Greenberg had already answered, or actually not answered, a question about his team’s prospects for the Dance, saying it was now up to the Committee and out of his hands.

The question I really wanted to ask, but didn’t was:

“Why did you set your schedule in such a way that you’re sitting here 23-8 with a 10-6 ACC record and even worrying about the NCAA Tournament?’’ I wish I had asked.

Back when it was in his hands, Greenberg scheduled Brown (257 RPI), UNC Greensboro (249), Delaware (239), VMI (310), Charleston Southern (285), Maryland-Baltimore County (333), Longwood (286) and, as it turned out, the worst team he could have possibly played, N.C. Central (347, last RPI rating). The conference dictated Iowa (210), so that was just a bad break you can’t really blame on him. And I recognize that you can’t always be certain just how bad the bad teams are going to be but to schedule the likes of Brown, UMBC, Delaware, Longwood and N.C. Central in the same year is to risk ending up with a Strength of Schedule of 133 and an RPI of 59.

If Virginia Tech had played a bad out-of-conference schedule the Hokies would be in the NCAA Tournament, no sweat. They played a really, really bad non-conference schedule, and the NCAA Committee didn’t buy it. It happened at Wake Forest a couple of years ago when the Deacons finished 17-13 and couldn’t get an NIT invite, so Coach Dino Gaudio adjusted. This year he played teams he could beat, but instead of playing nine teams with RPIs higher than 200, as did Virginia Tech, he played six (East Carolina, High Point, Winston-Salem State, Elon, UNC Wilmington and UNC Greensboro). And instead of playing five with RPIs higher than 285, as did Virginia Tech, he played one, cross-town neighbor, WSSU. And he played Wilmington and Greensboro on their courts, and along the way also played Gonzaga in Spokane, Purdue in West Lafayette, and Richmond, William & Mary and Xavier at home. He worked on his schedule and set it up right. And that’s how you go 19-10 and 9-7 in the league with a strength of schedule of No. 30 and an RPI of No. 39 and end up with a No. 9 seed despite a late-season slide.

And that’s how you spend this week getting ready for the NCAA Tournament instead of coming up with reasons why a pretty darn good basketball team was left behind. The real reason is obvious. A stroll through the deer park is nice, but it doesn’t lead to the Dance.

Sportswriters, being the cynical lot that we are, call it the Empty Plane Scenario, where the chartered plane touches down at some far flung site for a first-round post-season game with nobody aboard. Or at least there’s nobody aboard still willing and able to give the kind of effort it takes to beat the team they’re there to play.

Dave Odom took two trips on an empty plane, one to Tempe to not play Louisville in the 1992 NCAA Tournament (81-58 Cardinals) and one to Kansas City to not play Butler in the last game of his Wake Forest career in the 2001 NCAA Tournament (79-53 Bulldogs). Skip Prosser took one to the Twin Cities to not play Minnesota in the first round of the 2006 NIT (73-58 Gophers).

And Dino Gaudio arrived sans team last season when the Deacons flew to Miami to not play Cleveland State, a regular-season also-ran of the Horizon League seeded No. 13 in the first round of the NCAA Tournament (84-69 Vikings).

The way the Deacons arrived back in Winston-Salem in an empty bus after not playing No. 12 seed Miami last week in the ACC Tournament raised the questions of whether Wake Forest is still a team intact. It’s a question no coach wants to hear, much less answer, but it’s one I asked Gaudio yesterday following the Deacons’ assignment to play Texas in Thursday’s first round in New Orleans.

“Oh absolutely,’’ Gaudio said. “I don’t think that’s even a question. You can ask those questions to those kids.’’

So he has no doubt whatsoever?

“Absolutely none,’’ Gaudio said. “If you had asked me that question last year, I wasn’t sure. (This year), it’s not a question.’’

So the chemistry of his third team as head coach is better than that of his second?

“It’s night and day,’’ Gaudio said.

Let the record show I took Gaudio’s advice and asked the players if their team was still intact.

“Oh absolutely,’’ Ish Smith said. “I truly believe that. And it doesn’t hurt that you did get in the tournament. It doesn’t hurt.

“Obviously to have the tough loss like we did against Miami, the team can obviously go here or go there. But you’ve been around us all year. When our backs are against the wall and we hit the floor hard – splat – we usually put stuff together and find some way to win. And I think we have to do that now because there’s no tomorrow.’’

I asked a senior and I asked a sophomore, Al-Farouq Aminu.

“Definitely,’’ Aminu said. “Everybody is really together. Everybody is happier. Everybody is just wanting to get better still and it’ll take a whole team effort.’’

And will the Deacons be aboard the same plane as their coaches?

“Yes,’’ Aminu said. “Everybody still believes in our coaches, and that’s the way we have to be.’’

Odom was taken aback, but only for a moment.

“No I don’t,’’ he insisted. “Other people read it and tell me about it.’‘

Dave, looking back on it, had it easy in one regard. When he was coaching Wake from 1989 through 2001, the heaviest barrage of incoming fire was launched from local papers, and/or maybe a few hardy souls brazen or just absolutely fed up (usually both) enough to try to pin him down on his radio show. Now the traditional fourth estate is the least of a coach’s worries, what with the cyber proliferation of a vast and ear-rattling array of national internet sites, message boards and comments by the readers of blogs such as this one you’re reading now. Anything anybody has to say these days can—and will—be heard by far more people than read, let along buy, the daily newspaper.  And those voices are so often raised voices, railing at you for the color of your socks. Today’s coach has to please a far more connected and mobilized constituency packing post-modern bullhorns capable of being heard in Timbuktu. 

In that I was socked in over at Greensboro covering the Friday and Saturday sessions of the ACC Tournament (I did indeed take today off, and didn’t have one second thought), today was the first opportunity I had to talk with Coach Dino Gaudio since Thursday’s 83-62 loss to No. 12 seed Miami in the first round of the ACC Tournament. Mostly we talked about the Deacons’ No. 9 seed in the NCAA Tournament and the prospects for Thursday’s first-round game against Texas in the Birthplace of Jazz, the eagerly anticipated New Orleans. But I couldn’t help but wonder about his reaction to the firestorm of criticism that has raged these last three days.

“Honest to God, with my right hand on Skip, I never look at any of that,’’ Dino said, referring to his mentor and former boss at Wake, Skip Prosser. “It has no factor in my life. It has no bearing on me whatsoever. And I never look at that. And that’s the honest-to-goodness truth. I can look you in the eye and tell you, those things don’t matter. They don’t matter.

“So you know what, there are a lot of coaches who have coached in the ACC that in two of their first three years haven’t gone to NCAA Tournament. And there were four schools that had multiple guys go in the first round in the NBA draft—Wake Forest, UCLA, North Carolina and Louisville. Two of those teams are in the Tournament, Wake Forest and Louisville.’‘

Being a democratic kind of guy by background and inclination, there is much about this brave new age of the cyber soap box that I love. If a person has something to say, they should, at least within the often smudged bounds of propriety, be able to say it. It’s good to see the marketplace of ideas a’ booming. If you’re convinced that Dino Gaudio is not the right man for the job at Wake Forest, that’s your opinion and, in the words of Briscoe Darling of the Andy Griffith Show, more power to you. Personally, I don’t like to draw conclusions that I have to revise later and I never felt the need to be the first to have the last say. So I’m more measured in my opinions than many of you that I’ve heard from over the weekend, not to say that makes either of us right. But I’ve also never been in the business of hiring and firing coaches for performance-based reasons. I can and will opine whether I think a coach is doing a good or bad job, but I just can’t take myself seriously enough to tell Ron Wellman how to do his job.

What has bothered me has been the smattering instances of incivility or disrespect. Just because a person has disappointed you, that’s really no reason to call them names or question their character. I have to hope we’re all better than that.

The difference between watching that game and the ones I have watched this weekend is the difference between seeing the Grateful Dead—the vintage Dead, back before Pigpen boozed himself to death and Jerry stuck the needle in his arm—at Cameron Indoor Stadium and watching today’s incarnation of the band at, well, Greensboro Coliseum.

Forgive me if I’m coming off as an old warhorse who has out-lived his war. I’m whipped from having worked the graveyard shift the past two nights, getting in at 2, finally getting to sleep at 5 and getting back over to the Coliseum by the time the games tip off again. Watching inspired N.C. State barge past Clemson and Florida State has been fun, but the cumulative effects are wearing this old body out.

But the truth, as Lenox wrote so eloquently in this morning’s Journal, is the ACC Tournament a full decade into the 21st century is what it is, but it’s not what it was. It’s not even close to being what it was. Back then, when a team had to actually win the ACC Tournament to get a bid to the NCAA Tournament, it was as close to life and death as a sporting event can be. And the place was packed and pulsating. A ticket to the ACC Tournament was a truly prized possession and a seat on press row made you the envy of everyone you knew.. Today, whether you blame it on expansion, a watered-down product, the bad economy or whatever, it’s a empty shell of its former shelf

I still love coming, if nothing else than to see and catch up with so many friends that I usually don’t see any other time of the year. We swap stories, tell lies, bellylaugh with bellies way too full of free food we shouldn’t be eating. When the site is Atlanta, DC or Tampa, if I’m not at a game working you can always find me at the hospitality room at the media hotel, at least until they chase us out.

This year I’m actually thinking of hanging out at the hacienda for tomorrow’s championship and watching it on TV before heading over to Wake to cover the NCAA Tournament Selection show. I would have never, ever, even considered that in years gone by.

The ACC Tournament will never be what it was, but then, again, neither will the Grateful Dead.

I used to be really down on Gary Williams because he is so out of control so much of the time. But over the years I’ve gotten to know him a bit better and have gained enough perspective to really appreciate who he is and what he has done. Yes he loses it, and yes he makes a real spectacle of himself on the sidelines. But I’ve also sat close enough to him at Joel Coliseum to realize that most of the time he’s not really as apopletic as he looks, and he’s not as bad for railing at officials as you might think.

Afterward I’m invariably amazed by how calm, collected and analytical he can be about what he has seen seen.

He just wants to win so badly that he can’t help himself. And he has passion. He wills his teams to victory. He reminds me of the old days, when guys like Norm Sloan and Lefty Driesell roamed the sidelines, raising all kinds of ruckus for 40 minutes.

He’s down 41-25 to Georgia Tech as we speak and I’m sure his players are getting an earful in the locker room. Be interested to see how they respond.

His first season, he guided a grieving but gritty team to a better finish than many, if not most, expected. His second season, the Deacons were 24-7 for the most victories in four years, made the NCAA Tournament for the first time in four years,  tied Duke for second place in the ACC regular season at 11-5 and and even got a brief but tantalizing whiff of the rarefied air of the No. 1 ranking in the land. His third team, this team, has absorbed the loss of two sophomores to the NBA to win 19 and lose 10 against a stiff schedule, finish fifth in the ACC at 9-7 and, unless the NCAA Selection Committee really holds today’s pratfall in Greensboro against it, make the NCAA Tournament for the second straight season.

His record is a nice round 60-30 and he’s 27-21 in league play. That’s regular-season league play. We’ll get to that.

And along the way he has recruited well enough to help replenish this team with two good ones and have a well-regarded class in the pipeline for next season.

How he has done is every bit as impressive. He has represented Wake Forest in fine fashion and is well-liked by the media and, best I can tell, his coaching brethren.

The reason so many people aren’t really happy with Gaudio right now, then, is not what he has done, or how he has done it. It’s when he has done it. Actually it’s not even that. It’s when he’s not done it. In post-season play, his record is 0-4. And two of those losses, the 84-69 collapse against No. 13 seed Cleveland State and today’s 83-62 drubbing by a No. 12 seed Miami playing without its leading scorer and rebounder were, to put it bluntly, fiascoes. And fiascoes are remembered.

Fans not being happy with you is a part, a really big part, of being an ACC coach. Gaudio knew that when he took the job. Being a big-time college basketball coach is not for the faint of heart. There are a lot of people down Chapel Hill way not too enamored of Roy Williams right about now. And it seemed like just yesterday when there was a larger portion of the Maryland fan base than would, today, care to admit it who were riding in the posse on Gary Williams’ tail. But the difference is that in the good years, those constituencies were overjoyed not with just what the Williams Boys did, but when they did it.

Dino, even after today, should get another crack next week to prove that he can not only win, but win when it matters most.

If not then, when?

Having watched Wake Forest lose to a No. 7 seed in the ACC Tournament (Maryland) by 11, lose to a regular-season also-ran from the Horizon Conference seeded No. 13 in the NCAA Tournament (Cleveland State) by 15 and then lose to an ACC Tournament No. 12 seed missing its leading scorer and rebounder (Miami) by 21, I honestly don’t know where the Deacons can go to find someone they can beat in post-season.

A disturbing trend that began long before Gaudio took over as head coach only accelerated today when the Deacons were beaten just abut every way a team can get beaten by a Hurricanes’ team that had lost 11 of its previous 14 games. What is it about Wake Forest and the post-season?

That’s a question I asked everyone I could get to during an extremely somber post-game session. And no one had the answer.

“I don’t know,’’ senior L.D. Williams said. “Maybe we’re not used to being there. I don’t know. I really don’t know. I wish I could explain it. It’s unbelievable. Unbelievable.’‘

Chas McFarland, who played just one minute in the second half, was of no more help.

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out too,’’ McFarland said. “It’s not like we come out here and lose on purpose and not play well on purpose. There’s only so much time you can work on it, but we’ve got to go back to the drawing board.’‘

The seniors, Williams, McFarland, Ish Smith and David Weaver, have now won one post-season game in six tries—and that was the first one in which they played. Since beating Georgia Tech in double overtime in the first round of the 2007 Tournament, Wake has now dropped successive post-season games to Virginia Tech, Florida State, Maryland, Cleveland State and Miami.

But none, other than the devastating loss to Cleveland State last March, hurt worse than the one today.

“Honest to goodness I’ve never see anybody get shot and killed over a basketball game,’’ Williams said. “You can’t be scared. It’s basketball. We play this for fun. This is why we live, for these types of games, for the ACC Tournament. And for four years I’ve had the worst taste in my mouth in the ACC Tournament.

“I’ll never be able to get over this as long as I live. I’ve won one game in four years.’‘

The Deacons had the look of a team in disarray, especially in the second half. The body language bordered on profane. On more than one occasion Gaudio turned his palms toward the arena ceiling in a “Just what is going on?’’ gesture. He pulled McFarland after McFarland picked up his third and fourth fouls early in the second half and didn’t put him back in. He left Al-Farouq Aminu on the bench for all but seven minutes of the second half, and later didn’t mention the bruised hand that Aminu said was bothering him from the time he shot an airball on a free throw with 4:50 left in the first half.

But not one person in the locker room would acknowledge internal problems on the team. If they’re covering anything up, they’re doing it in unison.

“We’re fine,’’ McFarland said. “The chemistry’s fine. We’re fine. Everybody on this team loves each other. That’s not even a question.’‘

It came from a senior, and it came from a freshman.

“We’re one of the closest teams I’ve ever been a part of,’’ C.J. Harris said. “Every one of us are brothers.’‘

So if it’s not dissension, there must be another reason to explain the Deacons’ post-season woes. If they’re lucky, they’ll get a chance to figure it out next week in the NCAA Tournament, and not the NIT.

I had that experience last year in Atlanta when a bunch of us scribes got to wondering who had been to the most ACC Tournaments in a row and the more we asked around, the more it started looking like the honor belonged to me. And I didn’t want it. I’m old, but not that old. But through the recent wave of downsizing and retirements and people wising up and finding honest work and one generation passing into another, we couldn’t find anyone with a longer streak than mine.

There were many who had seen tournament since the 1960s, but as it turned out a Caulton Tudor had missed a tournament this season or a Bill Brill had missed one that season and no one had that long of an uninterrupted streak.

I’ve been to at least one session of every tournament since 1974. I was still a student at that state university in the general vicinity of the geographical center of the state when I saw my first ACC Tournament game. It was the championship of 1974, N.C. State’s 103-100 victory over Maryland that is still widely considered the greatest game in conference history. No wonder the hook sank in so deep.

Finally we ran into Al Featherston, the venerable scribe who after writing for decades for the Durham Herald and Durham Herald-Sun now covers ACC basketball for Basketball Times. Al, to my great relief, said he had made every tournament since 1968. So Al, best we can tell, gets the prize. Good for Al. Good for me.

Today, after the Deacons’ pre-ACC Tournament practice in Greensboro Coliseum, Walker set the record straight.

“I’m 100 percent back,’’ Walker said. “I’ve heard all the rumors and everything, and I don’t say any of those things. I’ll be back next year.’‘

Walker, a sophomore who two years ago was one of the most highly-rated centers in high school basketball, has played in only six of the Deacons’ 28 games. His last appearance was a two-minute stint at UNC Wilmington in his hometown on Dec. 16. He said he did expect more after playing in 11 games as a freshman.

“I thought I was going to get some of an opportunity,’’ Walker said. “I wasn’t asking this year to be the first, second or even third option. But I thought I was going to be the fourth option. I didn’t know it wasn’t going to turn out like this, but I’m fine either way.’‘

With the graduation of seniors Chas McFarland and David Weaver, and highly possible (if not probable) departure of sophomore Al-Farouq Aminu to the NBA, the Deacons will be looking for inside players next season to play alongside sophomore Tony Woods. The only other potential post player on the roster is Nikita Mescheriakov, a 6-8 transfer from Georgetown who will become eligible second semester next season, though the incoming recruiting class does include 6-8 Melvin Tabb or Raleigh and 6-11 Carson Derosiers of Lawrence, Mass.

“I think most definitely I’ll get a chance, God willing,’’ Walker said. “Me and Coach (Gaudio) talk on a regular basis and he tells me that next year, I mean it won’t be my year, but he’s going to give me the opportunity. And what I do with the opportunity is up to me,’‘

Walker, according the the Wake coaches, needed to grow both physically and emotionally, and he admits to certain, unspecified behavior that didn’t set well with the staff. In midseason Gaudio had Walker begin to practice with the Scout team to prepare the Deacons for an upcoming opponent, and he also put Walker and Mescheriakov on a weight-training program that has them lifting four times a week.

“(It was) just not agreeing with the coaches about some things, and I guess sometimes worrying about myself a little too much,’’ Walker said. “But I’ve grown over the year, and now it’s more about being a team player and putting myself to the side.’‘

The assembled media ribbed Gaudio a bit today at the ACC Tournament for his heavy 5 o’clock shadow. For the record, the time was around 2:45.

Gaudio joked that it might have to do with his Italian blood. He even said he wants to look like the Wake Forest beat guy for the Winston-Salem Journal, but we all know his wife, Maureen, is having nothing to do with that.

“I actually shaved this morning,’’ Gaudio said, in jest. “But hopefully I’ll have to shave a couple of times in a couple of days here.’‘