My Take on Wake - Playing Like the ACC Team You Are

Playing Like the ACC Team You Are

On Dec. 17, 1997 I found myself in Huntington, West Virginia, courtesy of Dave Odom. He’d scheduled an away game at Marshall as one of the “two-for-ones” he often came up with during his 12 seasons as Wake Forest’s head coach. The Thundering Herd has had some really good teams over the years, but the 1997-98 squad wasn’t one of them. Marshall was 3-3 when the Deacons arrived, having beaten such perennial powers as Bluefield State, Radford and Rio Grande to offset losses to Tennessee-Chattanooga, UMass and Morehead State. Marshall would finish 11-16 that season under Greg White. I expected the Deacons, even in their first season of the post-Tim Duncan era, to win handily.

So did the Deacons, and from the looks in their eyes, so did Marshall’s players. At least they expected that going into the game, before they saw what the likes of Tony Rutland and Jerry Braswell and Robert O’Kelley and Rafael Vidaurreta and Josh Shoemaker had to offer—which on this particular occasion wasn’t much. And as the game progressed, you could see how less-than-impressed the Marshall players were. You could also see their own confidence grow in leaps and bounds, until they took control of the game midway through the second half on the way to a relatively-easy 73-66 victory.

Wake Forest, like all ACC teams, has a name in basketball. And a name can be a powerful weapon against those teams that don’t have one. It’s a weapon that can, if used right, strike a bit of fear, if not intimidation in at least the lesser lights of the college game. But it’s also a weapon that can be squandered if not used properly. When a name team comes out against an underdog and plays stupid, uninspired basketball, then the underdog is going to eventually figure out that whatever fears it had were unfounded.

I saw that in Huntington in 1997 and I saw that last Friday in Wake’s 89-79 season-opening loss to Stetson. On the latter occasion, Coach Jeff Bzdelik saw it too.

“When you allow a team to come in here and get off to, I think it was a 9-2 start, all of a sudden they get confidence,’’ Bzdelik said. “(They’re) Like whoah, hey, we can get these cats—instead of us jumping up 9-2 and putting doubt in their minds. That’s where leadership comes in from our standpoint. Do we get sideways real quick? We took some quick bad shots that just bail out the defense.’‘

Wake clearly doesn’t have a lot going for it this season, but it is carrying the ACC brand. In the non-conference games such as tonight’s NIT opener against Hampton, that should mean something. On the other hand, a victory over an ACC team could make Hampton’s season, just as it went a long ways toward making Stetson’s.

The key, as anyone could see, is going to be shot selection. The Deacons are really hurting at basketball’s two most critical positions, point guard and center, but they do have some good shooters on the wings. But if at the first sign of resistance guys like J.T. Terrell and Ari Stewart start jacking up shots, then the offense is going to be the muddled mess it was against Stetson.

But why take my word for it when you can take that of Stewart?

“We’ve got take good shots—we’ve got to take good shots,’’ Stewart said. “Our shots are going to fall. Shooting is not something that anybody should worry about on our team. We’re going to make shots. It’s how you take the shots, you know? I know my freshman year, I used to come down and let her rip. Luckily I made some of them, and I missed some. But we can’t shoot like that all the time. We can’t do that because the longer the shots the longer the rebounds. Nobody is going to be consistent if we don’t rotate the ball.

“Coach Bzdelik all the time in practice is saying `The best thing you can do on offense is get the ball to the other side of the court.’ It’s move the ball, move it, move it, move it, and move the defense. If you don’t move the defense, you don’t want to take that shot. They’re going to let you take that shot all night. And that’s what we’ve got to learn.’’

Back to the main page.

By Dan Collins on 11/15/2010 (2:10 pm)

Comments

Thanks again for the post, Dan. Thanks also for quoting Ari Stewart.

It is great to know that at least one of the players understands what needs to be done from a mental standpoint (that’s especially the case with Ari Stewart, because he can really be special if he puts the game together mentally). That tells me that Coach Bzdelik has done a good job of explaining what he wants on the offensive end. It is an important first step in the right direction to be sure. The next step is to drill those expectations into the players’ minds to the point where they translate into the players’ natural instinct. Basketball is such a fluid game that players don’t have time to think about how to properly execute. They just have to do it.

With so much of their development at the AAU level (where such nuances of the game are often lost), today’s players have a significant adjustment to make if they want to excel in the ACC. Last year’s offense relied completely on Ish Smith running around and making plays, so no one this year’s squad really has experience with the type of offense that Coach Bzdelik wants. It’s going to take awhile. But if it starts to click, this can still be a fun team to watch (and it can be a competitive team in the future).

DC on 11/15/2010 (4:14 pm)

Ironic that you mention the game in Huntington. I was there with my father, who was an alumnus of Marshall. I am a native of Huntington. It was indeed a very long night for the Deacs—the bad memory I have was how poorly we guarded the three point shooter. The only good memory was my father complimenting me on how “polite” I was to all of his friends after the game. At least something good came from the game.

steve h on 11/15/2010 (2:48 pm)