Guilford Just What the Doctor Ordered
Regardless of what transpires in this most uncertain of basketball seasons, Wake will always have Guilford.
By that I mean the Deacons will have the memory of walking on the court with six scholarship players—three of them in their first college game—and tearing Division III Guilford asunder in last night’s exhibition victory at Joel Coliseum. The reason the Deacons looked much better than I expected may have had much to do with the Quakers, having lost two All-Americans and another essential player off last year’s 30-3 squad, looking a lot worse. The Quakers scrapped, but they had only one player taller than 6-4 and lacked the kind of strength and quickness it takes to dictate terms on the defensive. The Deacons got the ball where it needed to go. How much that had to do with better organization and precision instilled by new coach Jeff Bzdelik won’t be known until Wake plays an aggressive, athletic team intent on imposing its will by getting in its grill. But any team that runs the court for layups and dunks, drills 12 3-pointers on 28 tries, dishes out 21 assists (out of 32 field goals) and shoots 56 percent from the floor is going to look good, especially when it holds the other team to 17 field goals on 76 heaves.
And nobody looked better than Travis McKie, the 6-7 freshman from Richmond who showed things last night I hadn’t seen in practice. Or I’d seen them, but not like I saw them last night with fans in the stands. He’s mobile, he’s got a lightning quick release and he drilled three 3-pointers (in three tries) just like he meant to. He’s rangy and athletic enough to help in a lot of ways, like pulling down his seven rebounds and contributing two steals. I still imagine he’ll get bullied about some by the powerful kind of power forwards he’ll have to battle in the low blocks. But that same powerful power forward is also going to have to get out in a hurry if he doesn’t want to give up open 3-pointers to a player who can drain them. And down the road, the availability of Nikita Mescheriakov and Melvin Tabb should open up more opportunities for McKie to play his more natural position of wing forward.
A man who knows college basketball well enough to have won a whole lot of games coaching it mentioned that the only time J.T. Terrell shoots the basketball is when he has it. So I was grinning when Terrell came out and let five shots fly in the first 5 1/2 minutes. He made two, both 3-pointers. They turned out to be his only two 3-pointers of the game, on 10 attempts, and he finished with five field goals on a team-high 15 attempts. It bears noting he also led Wake with seven assists, and I hasten to add that none of this is to suggest that Terrell’s ready-willing-and-able approach to shooting the basketball is, necessarily, a bad thing. All teams need offense, and Terrell has it to spare. He’s certainly a player any opposing defense is going to have to take into account.
One of my all-time heroes, Coach Bighouse Gaines of Winston-Salem State, once coached a legendary gun named Reggie Gaines who he told to shoot 30 times a game. I remember House (it’s a mountain of a man who has a nickname off his nickname) said that Reggie was a role player whose role was to shoot the basketball. I’ve seen teams that bickered over who got the shots and I’ve seen teams that only cared about the shots going in. And what I haven’t seen is any reason to anticipate that this team will bicker over shots. And what I haven’t seen in J.T. Terrell is a player who cares only about getting his shots. To the contrary, I thought he played hard last night, and I thought his aggressiveness and athleticism proved really disruptive to what Guilford was trying to do offensively—as evidenced by his game-high four steals to go with his 16 points and six rebounds. He played with a passion, as did McKie. It was fun to see.
It was also fun to see everyone contribute, including walk-ons, Aaron Ingle, Denmore “Baltimore” McDermott and Ryan Keenan who logged 40 minutes among them. Keenan, a 6-4 junior from Bellaire, Tex., had the crowd up and whooping when he knocked down two 3-pointers on three tries.
Keenan’s minutes, as impressive as they were, appear numbered. The cavalry is saddling up. Ari Stewart was cleared for last night’s game, but Bzdelik said the decision was not to push him back from his hyper-extended knee, to err on the side of caution. Bzdelik also said that freshman Tony Chennault is going to give it a go full-speed for half of today’s practice. Stewart looks good to go for Friday’s opener against Stetson, and Bzdelik is hopeful Chennault will be cleared as well.
How much to make of a lopsided, early November victory over an outmatched opponent is never easy to gauge. The Deacons may end up being the surprise team of the ACC and they may end up where they were picked to finish, the cellar. The only certainty is they won’t finish worse.
And whatever happens, they’ll always have Guilford.