These Days, to steal a line from Jackson Browne, I don’t watch so much college basketball on TV, unless it’s ACC. The older I get the more diverse my interest become. The music thing takes up a lot of my time, of which I don’t regret one second. And I’ve always loved to read. I’m on about my fourth or fifth pass through the tale of a young man from the mountains of North Carolina going to the state university to make good. I don’t know how much good I’ve made, but I’ve always related to Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward Angel. But I’m always more than ready to set down my Gibson or my book whenever my newest favorite college team, the Missouri Tigers, is playing on TV.

What a fabulous story to see four former coaches and staff members at Wake Forest leading the Tigers to a 22-2 record and No. 4 ranking in the nation. I’m sure there are others in the Macadamia Nut Gallery who also knew Frank Haith, Ernie Nestor, Tim Fuller and Tony Hanson during their time at Wake and can attest to what special people they are.

Frank was at Wake twice, but the first stay was for only a year. Dave Odom, in one of his first acts after taking over as coach in 1989-90, hired Haith as graduate assistant. Haith left the next season to become a full-fledged coach at UNC Wilmington, but returned in 1998 when assistant Ricky Stokes left to return to Virginia. Haith remained until Odom left for South Carolina after the 2001 season, and was briefly on Odom’s Gamecocks staff before heading west to join Rick Barnes at Texas. I got to know his wife Pam, a fetching, vivacious woman who some may remember as assistant director of the Deacon Club, as well as their son Corey. As unfathomable as it seems, Corey is 17 now. My how they grow up. I didn’t know their daughter Brianna, who is six.

I had the extended pleasure of covering Haith as head coach at Miami and it was always good to run into him and catch up on things.

Ernie Nestor is probably as good a friend as I have in coaching. Most in the business are what I consider coaches who might be interesting people. I always consider Nestor to be an interesting person who happens to be a coach. Many hours were spent in his office talking about everything under the sun, and I always came away smarter and better informed for my trouble. Thankfully I had plenty of opportunity to hang out with Nestor because no assistant—not even Jeff Battle—has ever been at Wake longer. Nestor, who has been a head coach at George Mason and Elon, spent 14 seasons on the Wake bench. Like Haith, he made two stops. He was on Carl Tacy’s staff from 1980 through 1985, and Odom’s right-hand man from 1994 through 2001.

Nestor is from Philippi, West Va., so he was the one who tipped me off about the Highway 19 shortcut that connects Interstate 77 to Interstate 79 in his home state, thus staying clear of Charleston. Our family took that trip about a dozen times when Nate was an undergraduate at Eastman in Rochester, and we always called 19 the Ernie Nestor Highway.

Fuller was a walk-on at Wake, and was later an assistant coach across town at West Forsyth High School when a budding star named Chris Paul was playing for the Titans. He returned to his alma mater in 2005 to spend two seasons at director of basketball operations under Skip Prosser.

And Hanson was video coordinator for five seasons under Prosser. Like me, he went to North Carolina, though neither of us said much about it to anyone else in the Deacons’ program. You probably can guess why.

Even without the strong Wake connections, it would be hard not to like the Missouri Tigers. I’ve been lucky enough to see recent victories over Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma, and all were great games. They’re maybe the smallest elite team in the nation, with three small guards, 5-8 Phil Pressey, 6-2 Matt Pressey and 6-1 Michael Dixon and a frontcourt of 6-6 Kim English and 6-8 Ricardo Ratliffe. The guy who has been hot for them recently is Marcus Denmon, a 6-3 guard who scored 29 against Kansas and 25 last night against the Sooners.

They have a big game at home against Baylor Saturday.

They’re small but they will fight you tooth and nail and they have big hearts. They’re not a bit afraid of anyone. I love the abandon with which they play, and they’re always, of course, impeccably well-coached.

I’ve been to Mizzou Arena, to cover Wake’s 73-65 victory there in Tim Duncan’s senior season of 1997. So that gives me a frame of reference in these televised games, because I remember how hard the place can rock.

Besides being small, their terribly thin in numbers. They need to stay healthy and they need to keep playing as hard as they’re playing these days. And if so, maybe we’ll all be watching them on television come time for the Final Four. I can’t think of much I would like better.

My transportation at the time was a 1965 Ford LTD that my brother Tom Collins had picked up for $500 to get me through the winter with my job and sanity intact. It was as loud as it was fast, and it was very fast.

So I was tooling back to Chapel Hill after the game on Wade Avenue when, suddenly, my rear view mirror was filled with blue—not a blue light but a light-blue Cadillac. Seeings how this driver was in a bigger hurry than me, I pulled over to the right lane first chance I got.

And here came Smith blowing past me all alone, his hands gripped on the steering wheel, a cigarette hanging from his lips and smoke billowing out of his ears. It’s an image I’ll never forget.

Sometimes I wonder if it was a blessing or a curse to have been around long enough to remember how much games between these rivals really meant, back when the league itself allowed them to mean as much as they did. I’ll remain forever convinced that we all lost too much when the day—or in this case, the season—arrived that Wake Forest did not visit Chapel Hill, or the Tar Heels did not visit Winston-Salem. Now it’s been established that North Carolina and N.C. State will not play each other twice a year. There will be seasons the Tar Heels will not visit Raleigh.

And the sad thing is, it really doesn’t have to be this way.

Jonathan Bennett of the Macadamia Nut Gallery wondered what my opinion would be of cranking the Big Four back up. I’d love it, of course, but I can’t see it happening. The coaches won’t go for it. All coaches like to have as much control over their schedule as possible and the move to the 18-game conference schedule will cause many to cede more than they would like.

But there’s still a way to retain the rivalries that have made the league what it is—or at least what it was before expansion. I wish I could say the idea was mine, but really I stole it from my buddy Al Featherston, the long-time ACC writer and historian. Like is said in songwriter circles: amateurs borrow, but professionals steal. Featherston’s proposal is to divide the conference into seven-team divisions, as is done for football. That would allow at least most of the rivalries to remain intact.

Each team would play teams in its division twice, of course, for a total of 12 games. And each would play the teams in the other divisions once, for seven more games. That’s 19 games, if my public school education hasn’t failed me.

The one flaw in the system could become its biggest selling point. The seven games against the other division would leave some teams with 10 home conference games and others with only nine. That is, unless one of the games against the other division was played at a neutral site.

So the way to make it all work for everybody—the fans, the media, the league and of course the television networks—would be to set aside a long weekend between mid-December and Christmas when all 14 ACC teams would congregate at a neutral site. One year it could be Greensboro, the next Atlanta, the next Charlotte, and the next Madison Square Garden. And over those three days the odd game against the other division could be played. It could be marketed and sold as an Early Bird Special of what fans can expect to see over the next 2 1/2 months and it would build up tremendous energy and enthusiasm at a time of the year any league—even the ACC—could use all it could get.

Some coaches would balk because, again, another required conference game would give them less control of their own schedule. But it would be one game for the integrity and well-being of the conference as a whole, and not the two games that would be necessitated by a return to the Big Four.

John Swofford has not called me recently to ask my opinion, but my line is open. And if he were to call, I’d tell him Al Featherston has it figured out.

Problem is, for you, for me and for Al, it probably makes too much sense.

The question Rebecca got was: Who wrote the song Respect?

Rebecca knew who wrote it. It was Otis Redding. She also highly suspected that if she said Otis Redding, the teacher would say no, it was Aretha Franklin.

So Rebecca answered Aretha Franklin.

“Right,’’ the teacher said.

So the song has always had a special place in my heart, and would just on its own merits alone. I love Aretha’s version. How could you not? But my favorite has always been the original by the original one himself, Otis Redding. Take it away Otis Otis Redding Sings Respect

Problem is, I don’t know if I’ll ever look at the word itself the same way again after hearing Jeff Bzdelik play the respect card today after the loss at N.C. State. He’s not the first coach I’ve ever known to play the respect card, but he is the first I can remember to play it against his own team. And he’s the first who’s ever used the word in the way he used it today. I had almost made Mebane on my way home before I got a pretty good grip on what he was saying. Or at least I thought I did.

Bzdelik wasn’t talking about today’s the game, the one when the Deacons played fairly well offensively but could never get enough stops to get control of the game. He was talking about the meltdown from three weeks ago, when the Pack pasted Wake 76-40 in front of the Deacons’ home crowd. Wake was good enough to shave 25 points off that total in today’s 87-76 setback and still lost by 11.

“There’s an old saying in the NBA,’’ Bzdelik said. “You give respect by showing no respect. You give respect by showing no respect. And you all can figure out what that phrase really means. But the last time we played N.C. State we did not respect them because we didn’t play hard. We didn’t compete. That’s a heck of a statement for a coach to make, but that’s the truth.

“I mean, it’s just like I remember Michael Jordan saying one time that he’s had some rookies play him where they didn’t want to touch him. They just feared him. They didn’t even guard him. And Michael said you’re not even respecting me because you won’t compete against me. But if you get somebody out there who’s just battling and giving everything you’ve got – and still you come up short – you know what? Doesn’t your opponent respect you?

“So you give respect by showing no respect. You go out there and you battle.’‘

Sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me.

Not nearly as much was expected from this year’s class of Chase Fischer, Daniel Green and Anthony Fields. Good thing, for their sake. Only Fischer has made more than a nominal contribution. He’s averaging 6.7 points while shooting 35 percent from the floor and 32 percent from 3-point range. He had a decent stretch going on 3-pointers, hitting six of 15 over four games, before going 0-for-4 against UNC. Nobody except C.J. Harris could hit the broad side of a barn against the Tar Heels.

But Green did make an impression against the Tar Heels, hustling for five rebounds while committing four fouls in 15 active minutes. I asked coach Jeff Bzdelik yesterday if a lack of depth was showing up in the way the Deacons have faded in the second half in their past three games. He said possibly.

Partly because of that, and partly because he loves how the kid plays, but Bzdelik said he’s decided to give Green a bigger role in the final eight regular-season games headed into the ACC Tournament. Green has played 135 minutes total, and is averaging 1.3 points and 1.5 rebounds.

“Daniel Green has been improving steadily and has earned and deserves minutes,’’ Bzdelik said. “He did a great job in the time that he was in there, and I can see, for the remainder of this year, him getting a consistent amount of time.’‘

Fields lost his confidence somewhere along the way, and it’s hard for a coach to have confidence in a player who has none in himself. He has played 175 minutes total, but only 17 in ACC play.

Bzdelik did remind me of something that I’d forgotten along the way. Fields has had two wrist surgeries over the past 12 months, and Bzdelik is convinced that the forced inactivity and rehab has set Fields back. I don’t believe anyone expects Fields to ever be the next Chris Paul, but the staff would like to see him develop and provide depth at college basketball’s most critical position of point guard. It’ll probably be next year before we find out if that’s in the cards.

“In fairness to Anthony Fields, Anthony spent almost six months with his left hand in a cast,’’ Bzdelik said. “And he had two surgeries on his left wrist – with a bone graft. And he wasn’t able to play for six months.

“His wrist is still stiff to the point that the doctors said it will take about a year for him to get mobility back. It’s very difficult for a point guard to play basically with a hand tied behind his back. That needs to be understood.’’

The three who signed with Wake today are Tyler Hayworth of Kingsport, Tn., Will Smith of Charlotte and Joel Suggs of Sophia. Hayworth is 6-4, 306-pounds, Smith is 6-5, 285-pounds and Suggs is 6-6, 285-pounds. Head coach Jim Grobe said he was tickled pink to land the trio.

“The thing I like about Will is he’s got really good length to him,’’ Grobe said. “He’s tall. He’s got long arms. He’s just a great looking kid that I think is going to develop. He’s going to get bigger, faster and stronger, and all those kinds of things. So I think we’ve got a great frame to work with in both Tyler Hayworth and Joel Suggs.

“I just think we knocked it out of the park with these three offensive linemen. I thought we brought in three pretty good ones last year, and I think with these guys adding to that group we’ve really helped our depth.

“We’ve always kind of wanted to have like 15 offensive linemen that we’re working with, and we haven’t had that for awhile. So I think these three guys – added to the ones we’ve already got – I think we’ll come back in the fall and have a really good-looking group. You really don’t want freshmen to play in the offensive line. Joe Looney did. But these are three really, really good football players. I think we’ve done really good with these guys.’‘

Looking back, the three the Deacons recruited last year—all of whom redshirted—were Hunter Godwin, Dylan Intemann and Cody Preble. Godwin is 6-6, 290-pounds, Intemann is 6-5, 300-pounds and Preble is 6-5, 315-pounds.

I asked Grobe about the evolution of his recruitment of offensive linemen. The play of the offensive line has been, at best, adequate over the past six seasons.

“Initially we were looking for guys with better foot quickness than size,’’ Grobe said. “We were really kind of hanging our hats on running the football, and especially running some option football. As we’ve evolved with guys like Riley Skinner we needed better pass protectors.

“And so I think we’re looking for that kind of middle-of-the-road guy. We kind of have gone to a dual-threat quarterback, a kid that can run, a kid that can throw. And we kind of want a dual-threat offensive lineman, a guy who can be a little bit of a road grader and come off the ball and hit, but is big enough to pass pro and set blocks in the throw game. So I think that’s what we’ve done the past couple of years, and that’s kind of what we’re evolving toward is, more of a two-dimensional guy instead of a guy who is just a run blocker or a guy who is just a pass protector – a more versatile guy.’‘

It bears noting that all but one of the six offensive linemen who have signed the past two seasons stand at least 6-5. The runt is Hayworth at 6-4.

“The thing that you get into in pass protection is leverage, and you need a little bit bigger guy,’’ Grobe explained. “Because in pass protection, you really have to somewhat absorb the rush. And if you’re not big enough to do that, you get driven back into the quarterback. And if you’re a shorter guy, guys are able to get their hands up a little better and bat balls down and things like that.

“So yeah, I think we don’t need a guy that’s too big, but we do need a guy who can get up nose-to-nose with you and kind of keep your hands down and protect the quarterback in the pocket, as much as being able to come off and hit you when we’re running the football.’‘

It speaks for itself.

Yeah, I get in free. Yeah, I get good seats. Yeah, I get to talk with the players and coaches afterwards. I even get complimentary sodas.

But there are nights I’d rather be watching re-runs of Pawn Stars than sitting through and having to write about, on deadline no less, the kind of game I saw tonight between Wake and North Carolina. Apparently, judging from the number of empty seats in Joel Coliseum, quite a few people felt the same way. Not even the multitude of Tar Heels fans on hand had all that much to get excited about while watching their guys shoot 31 percent from the floor—the lowest by a North Carolina team in victory since Roy Williams’ first Tar Heel team beat Akron while shooting 30.4 percent in December of 2003.

Given the Tar Heels’ crooked sights, the game was there for the taking with 11 minutes remaining after a jumper by Chase Fischer cut the lead to seven. To have a game against North Carolina there for the taking is pretty heady stuff, even in a good season. And this has obviously not been a good season at Wake. So, as it turned out, the Deacons weren’t good enough to take advantage of their opportunity. They played 6 1/2 minutes without a field goal, got outscored 16-1 and spent the final minute and a half playing against the Blue Steel Team, or whatever the original Blue Team made up of bench-warmers and/or walk-ons is called these days.

After the Tar Heels prevailed 68-53 joy was hard to find from either side.  Williams talked about how ugly the game was, but that a team has to win ugly to have a great season—which the Tar Heels have every chance of doing. He was asked about the lack of atmosphere and how it might have affected his team’s intensity and motivation.

“Well, as a basketball player you’ve got to play,’’ Williams said. “I would hope that my team would play really hard with nobody in the crowd. It’s probably not as much fun, or something, but you’ve got to set the habits and set standards of playing exceptionally hard, regardless of what the crowd is doing.’

“If you’re a basketball player, play. If it’s on the damn playground, play. So I guess my answer to that is no. That’s a bunch of horse manure. You’ve got to play basketball, or don’t play.’‘

Coach Jeff Bzdelik was even less accommodating with the assembled media. He answered my question about the empty possessions after Fischer’s jumper cut the lead to seven, but he wasn’t as forthcoming with others. Michael Jennings of DeaconSports made mention of how the Deacons recurring problems cropped up again—with UNC outscoring Wake 11-0 on turnovers and 20-9 on second-chance points. Bzdelik’s answer could not have been more succinct.

“Right,’’ he said, allowing six seconds to lapse before I asked the next question.

When Jerome Richard of the Burlington Times-News asked if he was pleased with his team’s shot selection, Bzdelik was not about to let the fact he had touched on that subject earlier slide.

“Well like I said—I just said this—I said that we had opportunities around the rim and they blocked 12 shots,’’ Bzdelik responded. “So their length impacted the game. And then we had open looks, several open looks, probably a dozen open looks that we just couldn’t make shots. Sometimes that happens.’‘

The box score was as ugly as a stretch of South Carolina highway between Orangeburg and Florence. Tyler Zeller lighted it up with 18 points and a career-high 18 rebounds to go with three blocked shots. John Henson had 14 points, 12 rebounds and four blocks, but missed 10 shots from the floor. Kendall Marshall—a player any coach would love to coach—had a season-high 14 points along with six assists and no turnovers. And C.J. Harris outlasted some serious defense applied by Reggie Bullock to get to the line eight times, make all eight shots and finish with 19 points. But the Tar Heels, as mentioned earlier, shot as poorly as they have in victory since the 2003-04 season and Wake shot worse than they did, at 29.6 percent.

The most telling stat on the sheet, though, was 12,865. That’s the attendance that was given, which means there were probably not that many more than 10,000 in the building. The arch-rival is in town, their fans buy up around half of the tickets sold, and still Wake doesn’t come close to a sellout.

These are hard times for Wake basketball, as hard as I’ve seen in years. Maybe they’ll get better. It’s hard to imagine them getting worse.

It’s a policy to which I have tried to adhere, though, I have to admit, with only mixed success. We who make what living we make out of words have to come up with something. The goal is to snag and hold on to a reader’s attention, and sometimes the best way of doing that is through the use of a truism, a bromide, a platitude—all gussied up words for cliches.

For as Skip Prosser was wont to say, the reasons they’re cliches is because they’re true. If they weren’t true, they would have never been repeated enough times to become cliches.

The one I’ve spent the previous three paragraphs setting up is ``The best thing about freshmen is they become sophomores.’‘

That’s the thought that came to mind during yesterday’s ACC coaches teleconference, when two coaches from different area codes in the conference standings riffed about the struggle of getting a talented player through his freshman year as mentally and emotionally unscathed as possible. Even the best—well with a few exceptions like Kyrie Irving and Kenny Anderson—struggle in their first year of college. All freshmen think they have an idea of what they’re getting into when they arrive to play basketball at college, but few do. Even a staggering talent such as Harrison Barnes sometimes has to take his lumps before he finally figures out what he has to do and how he has to do it to become the player everyone expected him to be.

Yesterday coach Roy Williams of North Carolina and coach Jeff Bzdelik of Wake Forest commented on two freshmen we’ll see tonight when the Tar Heels play the Deacons at Joel Coliseum.

Williams was asked about James Michael McAdoo, the 6-9 forward from Norfolk who is averaging 5.4 points and 3.6 rebounds while shooting 41 percent from the floor and 60 percent from the line.

“You can’t tell with freshmen what goes through their mind every day,’’ Williams said. “Freshman have a wide variety of ways to handle things and you don’t learn about that until you’ve had them for a whole year.

“It’s a bright new world out there. The game is moving so fast. Everybody’s bigger and stronger. Guys come at different paces so you have to more or less try and push them as much as you can and try to force them to come, but still they’re going to come at their own pace.

“You can help them a little bit but mostly it’s up to them.’‘

Bzdelik was asked about the play of Chase Fischer, the 6-3 guard from Ripley, West Va., averaging 6.9 points while shooting 37 percent from the floor, 34 percent from 3-point range and 86 percent from the line. It’s just a hunch, but I believe if Wake hopes to make any kind of game of it tonight then it will need a significant contribution from Fischer.

“Chase has, I think, done a wonderful job,’’ Bzdelik said. “He’s very comfortable and confident out there. And yeah, he’s had moments when he’s been like a freshman and he’s had moments when he’s been otherwise.

“One thing that Chase does – people talk about his ability to shoot the basketball, and he can do that – but he also passes the ball really well. I think he might be our best passer. He sees the floor very well. He makes some really tough passes with his left hand. He’s made about five or six passes off his left hand, just dribbling with his left hand and firing that ball even across court with that left hand.

“I feel real good about him and I’ve got great confidence in him, and he has a really terrific future in this league if he gets stronger and understands positioning more and gets more experience. He’s a good all-around player who has a high IQ and who has really good skills.’‘

But there are days when it becomes painfully obvious how much work remains before he establishes himself as a solid, dependable ACC point guard. Today, against senior Andre Young of Clemson, was one of those days.

Young, unbridled in his younger days at Clemson, had his lessons to learn as well. By now, as a senior, he has learned many of them. One is to not get down when the going gets rough. The going got pretty rough early today for the Tigers, who missed 15 of their first 16 shots from the floor. But from the time Young drilled a 3-pointer from the left wing for Clemson’s second field goal, with 10:28 left in the half, the Tigers dominated play on the way to a 71-60 victory.

Young contributed seven field goals on 12 attempts and three 3-pointers on six heaves to lead Clemson with 19 points. At least as impressive was his floor game, which resulted in five assists and no turnovers in 33 highly effective minutes.

Chennault, meanwhile, made one of seven shots from the floor, scored three points and had three assists and two turnovers in 29 minutes. C.J. Harris (19 points and seven rebounds) and Travis McKie (13 points, 12 rebounds, three assists and two steals) played well, but it’s hard to play well enough to compensate for such a discrepancy at college basketball’s most vital position.

“He’s a really smart player who knows how to pick his spots,’’ Chennault said of Young. “He was a real leader for them, a good leader.’‘

Young bided his time early, starting only three games over his first two seasons. He cracked the lineup last season, and responded with career highs with 11.1 points and 80 3-pointers while committing just 40 turnovers against 102 assists.

Chennault, through 21 games this season, has 61 assists and 42 turnovers. Young, through 20 games, has 69 assists and 24 turnovers.

It should not be overlooked that again, Young is a senior while Chennault is a sophomore who missed 17 games last season with a broken foot.

“It’s important to have seniors who have been around for awhile and who understand,’’ coach Jeff Bzdelik of Wake Forest said “And that just takes time.’’

Ryan Bingham was on Outlaw Country singing Southside of Heaven and I wasn’t about to turn it off. It’s too good. It is a long song, but considering it was 9:50 and tipoff isn’t until 12:06, I didn’t have anything to worry about.

Bingham, who I got turned onto in the fabulous movie Crazy Heart, was a bull rider before he became a country music star. I always wonder how bull riding first got started (“I’m going to jump on the backk of that big son of a gun and hang on for eight seconds”). I imagine there’s a good chance alcohol was involved.

The rest of the time has been spent waiting for Scott Wortman of the Wake media relations department to find out the latest on Ty Walker. Scott just walked up and said that Walker is good to go, and that the battery of tests conducted yesterday and today have revealed no medical reason for him not to play. I asked if he will start, and Scott said he thought he would.

Catalin Baciu, the 7-2, 255-pound center from Romania, is listed as a starter for the Tigers. That will be a matchup worth watching. If Walker plays as well against Baciu as he did against Alex Len of Maryland, I have to think the Deacons have a chance. We’ll find out in a bit.