Saturday, February 27, 2010
Williams Calls for Crazed Dog Mentality
Throughout the second half of Wake Forest’s 77-68 loss to North Carolina, a quote from Coach Dino Gaudio of the Deacons kept bouncing around in my head.
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.’’