Tuesday, March 09, 2010

Deacons Braced For Miami Zone

Coach Dino Gaudio has a ready-made answer for anyone who tells him that Miami might play some zone in Thursday’s first-round game against the Deacons.

Do you reckon?

The Deacons saw an industrial-sized helping of zone in the two regular season games against the Hurricanes, the 67-66 loss in Coral Gables on Jan. 9 and the 62-53 victory in Winston-Salem on Feb. 2. Wake, in the two games, made 39 of 94 shots from the floor (41.5 percent) and nine of 28 from 3-point range (32.1 percent). Coach Frank Haith would have to be tired of coaching ACC basketball in South Florida and just want out if he didn’t play a lot of zone Thursday.

And knowing Frank Haith, I know that’s not who he is.

“We’re going to see 80 percent, 90 percent zone,’’ Gaudio said. “We did some good things against us in both games. We will have worked against it three days. We watched a lot of film yesterday, some of the things we did well and some of the things we need to do better. And we’ll work hard against it for two days now and hopefully we’ll play well against it.’‘