An Hour With Bzdelik: Take 9
MTOW: Now that you’ve had the luxury of 10 months of hindsight, did you know what you were getting yourself into?
JB: I had both eyes open. I’ve been around this business a long time. I knew that there would be a lot of questions and concerns. I knew that with the extreme youth and inexperience of this team, it’s not so surprising what our record was.
MTOW: The reaction from the fans here at Wake Forest, how was it like the reaction your first year at Colorado?
JB: I think the difference was the fans in Colorado knew me and they trusted me and they respected me. You know we took the Nuggets to the sixth-best turnaround in NBA history, and then we took Air Force to 11th in the nation, to the NCAA Tournament and to the Final Four of the NIT, and people knew me because I was a familiar face and in the neighborhood and on TV and knew the community. So when I went to Colorado, they said `We’ve got your back.’ And I know that that really doesn’t exist here.
MTOW: How do you connect with the fanbase here?
JB: That just takes time to. . . It just takes time. You can’t build relationships quickly, and my experience in Denver, or Colorado, those were years invested. So all I can do here is roll up my sleeves and do the best I can, with integrity and hard work – and honesty. And I understand the world that we live in today. All I can say is, whatever people say about me in a critical way, let it be known that it doesn’t run my day, at all. And that whatever people can say in a critical, negative way about me, it isn’t even close with how critical I am with myself. And that if they wanted to jump on anyone, do it on me and not these young men – because they’re good young people who will make this university proud of how they’re going to play in the future.