Dino Makes All the Right Moves
Dino had a good day yesterday, a really good day.
Dino, of course, is Dino Gaudio, the head coach of Wake Forest on the receiving end of the same slings and arrows that pepper any ACC coach who loses two games in a row. And I have to say the Deacons’ performance in the previous two games against William & Mary and Purdue (not because Wake lost, but because of the way it buried itself in the second half beneath 17 turnovers and 17 fouls) was really straining on my hard-earned conviction that early December is not the time to be drawing conclusions.
But Saturday was a new day, a great day for Dino and the Deacons. They walked into one of the loudest and most intimidating venues in all of college basketball and walked out with a 77-75 victory over a No. 17 Gonzaga team that will likely be heard from come March, a team that before Saturday had won 65 of 68 games in his home arena, the 6,000-seat McCarthey Athletic Center. And Dino made all the right calls.
First he had his team ready.
“Coach Gaudio had a great speech before the game, talking about us really going out there to get a win, really going to get it,’’ senior Ish Smith said. “And that hit home. Even though I struggled in the first half, in the second half I didn’t want to let my team lose. So I made some plays and all of us made some plays and we kept our composure and got a W.’‘
Then he inserted freshman C.J. Harris into the lineup for the first time and Harris responded with a season-high 19 points. Harris also played 32 minutes without a turnover, rewarding Gaudio for his reason for starting Harris in the first place.
“We wanted to make sure we went in there and had a little bit more of a steady hand,’’ Gaudio explained.
Gaudio spent the game juggling his substitutions to compensate for serious foul trouble to his front line, foul trouble that limited star forward Al-Farouq Aminu to only 25 minutes. But it was a play designed for Aminu before he fouled out with eight seconds remaining that might have produced the biggest basket of the game. Gonzaga had roared back to slice Wake Forest’s 14-point lead down to 74-73 when Gaudio called time with 1:27 remaining.
On the inbounds play—tagged New Orleans—L.D. Williams threw to Smith, who lobbed a pass to Aminu cutting down the left side of the lane for a dunk. The Bulldogs managed only two free throws on five attempts the rest of the way.
“We’ve had that in our pocket,’’ Gaudio said. “It’s a side out-of-bounds play. We’ve got a bunch of end-of-game stuff. And we just held it and held it.
“Usually we pass that ball and ball screen. But I was afraid of somebody jumping in the passing lane. So Ish came off and Farouq’s guy showed and he threw it right up to the rim just like it’s supposed to look. And Farouq went and got it too.
“We run it once a week in practice, time and score situations. They executed it, so give them credit.’‘
Leading 77-74 with 5.8 seconds remaining, Gaudio sealed the win by instructing his team to foul before the Bulldogs could launch a 3-pointer. L.D. Williams fouled star guard Matt Bouldin at midcourt with 3.7 seconds remaining and Bouldin was left to make the first and intentionally miss the second. Except his intentional miss didn’t catch rim, which gave the ball back to Wake Forest.
It’s an eternal debate among basketball fans, to foul or not to foul in that situation. Gaudio said the clock is the key.
“If it was a little more time, we wouldn’t have fouled,’’ Gaudio said. “But it was so close, I said `Foul at midcourt,’ so they wouldn’t have a chance to do something crazy and throw it in.’’
“With the time the way it was, around five seconds, I thought it would be good to foul because there wasn’t much time. Even if they did foul us, like they did, there’s no more time for them to really get a shot off.
“If there’s 10 or 12 seconds left, I’m not going to.’‘
Gaudio admitted later he coached the game with a heavy heart. He was told yesterday morning by Geoff Lassiter, Wake’s assistant director of athletics for marketing, that Mary Cook had died of cancer. Mary and her husband Ashby have long been two of the staunchest supporters of Wake Forest sports and she was a true friend to all in the Deacon family.
Gaudio began his post-game comments by saying the team had won the game for Mary Cook.
“I didn’t want to say anything to the kids, because when I heard I teared up,’’ Gaudio told me later when he called from Spokane. “She’s a great lady.’‘
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By Dan Collins on 12/06/2009 (2:34 pm)
Comments
Thanks Deacfreke for the kind words. We’ve been at this blog for about 15 months now and I’m having a great time.
I’m familiar with the plus-minus stat, mainly from hockey. I can see its value, but only after enough games. I’m big on sample size in all stats for all sports. Take baseball, for instance. A guy might be hitting .214 against left-handers, with three hits in 14 at-bats. But he also drove a screaming liner that the left-fielder caught above the fence. And he might have had a sharp smash ruled an error that another scorer might have ruled a hit. Fold in the two more hits and he’s hitting .357.
The stat is not provided in basketball. I try to keep substitutions on my play-by-play so I’ll have a general idea of effectiveness.
Great hearing from you, and thanks for reading.
Dan on 12/08/2009 (12:39 pm)
Dan,
Thanks for the great blog. The extra coverage is very much appreciated. Tom Timmerman of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has a blog on the St. Louis Billikens, and does an excellent job with it as well. I’m a native born St. Louisan and the Billikens are my #2 team.
Timmerman includes on his post game reports a statistic he calls “plus/minus.” He reports this for each participating player and it’s a measure of how the team fares while an individual is on the court. For example, if Tony Woods is on the court for 15 mins, and Wake scores five more points than the opponent during his stints on the floor, then Woods has a +5 plus/minus score for the game.
He explains the value of the measure on his Billiken Beat blog in his review of the Billikens-Iowa State game.
Is this a stat that is readily available to the media, or is he likely keeping the stat on his own time? Is this something you might consider keeping, and if so, reporting on as well? It certainly has my interest when I read his reviews.
Again, thanks for your great coverage of the Deacs.
deacfreke on 12/07/2009 (9:26 pm)
Yeah, it was a pretty obvious flagrant foul by Harris. And whether the rule is right or not, apparently a flagrant foul results in an ejection. So that’s that. The fact that Harris doesn’t think he did anything wrong is a little ridiculous, but I suppose that’s Mark Few’s problem.
McFarland does seem to have a knack for getting under the skin of the opponents (he sometimes has a knack for getting under my skin, and I’m watching the games from my living room!). I don’t know if his fifth foul was a “make-up” call or if the refs were simply more apt to call fouls on plays like that as a result of the flagrant foul earlier. Probably a bit of both.
Regardless, Chas has played very hard this year and actually has been one of our more consistent players. When Gaudio praised him for his maturity earlier in the year, I thought he was just appeasing Chas’ ego because he didn’t start that game. But McFarland has done a great job of playing within himself so far this year. He will never ever be described as nimble, but his defensive and rebounding positioning have been significantly better this year, which so far has kept him from committing some of the stupid fouls that drove many fans crazy the last couple of years. Hopefully he can keep it up.
DC on 12/07/2009 (4:22 pm)
Dan,
I’m surprised you did not discuss the McFarland incident in your blog. I only saw the second half of the game on TV, but of course they showed plenty of replays. I saw a quote from the Gonzaga player that he “didn’t understand why he got ejected”. Oh really? That was about as blatant an ejection-worthy foul as I’ve ever seen in college ball, luckily the ref was looking right at it. McFarland seems to have a knack for getting under opposing player’s skin, he is always in the middle of whatever “chippiness” is going on in any given game. When the refs fouled him out it seemed like a “make-up” call, the defender walked right into Chas’s arm and did a drama king act.
One more thought - at least on TV that environment at Gonzaga seemed similar to Cameron, should prep them well for visiting Duke, we can hope anyway.
Charles on 12/07/2009 (10:59 am)
I am so happy for the team and coach for this win. Those guys played great and this win really reminds me alot of the BYU win last year except maybe even better. I know coach and the players has probably taken some heat from us fans for the William and Mary game and the 2nd half of the Purdue game but I was so happy to see the change in the lineup. I know Stewart and Harris may not play every game like last night but man oh man were they special along with Ish. I really think we have some good pieces albeit very underrated pieces. Good win for the Deacs. It will be a nice day at work tomorrow since UNC lost. Will be kind of quiet.
Cliff Daniel on 12/06/2009 (6:22 pm)
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