A work in Progress Finally Progresses
If you’re like me, you look for signs wherever and however they might appear. And I had a hunch I had heard one before today’s game between Wake and Virginia at Joel Coliseum. My I-Pod was set, as usual, to the shuffle mode, and the song playing as I pulled into my spot in media parking across the street at Deacon Tower was one I imagine you might have heard as well. Don’t Worry, Be Happy.
Landlord say your rent is late,
And he may have to litigate,
Don’t worry, be happy.
So if you were anywhere around the back entrance of Joel Coliseum around two hours before tipoff, you might have heard me humming that infectious tune as I walked past. I was, indeed, happy, partly because we all had a time to remember last night at the Blind Tiger grooving and rocking to Donna the Buffalo, and partly because I had a feeling I was going to see something new and exciting and different out of Wake today. In the interest of full disclosure, I admit I’ve had it before this season, only to find out how wrong I was. But I knew the Deacons were coming off a week’s respite and playing a banged up team blown out at home two days earlier by Maryland. And I could see in practice, and hear in the voices of the coaches and players how hard they were working to pull out of their season-long nose dive.
I’ve written before how, unlike most of you guys, I don’t live and die with the outcome of the games I cover. If you’re a professional journalist, you’ve learned not to. And it bears noting that a really, really bad team is, in one essential way, easier to cover than a middling one. At least the story is defined. You don’t have to spend all your energy and focus trying to analyze and chronicle where the season is and where it’s headed. But the drawback, of course, is the sea of negativity you find yourself swimming in, and no matter how judicious and honest and straightforward you try to be, there are times its riptide can pull you under.
I sensed the Deacons might beat Virginia at Friday’s practice, and I felt it even stronger when I saw how they came out today. They weren’t razor sharp, especially on defense, but they were playing hard and hustling. I also noticed that four different Deacons, Gary Clark, C.J. Harris, Travis McKie and J.T. Terrell all drilled 3-pointers in the first 10 minutes, which I suspected might buck up their confidence as the game progressed.
Even when Wake came out flat in the second half and fell behind 48-38, I saw no need to change my tune. There were 13 minutes remaining and the Deacons, once again, were much more rested. I could see Cavaliers’ legs might get a bit heavy down the stretch.
The one moment I wondered if I’d been taken it again came after Wake cut the lead to 55-54 with seven minutes left. Clark got a wide-open shot off the fast break—his shot, the one he’s made all season—and missed. The ball was knocked out of bounds and J.T. Terrell got the ball in the left corner open enough to set his feet, exhale, take a sip of soda if he so desired, before he let it fly. And he missed.
Could I have been wrong? Was there cause to Worry, and Not Be Happy? Was I to see the Deacons go down once again?
What I saw instead was the Deacons get the ball 11 more times in the game, and score on 10 of them. The only empty possession was the time Ty Walker, in the midst of a breakout offensive performance, missed a layup. Otherwise the Deacons gashed Virginia’s defense, scoring on jumpers, drives and free throws. C.J. Harris was money in the second half, making eight of eight free throws, the final two with 36.6 second left for a 74-68 cushion.
Afterward I mentioned to Harris the misses by Clark and Terrell and the feeling that came over me in seeing them.
“We’re just maturing,’’ Harris said. “Five games ago we probably would have broke down and it could have been a blow-out out there. So we showed that guys are growing, we’re fighting through adversity and pulling through.’‘
Jeff Bzdelik made pretty much the same point in his post-game address.
“Listen, we spend half of our time not just on Xs and Os, but addressing the mental part of this game,’’ Bzdelik said. “On the board today was grit, it was discipline, it was toughness, it was being a good teammate, will. Those kinds of things. Right before we took the court we showed Al Pacino’s clip on Any Given Sunday in the locker room.
“It’s so much about our mental makeup and having confidence and fighting through things and not fighting ourselves – and I don’t mean fight among each other; they just get down. It’s a lot of stuff. And we need to understand what it takes to win games, and that’s playing through adversity. And what is toughness? And what is grit? And all those kinds of things, battling.’‘
Progress was made today, and as I’ve written progress doesn’t always run on schedule. It lurches forward, and it backtracks. Come Tuesday night in Tallahassee, the Deacons might get run off the court by Florida State. But the team I saw today is a much better team than the one I saw get clubbed by Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech. And maybe best of all, I don’t have to concern myself with a story I didn’t want to write, a team in danger of posting the first 0-16 record in ACC history.
So it was a good day.
I wonder how different it would have been if the song I heard as I was pulling into the parking lot today had instead been that came on as I was driving down Deacon Boulevard home. Sing It Merle