s senior season of 1997. So that gives me a frame of reference in these televised games, because I remember how hard the old Hearnes Center could rock. Obviously the program has great fan support.
Besides being small, they’re terribly thin in numbers. They need to stay healthy and they need to keep playing as hard as they’re playing these days. And if so, maybe we’ll all be watching them on television come time for the Final Four. I can’t think of much I would like better.
Dean Smith had lost to Norm Sloan eight straight times when his Tar Heels grabbed a six-point lead in overtime in Reynolds Coliseum on Jan. 18, 1975. Monte Towe and Moe Rivers applied a suffocating press and turned freshman Phil Ford over a couple of times, igniting a late rally to an 88-85 victory.
My transportation at the time was a 1965 Ford LTD that my brother Tom Collins had picked up for $500 to get me through the winter with my job and sanity intact. It was as loud as it was fast, and it was very fast.
So I was tooling back to Chapel Hill after the game on Wade Avenue when, suddenly, my rear view mirror was filled with blue—not a blue light but a light-blue Cadillac. Seeings how this driver was in a bigger hurry than me, I pulled over to the right lane first chance I got.
And here came Smith blowing past me all alone, his hands gripped on the steering wheel, a cigarette hanging from his lips and smoke billowing out of his ears. It’s an image I’ll never forget.
Sometimes I wonder if it was a blessing or a curse to have been around long enough to remember how much games between these rivals really meant, back when the league itself allowed them to mean as much as they did. I’ll remain forever convinced that we all lost too much when the day—or in this case, the season—arrived that Wake Forest did not visit Chapel Hill, or the Tar Heels did not visit Winston-Salem. Now it’s been established that North Carolina and N.C. State will not play each other twice a year. There will be seasons the Tar Heels will not visit Raleigh.
And the sad thing is, it really doesn’t have to be this way.
Jonathan Bennett of the Macadamia Nut Gallery wondered what my opinion would be of cranking the Big Four back up. I’d love it, of course, but I can’t see it happening. The coaches won’t go for it. All coaches like to have as much control over their schedule as possible and the move to the 18-game conference schedule will cause many to cede more than they would like.
But there’s still a way to retain the rivalries that have made the league what it is—or at least what it was before expansion. I wish I could say the idea was mine, but really I stole it from my buddy Al Featherston, the long-time ACC writer and historian. Like is said in songwriter circles: amateurs borrow, but professionals steal. Featherston’s proposal is to divide the conference into seven-team divisions, as is done for football. That would allow at least most of the rivalries to remain intact.
Each team would play teams in its division twice, of course, for a total of 12 games. And each would play the teams in the other divisions once, for seven more games. That’s 19 games, if my public school education hasn’t failed me.
The one flaw in the system could become its biggest selling point. The seven games against the other division would leave some teams with 10 home conference games and others with only nine. That is, unless one of the games against the other division was played at a neutral site.
So the way to make it all work for everybody—the fans, the media, the league and of course the television networks—would be to set aside a long weekend between mid-December and Christmas when all 14 ACC teams would congregate at a neutral site. One year it could be Greensboro, the next Atlanta, the next Charlotte, and the next Madison Square Garden. And over those three days the odd game against the other division could be played. It could be marketed and sold as an Early Bird Special of what fans can expect to see over the next 2 1/2 months and it would build up tremendous energy and enthusiasm at a time of the year any league—even the ACC—could use all it could get.
Some coaches would balk because, again, another required conference game would give them less control of their own schedule. But it would be one game for the integrity and well-being of the conference as a whole, and not the two games that would be necessitated by a return to the Big Four.
John Swofford has not called me recently to ask my opinion, but my line is open. And if he were to call, I’d tell him Al Featherston has it figured out.
Problem is, for you, for me and for Al, it probably makes too much sense.
The lights went out at Northwest Middle School when my daughter was a student there in the sixth grade. The teacher, to keep rein on the class, decided to play a round of Jeopardy.
The question Rebecca got was: Who wrote the song Respect?
Rebecca knew who wrote it. It was Otis Redding. She also highly suspected that if she said Otis Redding, the teacher would say no, it was Aretha Franklin.
So Rebecca answered Aretha Franklin.
“Right,’’ the teacher said.
So the song has always had a special place in my heart, and would just on its own merits alone. I love Aretha’s version. How could you not? But my favorite has always been the original by the original one himself, Otis Redding. Take it away Otis Otis Redding Sings Respect
Problem is, I don’t know if I’ll ever look at the word itself the same way again after hearing Jeff Bzdelik play the respect card today after the loss at N.C. State. He’s not the first coach I’ve ever known to play the respect card, but he is the first I can remember to play it against his own team. And he’s the first who’s ever used the word in the way he used it today. I had almost made Mebane on my way home before I got a pretty good grip on what he was saying. Or at least I thought I did.
Bzdelik wasn’t talking about today’s the game, the one when the Deacons played fairly well offensively but could never get enough stops to get control of the game. He was talking about the meltdown from three weeks ago, when the Pack pasted Wake 76-40 in front of the Deacons’ home crowd. Wake was good enough to shave 25 points off that total in today’s 87-76 setback and still lost by 11.
“There’s an old saying in the NBA,’’ Bzdelik said. “You give respect by showing no respect. You give respect by showing no respect. And you all can figure out what that phrase really means. But the last time we played N.C. State we did not respect them because we didn’t play hard. We didn’t compete. That’s a heck of a statement for a coach to make, but that’s the truth.
“I mean, it’s just like I remember Michael Jordan saying one time that he’s had some rookies play him where they didn’t want to touch him. They just feared him. They didn’t even guard him. And Michael said you’re not even respecting me because you won’t compete against me. But if you get somebody out there who’s just battling and giving everything you’ve got – and still you come up short – you know what? Doesn’t your opponent respect you?
“So you give respect by showing no respect. You go out there and you battle.’‘
The recruiting class of 2012 was never destined to challenge the class of 1990—Rodney Rogers, Randolph Childress, Trelonnie Owens, Marc Blucas, Robert Doggett and Stan King—for the distinction of best in school history. It’s not every year you get two Hall of Famers, along with two invaluable role players like Owens and Blucas. I happened to run into Dave Odom at practice last week and razzed him about missing out on Doggett and King. Thankfully he knows me well enough to recognize my feeble attempt at humor. And truth is, if Doggett hadn’t had knee problems, he might have been the real thing as well.
Not nearly as much was expected from this year’s class of Chase Fischer, Daniel Green and Anthony Fields. Good thing, for their sake. Only Fischer has made more than a nominal contribution. He’s averaging 6.7 points while shooting 35 percent from the floor and 32 percent from 3-point range. He had a decent stretch going on 3-pointers, hitting six of 15 over four games, before going 0-for-4 against UNC. Nobody except C.J. Harris could hit the broad side of a barn against the Tar Heels.
But Green did make an impression against the Tar Heels, hustling for five rebounds while committing four fouls in 15 active minutes. I asked coach Jeff Bzdelik yesterday if a lack of depth was showing up in the way the Deacons have faded in the second half in their past three games. He said possibly.
Partly because of that, and partly because he loves how the kid plays, but Bzdelik said he’s decided to give Green a bigger role in the final eight regular-season games headed into the ACC Tournament. Green has played 135 minutes total, and is averaging 1.3 points and 1.5 rebounds.
“Daniel Green has been improving steadily and has earned and deserves minutes,’’ Bzdelik said. “He did a great job in the time that he was in there, and I can see, for the remainder of this year, him getting a consistent amount of time.’‘
Fields lost his confidence somewhere along the way, and it’s hard for a coach to have confidence in a player who has none in himself. He has played 175 minutes total, but only 17 in ACC play.
Bzdelik did remind me of something that I’d forgotten along the way. Fields has had two wrist surgeries over the past 12 months, and Bzdelik is convinced that the forced inactivity and rehab has set Fields back. I don’t believe anyone expects Fields to ever be the next Chris Paul, but the staff would like to see him develop and provide depth at college basketball’s most critical position of point guard. It’ll probably be next year before we find out if that’s in the cards.
“In fairness to Anthony Fields, Anthony spent almost six months with his left hand in a cast,’’ Bzdelik said. “And he had two surgeries on his left wrist – with a bone graft. And he wasn’t able to play for six months.
“His wrist is still stiff to the point that the doctors said it will take about a year for him to get mobility back. It’s very difficult for a point guard to play basically with a hand tied behind his back. That needs to be understood.’’
