My Take on Wake - The Wellman Interview: Part IV

The Wellman Interview: Part IV

MTOW—The basketball season is early, but there were a couple of really bad losses. You’re not used to losing to Stetson and Winthrop. Would you please assess the first six games of what you’ve seen from Coach Jeff Bzdelik.

WELLMAN—We’re in a transition period and Jeff is doing a great job. I am so enthused about the future of our basketball program. The way he runs a practice and the effort that is being expended by the players, and the teaching points that are being made by the coaches – I love coming to his practices. It’s a classroom. It’s a time when you see passion come out of the players. They’re being treated well. They’re absorbing, or trying to absorb everything that he says. He has such knowledge of the game and he has a wonderful way of teaching it to the players. They’re responding to him. But it’s still a period of transition. We need to remember too that this team wasn’t picked very high in the conference by all the prognosticators before we lost Tony Chennault and before we lost Tony Woods. When you lose your center, who we anticipated being pretty good, and a point guard, who even though he’s a freshman was going to be pretty good, you’ve lost an awful lot. Jeff has not made any excuses. But that’s the reality. There aren’t many teams in America that could lose two starters at those positions and overcome it very effectively. We’ll overcome it. I’m very confident that this team will show progress throughout the year. We’re not going to win a national championship this year. That’s not going to happen. But what we’re looking for is improvement, intensity of play, a transition year that is going to produce the results, eventually, that we want.

MTOW—And what is the concern about the crowds, because I’ve never seen that few people watching Wake Forest play basketball?

WELLMAN—Again, our fans are frustrated and disappointed. We hope that they will come back. We think that they will come back. Our crowds have always been mediocre especially in November and even in December. The fans in this conference are ACC fans. They love ACC basketball. And if you look at our history, and just about everybody in the ACC, the crowds aren’t nearly as great in November and December as they are in January and February. So we think our crowds will pick up and our fans will come back as they see that this team is improving. And that’s what we’ve got to do. We’ve got to produce a quality product for our fans to really enjoy it and we’re confident that will happen.

Back to the main page.

By Dan Collins on 12/03/2010 (7:00 am)

Comments

Wellman sounded good but he was all wrong. The season is over and the team didn’t show much improvement during the
year. They were the laughing stock of the ACC. This wasn’t
a lesson in rebuilding but an example of plain old poor
coaching. How Wellman was allowed to just pick a new coach
based on a gut feeling and not form a search committee is
beyond good judgement and business practice. He rolled the
dice and the REAL LOSERS are Wake alumni and fans.

This past season was a total disaster for Wake students,
alumni and fans. How Wellman can justify the selection of
Bzdelik is hilarious. Never heard of a gut feeling being
a major part of a decision this important. Why weren’t other potential coaches interviewed or a search commitee
utilized? Let’s see what 4&5 star recruits want to commit
for next year.

let’s

mulligan on 03/13/2011 (3:43 pm)

I am a Wake grad living in Arizona and try to keep up with Wake basketball, although most games aren’t available in my area. I was very shocked at Wellman’s pick of his obvious buddy to replace a coach who had a coaching record much better than his pick, and is obviously performing as well as his past record reflects. I may have missed something, but why is there not a movement among the fans and supporters of Wake Forest to not only demand replacement of this obviously incompetent coach, but also the AD who fired a popular and promising coach with such an obvious misfit. I think it is time for some hard questions to be placed before the current WF basketball coach and AD. Why am I not seeing any, other than ones that give the AD an opportunity to praise this inept coach? I am sure the lack of crowds at the Wake home games is not the norm in November and December, regardless of what the AD says. As a simple start, why not ask him to back up his allegations with facts. It looks like the facts are starting to back up his mistake in judgement as to what a good basketball coach should be.

Hal Dale on 12/16/2010 (12:03 am)

Dan glad to have you back. Wellman is sure blowing a lot of smoke. From what has gone on I think there were a lot more Dino supporters out there than portrayed.
Jay Williams even commentated in the Iowa game when this rebuilding was brought up that he did not understand. He said they had a coach that was 61 and 31 and two NCAA appearences and a top 8 recruiting class. Do not like Duke but go Jay. You cannot blame coach B it is Wellmans fault and he is trying to cover himself.

ed on 12/04/2010 (7:04 am)

I couldn’t disagree with these comments more. Just because you don’t know like the hire, it doesn’t mean it was terrible. I think that Ron is one of the best AD’s around and he’s made some pretty great choices up to this point. Bz deserves your support based on Wellman’s track record alone.

Beyond that, he is a top-notch basketball mind and he’s going to do our program a wealth of good. It’s WAY too early to judge him by wins-losses or recruiting. The fact is that this team is improving, despite a slew of setbacks beyond Bz’s control. More importantly, the pieces are in place - from both a player personnel and coaching perspective - for this group to be successful down the road. It’s not going to happen instantly but look at the progress we’ve already seen from Ty. Give the man a chance to succeed (and a real PG) before you start calling for his head.

Andy on 12/03/2010 (12:34 pm)

A lot of what Ron says is certainly true especially when you lose two starters. That said, Bz was a terrible hire and has the credentials to prove that. The Wake fans aren’t buying into it at all and you can see that. As you say Dan, when is the last time you saw empty seats like you’ve seen? Been a long time. And we lost big to Stetson, Winthrop and VCU. The comeback against Iowa was stirring to be sure, but let’s be realistic-they are nothing special this year. I look for a long, hard road in the ACC conference play. I don’t think it’s worth rehashing and I never was a big Dino fan but he won 61 games in three years and could recruit. This guy has lost everywhere except one season and the skinny is he can’t recruit. I think in this league with our traditions, we deserved better than we got and we certainly could have gotten better, there were a lot of coaches out there. That said, I fervently hope I’m wrong and Ron is right or else the empty seats will get larger and that is sad considering what we had a few short years ago.

fpvjr on 12/03/2010 (9:00 am)

Recruiting is the key to a successor basketball team. Wake’s coach missed on every prospect in the top 100 this year. What happened to Wake’s ability to attract top talent?

Richard Stanley on 12/03/2010 (8:32 am)