Do you reckon?

The Deacons saw an industrial-sized helping of zone in the two regular season games against the Hurricanes, the 67-66 loss in Coral Gables on Jan. 9 and the 62-53 victory in Winston-Salem on Feb. 2. Wake, in the two games, made 39 of 94 shots from the floor (41.5 percent) and nine of 28 from 3-point range (32.1 percent). Coach Frank Haith would have to be tired of coaching ACC basketball in South Florida and just want out if he didn’t play a lot of zone Thursday.

And knowing Frank Haith, I know that’s not who he is.

“We’re going to see 80 percent, 90 percent zone,’’ Gaudio said. “We did some good things against us in both games. We will have worked against it three days. We watched a lot of film yesterday, some of the things we did well and some of the things we need to do better. And we’ll work hard against it for two days now and hopefully we’ll play well against it.’‘

But in one respect, he might be the most predictable coach in the ACC. His teams are going to come get you defensively and they’re going to the basket when they get the ball. That’s the way he does things. That’s how his teams play.

Tonight Purnell’s Tigers played a Wake Forest team going through all kinds of throes trying to scoring in a half-court game. Last time out the Deacons allowed FSU to score only four second-half field goals, out of 19 heaves, and still lost because they couldn’t score more than 22 points in the second half against the Seminoles’ set defenses. So I asked Purnell if he had any apprehensions about opening the court with pressure defense against a team that has been going though such rough sledding in the half court.

I knew his answer before he gave it.

He declined, in effect, to comment on any problems Wake might be having in the half-court offense, but did say that pressing a player as fast as Ish Smith could be problematic. He also said that, apprehension or no apprehension, Clemson is going to press on defense.

“There’s always apprehension,’’ Purnell said. “But that’s what you do.’‘

The press got to Wake enough to cause problems, and obviously contributed to the Deacons’ less-than-grand total of 18 turnovers. Ish was really shaky early with five first-half turnovers, before settling down to commit just one the rest of the way. And Al-Farouq Aminu, handling the ball at times like it was a wet bar of soap, also piled up six. So it’s not like the Tiger press was useless.

But what it did was open up the court and let the Deacons loose. Aminu dunked off the fast break about four minutes into the game and said later it was a basket he really needed. “It had been awhile since I scored,’’ he said. For pretty much every turnover, there was an easy basket—something that had been mighty hard to come these last couple of weeks. The Deacons scored 18 points off fast breaks and 19 on the offensive boards, at times because the first charge at the basket had opened up the rebounding lanes.

The Deacons look better when they run. Most teams do. And on this day they can thank Oliver Purnell for giving them a chance to.

Let Ish Smith push the ball and let Al-Farouq Aminu dunk once or twice off the break and the crowd will really get into it and Wake will be back up and running.

I have a personal stake in the outcome. If the Deacons win, they play at 2 p.m. in Thursday’s first-round of the ACC Tournament. If they lose, they play in a game scheduled for 9 p.m. but in all likelihood won’t tip off until 9:30. And if the 7 p.m. game goes overtime, as it did three years ago in Atlanta, it won’t start until 10.

I’m a night owl, but I’d rather not cover another 10 o’clock game.

Doc, for whom the Wake Forest practice complex is named, was one of the all-time characters, and he was from another time. His language and overall apparent lack of personal and cultural sensitivity probably wouldn’t be tolerated today, and maybe shouldn’t be. I’m more than content to let you make up your own mind about that. In that regard he was like Frank Howard, the salty football coach of Clemson who said and did things that simply couldn’t be said or done today. But Frank, like Doc, could be so rib-splitting funny that you had to laugh along whether you wanted to or not.

And the more you got to know both, the more you wanted to.

If you knew Doc and have stories, let’s hear them. There might be a couple that I can actually post.

UPDATE:
T. Gary Strickland, who was a student trainer under Doc a few years ago, just called to give me the news. He hadn’t seen my blog yet. Gary absolutely loved Doc, and was one of the many who could see that beneath the gruff exterior there was a heart of gold. Gary told me an amazing statistic, that Doc was the Godfather to 22 children of former Wake Forest athletes or student trainers. Gary also said that during basketball games, it was the job of the student trainers to keep Doc quiet. It was a task that often was simply too much ask.

Getting ready to head off and do something I almost never do anymore, especially at this time of year. Going to see a movie, at a real-life theater. Usually I just wait until it comes out in DVD, but I’ve been dying to see Crazy Heart, the one in which Jeff Bridges plays the broken-down juicer country music singer. My bride bought me the book, by Thomas Cobb, when it came out about 20 years ago, and I read it. Some grim, grim stuff that’s hard to get through, but definitely worth it. The trailers of the movie look enticing (as they’re obviously supposed to) and Eddie Bumgardner, who I thought was as good a music reviewer as I’ve ever read during his long and legendary run with the Winston-Salem Journal, has insisted that I check it out. When Eddie B. gives me advice, I’ve learned to take it.

My great hope is that it’s 1/10th as good as that other movie about the broken-down country music singer, Tender Mercies, which stunned the movie world in 1983 by winning five Oscar nominations, including best actor for my cinematic hero, Robert Duvall. My daughter, who is home for spring break, just told me she’s never seen it. I assured her that it would be mandatory viewing during her week in Winston. If somebody put a howitzer to my head and insisted I name my favorite movie of all-time, it would probably be Tender Mercies.

I hate to miss the two early ACC games, but I’ll be back in time the see the Techs go at it at 4, and then await breathlessly along with the rest of the college basketball world for tonight’s titanic tilt between the Blues. Life is grand.

“Have you ever had a season when you didn’t have a players’ only meeting?’’ I asked Jim Grobe later.

He said he had not.

So I would be among the last people to make too much out of a pow wow the Deacons had at Joel Coliseum after Thursday’s practice. Senior David Weaver said Ish Smith was so stung by the loss against North Carolina that he had been trying to gather the troops, but that there were too many conflicts of schedules.

“And (Thursday) it was like `We’re all here, so let’s just meet.’ ‘’ Weaver explained. “We just wanted to get everything out in the open and make sure that everybody’s on a straight path. We’re just trying to turn things around and any beefs or tits or tats that anybody has we wanted to get those out in the open and make sure we can concentrate and get this win and make us feel a lot better here at the end.’‘

L.D. Williams said no voices were raised and no challenges were issued.

“It wasn’t anything like us bashing each other or guys pointing fingers,’’ Williams said. “It was just like `Where is this team right now? Where are you individually? How are you feeling?’ And it was good. Ish, he sat us down and asked `Where is the confidence that I saw a few months ago? Where is the confidence that was here last month? Where is that? Do you lack confidence?’

“We lost at Florida State not because we didn’t play, we lost because we didn’t play with confidence. A lot of the turnovers we had were out of being scared to make a play. I told the guys (Thursday) that `We’ve been playing this game since we were little kids and we’ve all made plays. That’s why we’re here right now. For us not to be doing it right now is unacceptable.’ ‘’

Coach Dino Gaudio said before today’s practice that he hadn’t heard of the session. But he was far from disappointed.

“I think that’s good,’’ Gaudio said. “I think that’s showing leadership. I think it means more sometimes when those guys talk than when the coach talks.’‘.

“I talked to those guys the other day and said `We must be a better half-court-executing offensive team,’ ‘’ Gaudio said. “We have to screen better, we have to read defenses better, we have to pass the ball a little better. We have to. We don’t have Jeff (Teague) and James (Johnson), who are just going to break guys down and go one-on-one. But I think those things are big.

“You’d better do them all year.’‘

The year, despite what I’m hearing from many people inside and out of the peanut gallery, is not over. The Deacons have hit a ditch, as they did at the end of last season. The difference this time around is there is still time to get back on the blacktop with Sunday’s final regular-season game against Clemson and next week’s ACC Tournament.

But to avoid another bitter end to what was, in mid-January, such a promising season, the Deacons are going to have score more points against set defenses. It won’t be easy because, as Gaudio said a week ago, there’s no secret to what opponents are doing. They’re clogging the lane to a) keep Ish Smith from getting all the way to the cup and, b) surround Al-Farouq Aminu, Chas McFarland and Tony Woods with bodies inside. They’re also doing a surprisingly good job of closing out on the Deacons’ best 3-point shooters, freshmen Ari Stewart and C.J. Harris and junior Gary Clark. So they’re basically double-dog daring players such as Smith, Aminu, L.D. Williams, Tony Woods, David Weaver and Chas McFarland to beat them with jump shots.

Aminu and Williams have attempted to compensate by slashing to the basket, but given that neither is a great ball-handler, the results have been painful to watch. Aminu, over the past three games, has committed 13 turnovers and made only eight field goals. Williams has committed only five turnovers in the three games, but he’s nine of 29 from the floor.

Anyone who has watched the Deacons over the course of the season knows how offensively challenged they can be. Smith and Harris are the only two threats to create their own shots, and Smith shoots 42 percent from the floor and 22 percent from 3-point range, and Harris, until his 12-point performance (that also included four turnovers) at FSU was going through a dreadful freshman slump.

So is the answer that the Deacons just don’t have enough scorers to be anything more than a middling ACC teams (have they, like water, found their own level?) or is it that Dino and his staff haven’t been able to solve a problem they knew they had way back in October?

The other, equally obvious, issue is that Wake isn’t getting enough baskets in transition. The Deacons scored four of their first six points at FSU on fast breaks, and had only one more fast-break basket the rest of the night. I’m headed off to practice in a minute and that’s one of the things I’ll be talking to Dino and the team about.

I’ll let you know what they said.

One question I have for you is the same I had for Coach Gaudio last night. Do you play for one last possession with 23 seconds left, down two? I know Dino is catching just a bit of heat these days and I’m not trying to turn up the burner. And I will admit that ``It’s just that I always thought,’’ is probably one of the lamest ways there can be to start a sentence, in that it suggests that you haven’t done much thinking on the subject in some time. But it’s just that I always thought that the team behind should extend the game whenever possible.

There’s much to discuss.

I replied that if you’re trying to pick the five best players, it should be Al-Farouq Aminu. But if your criterion is the five most valuable players, then it should be Ish Smith.

After Smith missed 16 of 21 shots and Aminu managed just seven points in the Deacons’ 77-68 setback, I ran into Barry in the press room.

“How about neither?’’ he cracked.

The collateral damage in the Deacons late-season slide is piling up. Not only is Wake playing its way onto the NCAA Tournament bubble with four straight losses, the resumes for post-season accolades are getting thinner game by game. Aminu’s chances are hanging by the barest of threads after his scoreless performance against the Seminoles.

In my mind, at least three issues were settled Wednesday night. The Deacons will play in Thursday’s first round of the ACC Tournament, Gary Williams should be the ACC’s Coach of the Year and Greivis Vasquez should be the Player of the Year.

And along with that, Jordan Williams took a giant step toward ACC Rookie of the Year.

I hadn’t.

Scott said that Coach Dino Gaudio will go tonight with two big men, Tony Woods and Chas McFarland, in the lineup, moving Al-Farouq Aminu to wing forward. Seniors Ish Smith and L.D. Williams will start in the backcourt and freshman C.J. Harris, who has started 20 straight games, will come off the bench.

Upon hearing the news, I harkened back to something Dino said in the post-game media conference after Saturday’s home loss to North Carolina.

“If there was one thing I wish we could establish more it would be an inside game,’’ Gaudio said. “That’s what I wish we could establish more. But because we’re not making jump shots, the lane is incredibly crowded. As soon as they guys catch, there’s another guy behind and another guy digging down. If you said `Put your finger on one thing, do you want to make threes or do want to have an inside game?’ I wish we had the inside game.’‘

The Deacons have come full circle, going with the same lineup they opened the season with.

I love many of the people down here, and I’ve had some great times. I’m always treated very, very well. Chuck Walsh, the sports information director, is a great friend, and has been since he held the same position at Maryland. And the press corps has always been one of the friendliest I’ve ever known. I have to say I miss Steve Ellis, the venerable FSU beat guy who passed away last fall.

But none of that is enough to want to live here. Neither is the fact Lenox and I stumbled into one of my favorite blues bars over a half-dozen or so years ago, the Bradfordville Blues Club about 10 miles north of town. You drive down a two-lane road for a few miles, turn onto a dirt road, ride through a field and there it is in all its cinder-block and tin-roof glory. They serve fried fish outside and foot-tapping roadhouse blues inside. And it’s no dive. The cover is 15 or 20 dollars, which has been well worth it for the shows I’ve seen there.The problem is it’s only open on weekends, and that leaves at least five days a week to find something else to do.

And it’s not really Florida, more like South Georgia. And I’d rather not live in North Georgia, much less South Georgia.

I’m bringing all this up because I came down here once to apply for a job. I’d been with the Journal for at least 10 or 15 years when the sports columnist position for the Tallahassee Democrat opened up with the retirement of Bill McGrotha. The sports editor at the time, Ron Morris, is a close pal, and has been since we knocked around the Triangle together in the late 1970s. Ron, who these days in sports columnist for the Columbia State, is someone I know I could work for, happily. And I thought at the time I really wanted to write a column.

The job wasn’t offered. I believe Ron wanted me, but as it turned out it wasn’t his call. And every time I return I’m glad it never happened. I’ve spent the years since in Winston-Salem, covering the best beat in America. We’ve raised our kids in Winston and I’ve found over the years that it’s one of the best-kept secrets around.

And as much as I like football, I don’t think I like it enough to be the sports columnist for the Tallahassee Democrat.

The best decisions in life are often the ones you never have to make.

Time and again Gaudio has been asked about the Deacons’ collapse down the stretch last season and time and again Gaudio has patiently explained how Wake actually won six of its final seven regular season games—with the only loss of the stretch coming at Duke. And he has repeatedly made the point that he felt that in most aspects the Deacons played pretty well against Maryland in the first round of the ACC Tournament. He based that on the fact Wake committed only nine turnovers, held the Terps to 43.6 percent from the floor and battled Maryland fairly evenly on the boards, losing 44 to 40.

I would be hard-pressed to count the times he has said the reason the Deacons lost that game was they missed 52 shots from the floor. They took 74 field-goal attempts and made 22, which, eerily enough, was the exact same totals from Saturday’s home loss to North Carolina.

But when a team comes out in the ACC Tournament and shoots 26 percent in the first half and is never closer than eight points over the final 16 1/2 minutes, then that’s a bad game no matter how you slice it. And when a team then turns around and falls behind 29-12 in the first half of an NCAA Tournament game against a No. 13 seed from the Horizon League, and is never closer than 11 over the final nine minutes of an 84-69 season-ending setback, then that’s a terrible loss, one of the worst in school history.

To the fan who has suffered through such a loss, Gaudio’s insistence on pointing out the six wins over the final seven regular-season games can come off as a case of denial of just how bad the season really ended.

As recently as two hours ago, last season came up again. In the weekly ACC Coaches Teleconference, J.P. Giglio of the Raleigh News and Observer asked Gaudio if the team was trying to avoid finishing the season the way the Deacons’ last two teams finished theirs.

“Let’s look at last year,’’ Gaudio said. “Our team last year finished the regular season—if I’m understanding you correctly. . .

“But nobody cares about the regular season, you know that,’’ Giglio interjected.

“Well I do,’’ Gaudio maintained. “I think the other coaches do, or else we won’t get on the plane and fly to Tallahassee. Let’s just forget about it. We’ll forfeit it. I’ll call Oliver (Purnell of Clemson) and tell him `You don’t need to come up on Sunday.’

“Yeah, the regular season means a lot to us. And like I said we finished last year winning six of our last seven games in the regular season.’‘

My take is that the regular season does matter, but only until it’s over. A team such as Wake Forest hopes to win enough hands in the regular season to get a seat at the table for the game that ultimately will decide the success or failure of a season.

I’m conflicted by Gaudio’s season-long campaign. Part of me understands that a misconception left to stand can become the record. (I can remember times when the argument was advanced that other newspapers gave better coverage to Wake Forest than did the Winston-Salem Journal. I knew it to be hogwash, and could prove it in any way it needed to be proven. But the more that people said it, the more widespread the notion became and the more my relationship with the school and my readership was compromised.) But another part of me feels that Dino is just fighting a battle he’ll never win, or else is just not worth winning.

Harris took three shots (two from 3-point range) and missed them all. For the second game in a row, he didn’t score.

Over the last five games, Harris has shot 15 percent from the floor (five for 33) and 12 percent from 3-point range (two for 17) while averaging 3.6 points. Before the slide, he was averaging 11.2.

So I asked Coach Dino Gaudio what was going on with C.J. Harris.

“I just think C.J. is a terrific kid who, like a few in that locker room, has just lost his confidence a little bit,’’ Gaudio said. “We sat down with him and put a C.J. Harris clip together where he was playing really well. At Gonzaga. He shot the ball really well against Purdue. We had all those shots he made just to say `Hey C.J., you’ve done it. Here look,’ just to try to make him a little bit of a pick-me-up-tape, if you will.’‘

Woods scored four of the Deacons’ first six points, but was on the bench well before the first media timeout, the first Wake player to be substituted for. He played 10 minutes in the first half, hitting three of four shots from the floor for eight points to go with four rebounds.

McFarland started the second half, and Woods never returned to the game until the second media timeout at 11:38. John Henson of the Tar Heels dunked on an inbounds play and at the other end, Woods began a drive from the top of the key, took a dribble or two and threw the ball away. Moments later the horn blew and McFarland replaced Woods. So Woods, done for the day, played a total of one minute in the second half.

I asked Coach Dino Gaudio about the decision to start Woods.

“I just thought Tony was practicing better, nothing outside of that,’’ Gaudio said. “I just thought he was practicing better so we put him in there.’‘

And I asked Gaudio why Woods played only one minute in the second half.

“The only reason he didn’t play in the second half, I just didn’t think he was playing well,’’ Gaudio said. “I didn’t. I didn’t think he was playing well. I think early in the game their post guys were hurting us. They were hurting us with second shots.

“But those were just coaching decisions off players’ performances, nothing else.’‘

It’s not an original thought to say that coaches are much quicker to take into account defensive performance, while most fans (and sportswriters) put much more stock in what happens at the offensive end. The Tar Heels did score their first two field goals on follow shots, and when Deon Thompson scored over Woods, Woods was on his way to the bench.

But the performance did bring to mind last year’s NCAA Tournament, when Woods made a surprise start and played a total of five minutes in the 84-69 loss to Cleveland State. The difference is, last year the season was over and Woods had to wait seven months to make amends. This year he only has to wait four days before the Deacons’ game at Florida State on Wednesday.

Gaudio had observed a couple of weeks ago that coach-driven teams go only so far. It’s the player-driven teams that advance deep in the NCAA Tournament. I found it rather profound, and built a blog around it.

So that’s what has been so surprising about the Deacons’ three-game slide that picked up steam with today’s loss to a wounded arch-rival at home on national television. I really thought that the senior leadership of Ish Smith and L.D. Williams would provide the steel and inner strength a team needs to win tough games in late March and February. In today’s game, Smith had seven assists and only one turnover, but he made just five of 21 shots from the floor. And Williams had nine rebounds and 14 points, but was just three for 13 from the floor.

Williams said that the losing streak is on the team as a whole, but he and the other seniors know they have to carry more than their share of the weight.

“If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard that, that it’s up to us seniors to get the guys going, I probably wouldn’t bank on this college degree,’’ Williams said. “But everybody’s right. It’s up to us. We’ve been through the trenches year in and year out. We’re the guys that everybody looks to. If something goes wrong, they look to us. You’ve got to be the guys to fix it. Obviously we’re not doing our job.’‘

And I’ve been either warned or forewarned (maybe someone can explain the difference) that the next practice I can attend might get a bit heated.

“I’m pretty sure you’re going to see a change in Ishmael Smith and you’re definitely going to see a change in L.D. Williams,’’
Williams said. “I told the guys in the locker room, it feels like Groundhogs Day. We wake up on the game day, we go to sleep and the next game we say the same things over and over – `Rebound, defense and execute on offense.’ That’s what we’ve been saying the last three games, and we haven’t been doing it.

“It’s enough being nice. It’s enough saying some guys have got it. We’ve got to go to the crazed dog mentality right now, because our back is against the wall now. That’s where it’s at. We’ve got to find ourselves again. If it takes us having to go back to square one, that’s what it’s going to take. If it takes the coach sitting some guys, that’s what it’s going to take. But we’ve got to understand what it means to wear the Wake Forest Old Gold and Black again. We’ve kind of gotten away from that.’‘

Williams also fired a salvo at those who have already written the Deacons off this season.

“People can say what they want,’’ Williams said. “They’re not in our locker room. They’re not out on the floor with us playing.

“There are a lot of naysayers. Those are the people that we have to weed out. We’re going to walk on campus on Monday with our heads held high, ready to get better. That’s the only thing we can do from here, get better. So all the people out there who want to nag us and count us out, that’s all right. That’s all well and fine. If we’re doing well, we don’t want you on the bandwagon.’’