Lenox and I are hanging out at the arena waiting to talk some basketball. If you’re interested, jump on http://www.journalnow.com and go to the live chat.
Would love to hear from you.
Apparently I’m not the only person who feels that the first four minutes of Wake Forest’s game against Texas in tomorrow’s first round of the NCAA Tournament will be the most critically important four minutes in the recent history of Deacons’ basketball.
Lenox, our photographer Bruce Chapman and I ran into Drew Brown on our flight in from Raleigh to Orlando and on to New Orleans. Brown, also known as Donald Ross in certain circles, is a Wake grad who rarely allows his duties as an attorney in Greensboro to keep him from watching his beloved Deacons play.
We all agreed that if the Deacons are going to make any splash in the tournament, they’re going to have to get off to a better start than they had last week against Miami or the one they had last season against Cleveland State. In both instances, Wake was punched in the mouth early and never got off the canvas.
To that end, I asked Dino Gaudio what a coach can do to assure that his team comes out of the locker room ready and raring to play.
“You know what, we just have to come out and play with energy and emotion,’’ Gaudio said. “That’s what it’s all about. We talked about that, and how we’ve got to be excited to play..
“But I think that’s the biggest thing. You have to come out with energy and emotion. And it’s got to be an aggressive mentality. I told our guys, `If you’re going to make a mistake tomorrow night, make it on the side of aggression’. And that’s exactly what we have to do. And I told Ish (Smith) I just want him to be aggressive. I want him to be in an attack mode. And I think he’ll do that.
“I think as he goes, we go.’‘
I also asked Smith and L.D. Wililams about the importance of a fast start, and what they can do, as team leaders, to see that the Deacons are ready to play.
“A lot of what we do is predicated on our defense,’’ Williams said. “So in these games in these tournament situations, you really have to start off getting stops.
“You know, everybody in this tournament can score. Everybody has proven they’re elite teams. The better teams are the teams that get stops. They string stops together when they need stops, and they rebound the basketball. They also play loose.’‘
Smith said it’s always important to get off to a fast start. But he recognizes that at certain times its more important than others.
“It’s huge to get off to a good start, I think, in every game, but this one in particular—obviously based upon the two previous games (against Cleveland State and Miami),’ Smith said. “So it’s going to be huge for us to jump out to a good start and (it’s huge) maintaining that and, not maintaining it but exceeding it throughout the whole game.’’
Wake Forest’s lone victory in the last month came against a team, Clemson, that pushed the tempo and allowed the Deacons to get out and run. Texas, Thursday’s opponent in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, ranks seventh in the nation with a 81.2 points a game. So Ish Smith of the Deacons, for one, is happy he won’t be facing a team trying to slow the game down.
“As you know it’s going to be a track meet,’’ Smith said. “So we’ve got to convert in transition, like Coach said we’ve got to shoot the ball and we’ve got to play great defense.’‘
The Deacons didn’t look like a team having much fun down the stretch, especially during their ACC Tournament cameo against Miami. But Ish Smith likes to have fun and he likes to win, and he’s pretty certain that one leads to the other.
“More than anything we have to play with energy and play with emotion and play kind of like – I hate to steal the thunder from Miami – but how they came out,’’ Smith said. “They didn’t care whether they won or lost. If you play with that kind of freedom, if you play with that kind of looseness, those three balls start falling, those free throws start falling. It doesn’t snowball. Those runners start falling.
“All those things start falling because you’re playing in a relaxed state.’’
When Jim Grobe told me he hoped he didn’t see me for awhile, I didn’t take it personally.
I’d just gotten through telling Grobe that I might not make it by spring practice anytime soon and that it would be up to Coach Dino Gaudio and his basketball Deacons when I did. Wake plays Texas on Thursday and I’m absolutely swamped between writing for the paper and this blog and pulling my act together for the trip to New Orleans. And as long as the Deacons keep playing, I’m going to stay swamped. Such is life for a beat guy in March.
“I hope you don’t get out there for a long time,’’ Grobe said.
It was really good talking with Grobe Monday about his team and I’m anxious to get my first look in four years of a Wake Forest football team without Riley Skinner at quarterback. One of the developments I wanted to discuss was why he rearranged his coaching staff since last season.
In case you didn’t catch the story we had in this morning’s Journal, Grobe has changed the responsibilities for six of his nine full-time assistants.
Defensive coordinator Brad Lambert will coach the safeties after coaching linebackers last season; offensive coordinator Steed Lobotzke will add tight ends to his responsibilities as offensive-line coach; Keith Henry will coach the cornerbacks after coaching defensive ends; Steve Russ will coach the linebackers after coaching fullbacks and tight ends; and Tim Billings will coach the defensive ends after coaching the secondary.
I should have noted that Billy Mitchell will add fullbacks to his responsibilities of coaching the running backs, kickers and punters.
Grobe explained that he has a wealth of good defensive coaches—Billings and Russ were defensive coordinators at Marshall and Syracuse and Lambert is entering his third season as the Deacons’ DC—that he wants to take better advantage of.
“Last season I was disappointed that we didn’t play better defense,’’ Grobe said. “I thought at some positions we didn’t get as good of play out of a couple of our players that we should have. And I think, as coaches, you get lulled to sleep sometimes because guys that have done it in the past, you just keep waiting and expecting them to step up and do it again. And when they don’t, I think you take a hard look at yourself as coaches.
“And for me personally as a head coach, I was very concerned that we didn’t play defense as well as we can. Of course we lost some great players. I know we lost (Aaron) Curry and Alphonso (Smith) and some of those guys. But I just felt we didn’t play as well as we were capable of on the defensive side of the ball last year. It’s nobody’s fault in particular, but I think sometimes it’s good to stir things up.
“I think some of our coaches will be coaching more to their strengths. I coached Steve Russ (at Air Force). He’s been a linebacker and a defensive coach his whole career. When we had an opening here, that opening happened to be on the offense and I felt like it would be best for us not to make a lot of changes because I thought we had a lot of talent. So I kept Steve on offense, but I’ve always felt that he needed to be on the defensive side.
“I think some of the coaches, by moving them around, are going to maybe be in better positions to maximize their abilities. With Tim Billings, Steve Russ and Brad Lambert, we’ve got three defensive coordinators on our staff.’‘
By the way, I did have a mistake in today’s article that I regret. The spring game is set for BB&T Field on April 17, and not the Doc Martin Practice Complex on campus. Grobe and everyone seemed so happy with the past few spring games on campus that I got sloppy and assumed it would remain there. My bad.
The question I left unasked at the ACC Tournament, and have since lived to regret, would have been addressed to Seth Greenberg. His answer wasn’t really germane to anything I was writing, so to ask it, at the time, might have come off as goading or mean. So I saw no point, until hearing wall to wall over these last couple of news cycles what a travesty it was that Virginia Tech got left out of the NCAA Tournament while Wake Forest got in.
Greenberg had already answered, or actually not answered, a question about his team’s prospects for the Dance, saying it was now up to the Committee and out of his hands.
The question I really wanted to ask, but didn’t was:
“Why did you set your schedule in such a way that you’re sitting here 23-8 with a 10-6 ACC record and even worrying about the NCAA Tournament?’’ I wish I had asked.
Back when it was in his hands, Greenberg scheduled Brown (257 RPI), UNC Greensboro (249), Delaware (239), VMI (310), Charleston Southern (285), Maryland-Baltimore County (333), Longwood (286) and, as it turned out, the worst team he could have possibly played, N.C. Central (347, last RPI rating). The conference dictated Iowa (210), so that was just a bad break you can’t really blame on him. And I recognize that you can’t always be certain just how bad the bad teams are going to be but to schedule the likes of Brown, UMBC, Delaware, Longwood and N.C. Central in the same year is to risk ending up with a Strength of Schedule of 133 and an RPI of 59.
If Virginia Tech had played a bad out-of-conference schedule the Hokies would be in the NCAA Tournament, no sweat. They played a really, really bad non-conference schedule, and the NCAA Committee didn’t buy it. It happened at Wake Forest a couple of years ago when the Deacons finished 17-13 and couldn’t get an NIT invite, so Coach Dino Gaudio adjusted. This year he played teams he could beat, but instead of playing nine teams with RPIs higher than 200, as did Virginia Tech, he played six (East Carolina, High Point, Winston-Salem State, Elon, UNC Wilmington and UNC Greensboro). And instead of playing five with RPIs higher than 285, as did Virginia Tech, he played one, cross-town neighbor, WSSU. And he played Wilmington and Greensboro on their courts, and along the way also played Gonzaga in Spokane, Purdue in West Lafayette, and Richmond, William & Mary and Xavier at home. He worked on his schedule and set it up right. And that’s how you go 19-10 and 9-7 in the league with a strength of schedule of No. 30 and an RPI of No. 39 and end up with a No. 9 seed despite a late-season slide.
And that’s how you spend this week getting ready for the NCAA Tournament instead of coming up with reasons why a pretty darn good basketball team was left behind. The real reason is obvious. A stroll through the deer park is nice, but it doesn’t lead to the Dance.
The only thing worse than not being invited to the NCAA Tournament is to get invited and not show up.
Sportswriters, being the cynical lot that we are, call it the Empty Plane Scenario, where the chartered plane touches down at some far flung site for a first-round post-season game with nobody aboard. Or at least there’s nobody aboard still willing and able to give the kind of effort it takes to beat the team they’re there to play.
Dave Odom took two trips on an empty plane, one to Tempe to not play Louisville in the 1992 NCAA Tournament (81-58 Cardinals) and one to Kansas City to not play Butler in the last game of his Wake Forest career in the 2001 NCAA Tournament (79-53 Bulldogs). Skip Prosser took one to the Twin Cities to not play Minnesota in the first round of the 2006 NIT (73-58 Gophers).
And Dino Gaudio arrived sans team last season when the Deacons flew to Miami to not play Cleveland State, a regular-season also-ran of the Horizon League seeded No. 13 in the first round of the NCAA Tournament (84-69 Vikings).
The way the Deacons arrived back in Winston-Salem in an empty bus after not playing No. 12 seed Miami last week in the ACC Tournament raised the questions of whether Wake Forest is still a team intact. It’s a question no coach wants to hear, much less answer, but it’s one I asked Gaudio yesterday following the Deacons’ assignment to play Texas in Thursday’s first round in New Orleans.
“Oh absolutely,’’ Gaudio said. “I don’t think that’s even a question. You can ask those questions to those kids.’’
So he has no doubt whatsoever?
“Absolutely none,’’ Gaudio said. “If you had asked me that question last year, I wasn’t sure. (This year), it’s not a question.’’
So the chemistry of his third team as head coach is better than that of his second?
“It’s night and day,’’ Gaudio said.
Let the record show I took Gaudio’s advice and asked the players if their team was still intact.
“Oh absolutely,’’ Ish Smith said. “I truly believe that. And it doesn’t hurt that you did get in the tournament. It doesn’t hurt.
“Obviously to have the tough loss like we did against Miami, the team can obviously go here or go there. But you’ve been around us all year. When our backs are against the wall and we hit the floor hard – splat – we usually put stuff together and find some way to win. And I think we have to do that now because there’s no tomorrow.’’
I asked a senior and I asked a sophomore, Al-Farouq Aminu.
“Definitely,’’ Aminu said. “Everybody is really together. Everybody is happier. Everybody is just wanting to get better still and it’ll take a whole team effort.’’
And will the Deacons be aboard the same plane as their coaches?
“Yes,’’ Aminu said. “Everybody still believes in our coaches, and that’s the way we have to be.’’
Like many, if not most, coaches I’ve known, Dave Odom said he didn’t read the paper. So after about the third or fourth time he brought up something we’d written in the Winston-Salem Journal, Lenox observed that “For a man who doesn’t read the paper, you sure seem to read the paper a lot.”
Odom was taken aback, but only for a moment.
“No I don’t,’’ he insisted. “Other people read it and tell me about it.’‘
Dave, looking back on it, had it easy in one regard. When he was coaching Wake from 1989 through 2001, the heaviest barrage of incoming fire was launched from local papers, and/or maybe a few hardy souls brazen or just absolutely fed up (usually both) enough to try to pin him down on his radio show. Now the traditional fourth estate is the least of a coach’s worries, what with the cyber proliferation of a vast and ear-rattling array of national internet sites, message boards and comments by the readers of blogs such as this one you’re reading now. Anything anybody has to say these days can—and will—be heard by far more people than read, let along buy, the daily newspaper. And those voices are so often raised voices, railing at you for the color of your socks. Today’s coach has to please a far more connected and mobilized constituency packing post-modern bullhorns capable of being heard in Timbuktu.
In that I was socked in over at Greensboro covering the Friday and Saturday sessions of the ACC Tournament (I did indeed take today off, and didn’t have one second thought), today was the first opportunity I had to talk with Coach Dino Gaudio since Thursday’s 83-62 loss to No. 12 seed Miami in the first round of the ACC Tournament. Mostly we talked about the Deacons’ No. 9 seed in the NCAA Tournament and the prospects for Thursday’s first-round game against Texas in the Birthplace of Jazz, the eagerly anticipated New Orleans. But I couldn’t help but wonder about his reaction to the firestorm of criticism that has raged these last three days.
“Honest to God, with my right hand on Skip, I never look at any of that,’’ Dino said, referring to his mentor and former boss at Wake, Skip Prosser. “It has no factor in my life. It has no bearing on me whatsoever. And I never look at that. And that’s the honest-to-goodness truth. I can look you in the eye and tell you, those things don’t matter. They don’t matter.
“So you know what, there are a lot of coaches who have coached in the ACC that in two of their first three years haven’t gone to NCAA Tournament. And there were four schools that had multiple guys go in the first round in the NBA draft—Wake Forest, UCLA, North Carolina and Louisville. Two of those teams are in the Tournament, Wake Forest and Louisville.’‘
Being a democratic kind of guy by background and inclination, there is much about this brave new age of the cyber soap box that I love. If a person has something to say, they should, at least within the often smudged bounds of propriety, be able to say it. It’s good to see the marketplace of ideas a’ booming. If you’re convinced that Dino Gaudio is not the right man for the job at Wake Forest, that’s your opinion and, in the words of Briscoe Darling of the Andy Griffith Show, more power to you. Personally, I don’t like to draw conclusions that I have to revise later and I never felt the need to be the first to have the last say. So I’m more measured in my opinions than many of you that I’ve heard from over the weekend, not to say that makes either of us right. But I’ve also never been in the business of hiring and firing coaches for performance-based reasons. I can and will opine whether I think a coach is doing a good or bad job, but I just can’t take myself seriously enough to tell Ron Wellman how to do his job.
What has bothered me has been the smattering instances of incivility or disrespect. Just because a person has disappointed you, that’s really no reason to call them names or question their character. I have to hope we’re all better than that.
As I was covering the ACC Tournament last night played in front of a sparse and mostly disinterested gathering in cavernous Greensboro Coliseum, it occurred to me that I was probably sitting only a seat or two away from where I sat the night of my first ACC Tournament game, the aforementioned 1974 championship in which the Wolfpack of David Thompson, Tommy Burleson and Monte Towe outlasted the Maryland Terps of John Lucas, Tom McMillen and Len Elmore 103-100. For all the exansion the arena has undergone, the court, best I can tell, is in the same place.
The difference between watching that game and the ones I have watched this weekend is the difference between seeing the Grateful Dead—the vintage Dead, back before Pigpen boozed himself to death and Jerry stuck the needle in his arm—at Cameron Indoor Stadium and watching today’s incarnation of the band at, well, Greensboro Coliseum.
Forgive me if I’m coming off as an old warhorse who has out-lived his war. I’m whipped from having worked the graveyard shift the past two nights, getting in at 2, finally getting to sleep at 5 and getting back over to the Coliseum by the time the games tip off again. Watching inspired N.C. State barge past Clemson and Florida State has been fun, but the cumulative effects are wearing this old body out.
But the truth, as Lenox wrote so eloquently in this morning’s Journal, is the ACC Tournament a full decade into the 21st century is what it is, but it’s not what it was. It’s not even close to being what it was. Back then, when a team had to actually win the ACC Tournament to get a bid to the NCAA Tournament, it was as close to life and death as a sporting event can be. And the place was packed and pulsating. A ticket to the ACC Tournament was a truly prized possession and a seat on press row made you the envy of everyone you knew.. Today, whether you blame it on expansion, a watered-down product, the bad economy or whatever, it’s a empty shell of its former shelf
I still love coming, if nothing else than to see and catch up with so many friends that I usually don’t see any other time of the year. We swap stories, tell lies, bellylaugh with bellies way too full of free food we shouldn’t be eating. When the site is Atlanta, DC or Tampa, if I’m not at a game working you can always find me at the hospitality room at the media hotel, at least until they chase us out.
This year I’m actually thinking of hanging out at the hacienda for tomorrow’s championship and watching it on TV before heading over to Wake to cover the NCAA Tournament Selection show. I would have never, ever, even considered that in years gone by.
The ACC Tournament will never be what it was, but then, again, neither will the Grateful Dead.
Sitting directly across the court from the Maryland bench, it occurred to me how perfect it is that the Terrapins wear red. It matches the color of their coach’s face.
I used to be really down on Gary Williams because he is so out of control so much of the time. But over the years I’ve gotten to know him a bit better and have gained enough perspective to really appreciate who he is and what he has done. Yes he loses it, and yes he makes a real spectacle of himself on the sidelines. But I’ve also sat close enough to him at Joel Coliseum to realize that most of the time he’s not really as apopletic as he looks, and he’s not as bad for railing at officials as you might think.
Afterward I’m invariably amazed by how calm, collected and analytical he can be about what he has seen seen.
He just wants to win so badly that he can’t help himself. And he has passion. He wills his teams to victory. He reminds me of the old days, when guys like Norm Sloan and Lefty Driesell roamed the sidelines, raising all kinds of ruckus for 40 minutes.
He’s down 41-25 to Georgia Tech as we speak and I’m sure his players are getting an earful in the locker room. Be interested to see how they respond.
What Dino Gaudio has done at Wake Forest is impressive. Really impressive.
His first season, he guided a grieving but gritty team to a better finish than many, if not most, expected. His second season, the Deacons were 24-7 for the most victories in four years, made the NCAA Tournament for the first time in four years, tied Duke for second place in the ACC regular season at 11-5 and and even got a brief but tantalizing whiff of the rarefied air of the No. 1 ranking in the land. His third team, this team, has absorbed the loss of two sophomores to the NBA to win 19 and lose 10 against a stiff schedule, finish fifth in the ACC at 9-7 and, unless the NCAA Selection Committee really holds today’s pratfall in Greensboro against it, make the NCAA Tournament for the second straight season.
His record is a nice round 60-30 and he’s 27-21 in league play. That’s regular-season league play. We’ll get to that.
And along the way he has recruited well enough to help replenish this team with two good ones and have a well-regarded class in the pipeline for next season.
How he has done is every bit as impressive. He has represented Wake Forest in fine fashion and is well-liked by the media and, best I can tell, his coaching brethren.
The reason so many people aren’t really happy with Gaudio right now, then, is not what he has done, or how he has done it. It’s when he has done it. Actually it’s not even that. It’s when he’s not done it. In post-season play, his record is 0-4. And two of those losses, the 84-69 collapse against No. 13 seed Cleveland State and today’s 83-62 drubbing by a No. 12 seed Miami playing without its leading scorer and rebounder were, to put it bluntly, fiascoes. And fiascoes are remembered.
Fans not being happy with you is a part, a really big part, of being an ACC coach. Gaudio knew that when he took the job. Being a big-time college basketball coach is not for the faint of heart. There are a lot of people down Chapel Hill way not too enamored of Roy Williams right about now. And it seemed like just yesterday when there was a larger portion of the Maryland fan base than would, today, care to admit it who were riding in the posse on Gary Williams’ tail. But the difference is that in the good years, those constituencies were overjoyed not with just what the Williams Boys did, but when they did it.
Dino, even after today, should get another crack next week to prove that he can not only win, but win when it matters most.
If not then, when?
» Doug on 'Getting a New Career in Gear.'
» Doug on 'Getting a New Career in Gear.'
» DeaconDash on 'Getting a New Career in Gear.'
» ray on 'Wake's Jewel.'
» Lee Anglin on 'Getting a New Career in Gear.'
» Getting a New Career in Gear
» Levon Is Across the Great Divide
» Trackbar Adjustment and a High Groove
» Interview with Jeff Bzdelik: Part I