Leaving Charlottesville in the Broad Daylight
Wake Forest celebrated one of its best days of the basketball season. Not only did the Deacons brave upwards of two feet of snow to make it to the arena and survive a conspicuous no-call at the end of regulation to beat Virginia 67-64 in overtime, they also made a clean get-away and by 3:30 were rolling down Route 29 bound for home.
How we ever did our jobs without cell phones I can’t remember. But I know I was happy Scott Wortman, Wake Forest’s assistant director of media relations in charge of basketball, had one handy as he riding the bus home with the players. Scott got Coach Dino on the phone for me, and then arranged for me to talk with Ish Smith and Al-Farouq Aminu for the story I was putting together for the Journal.
And for those interested, all said the roads were clear, which was surprising given the amount of snow that dumped on Central Virginia.
Dino confirmed what was obvious to anyone who watched the game, that defense made the difference. But it didn’t start out that way, not when Mike Scott came out and hit his first five shots for 10 quick points. He scored most of them on Aminu, which didn’t sit well with Dino.
“When (Aminu) came out the first TV timeout, I got into him pretty good,’’ Gaudio said. “Our whole little thing before this game was `This is a noon game. We have to be up and ready to play.’ We got Virginia to let us shoot around in the auxiliary gym at 10 this morning, and we shot our free throws and for the first time we ran through about 15 of our sets and all of our (out of bounds plays). We ran through them. We wanted to be ready to go. We couldn’t be sleepwalking until the second half.
“They jumped on us, but we responded.’‘
Scott, for the record, missed his final 10 shots and didn’t score over the final 35 minutes.
Gaudio was impressed with the bench production he got from Tony Woods, who contributed six points and five rebounds in 20 minutes. But when both Chas McFarland and Woods fouled out, Gaudio went with his small lineup down the stretch with Aminu at center and L.D. Williams at power forward. Virginia made only three of 10 shots in overtime.
“L.D. is just so gosh-darn smart,’’ Gaudio said. “He can run our stuff at (power forward). He’s never practiced at (power forward) but he knows. He’s smart and he’s got a great I.Q. We’re running plays and he’s at (power forward) and he knows where he’s supposed to be.’‘
I happened to have a box score of the early game between the two teams, won by Wake Forest 69-57 in Joel Coliseum on Jan. 23. I did a double-take when I saw the box for today. The Cavaliers, in the first game, took 65 shots from the floor and made 22. Today they took 65 shots from the floor and made 22.
What are the odds of that?