Manning is a turrible second half coach

DeaconSig said:

Getting ass-raped by Syracuse should have been the sign everyone needed.

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That was the one that did it for me. Believe that as soon as the game was over I came on the boards and said that we'd finish 14th in the conference. Looks like we're well on our way.

CreamyGoodness said:

Manning has shown signs of being able to recruit, but hasn't proven anything in terms of "X's and O's"...Bzzzz seemed to have decent game plans drawn up, and actually made some halftime adjustments, but couldn't relate to players or recruit. This is similar to our rotational issues this season. We give up offense for defense and vise versa. This is just the story of Wake Forest basketball from the past 7 years.

Before I get negged to death for saying Jeffy B drew up a nice game plan here and there, think back to us beating UNC, Duke and State at home. That's something that I doubt Manning will accomplish by year 4. Right now Danny is in year 2 and is 10-11. [Redacted] finished year 2 13-18 with an awful, awful roster... Let's see how the final few games pan out. They seem to be on a similar trajectory IMO.

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lol- come on. Manning has shown the ability to draw up a game plan, too. Adjusting to the opponent's halftime adjustments seems to be a really big issue, though. And having watched far too many games in both era, I think Manning is the taller dwarf.

If you created a test environment in which:

Jeff Bz is given 10 highly motivated basketball players and Danny Manning is given the clones of these 10 highly motivated basketball players. Each coach has mediocre assistants and 48 hours to get the team ready for the game. I think you have to take Jeff Bz in a situation like that because he is a bit sharper with adjustments and lineups.

But with that said, I think Danny Manning is a better overall college basketball coach of course.

Wake has 5-6 players that should be playing ACC basketball.. the Freshman that he recruited to play in this league are our most promising players in years.

Not saying everything he is doing is right, because its not. Questionable rotations, Doral should play ALOT more, as should Collins. Can't seem to keep players motivated, but if I knew i was getting subbed out for some of the players on this roster, I'd find it hard to keep the intensity up. We need more players that are ready for what the ACC demands. The same scenario as the football squad.

Fuck wellman

Im excited for next year...wake at least provides me with that consistency every season.

Strickland33 said:

lol- come on. Manning has shown the ability to draw up a game plan, too. Adjusting to the opponent's halftime adjustments seems to be a really big issue, though. And having watched far too many games in both era, I think Manning is the taller dwarf.

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I'd agree with this. Not defending my boy bezzz, just pointing out some broad parallels.

FckVwls said:

If you created a test environment in which:

Jeff Bz is given 10 highly motivated basketball players and Danny Manning is given the clones of these 10 highly motivated basketball players. Each coach has mediocre assistants and 48 hours to get the team ready for the game. I think you have to take Jeff Bz in a situation like that because he is a bit sharper with adjustments and lineups.

But with that said, I think Danny Manning is a better overall college basketball coach of course.

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100% agree, and how sad it is that this is even a discussion.

so in year 6 post dino we are comparing our current coach to the disaster that was [Redacted]. f you ron wellman. f you nathan hatch. f you anyone who has given a dime to their regime.

CreamyGoodness said:

Manning has shown signs of being able to recruit, but hasn't proven anything in terms of "X's and O's"...Bzzzz seemed to have decent game plans drawn up, and actually made some halftime adjustments, but couldn't relate to players or recruit. This is similar to our rotational issues this season. We give up offense for defense and vise versa. This is just the story of Wake Forest basketball from the past 7 years.

Before I get negged to death for saying Jeffy B drew up a nice game plan here and there, think back to us beating UNC, Duke and State at home. That's something that I doubt Manning will accomplish by year 4. Right now Danny is in year 2 and is 10-11. [Redacted] finished year 2 13-18 with an awful, awful roster... Let's see how the final few games pan out. They seem to be on a similar trajectory IMO.

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I actually think that Manning's game planning is, so far, the best aspect of his coaching. He usually does a pretty good job developing a strategy; if the opposing team has a dominate big, then Manning knows how to defend them. He might be a 1 trick pony in that respect though. Manning is just an Ok recruiter, obviously better than Bz but mainly in the sense that he knows how to construct a team better. We still haven't landed talent that on paper is any better than any Bz recruiting class. Manning seems pretty lost during the games, and so far I am not impressed with his player development. Sure DT is better and Rondale is better than advertised, but Crab, Codi, Dinos and Wilbekin are all worse, McClinton has yet to show up, and Washington red shirted his senior year for Christ's sake after 18 months under Manning tutelage. Our head coach is, at best, pretty decent at gaming planning, ok at recruiting and pretty bad at in game coaching and player development. This is where we find our selves 6 years and two HCs after Wellman fired Gaudio.

Yeah, I dunno. I'm really demoralized. I will fully admit that I was optimistic about the hire, maybe out of necessity so I wouldn't just fall out of Wake fandom altogether. After our OOC this year, I felt really good about the direction of things. I knew ACC play would be tough, I didn't expect to even get to .500, but so far it's just been terrible. To the extent we're comparing against [NR], I would still take Manning any day just because he doesn't seem like a petulant child full of excuses. But, a comparison to [NR] is pretty irrelevant. The results have been bad.

Still, I'm not grabbing a pitchfork yet. It looks like the second halves have been bad, but actually in ACC play only four teams have outscored us by more than 6 points in the second half (Duke, Miami, Cuse, and Clemson). So I don't know that that's a particularly telling stat. Louisville outscored us by a point in the second half, UVA by 3, ND by 6. We actually outscored NC State, VT, and UNC in the second half. Yes, we gave up 49 points to NC State, but we scored 50. We gave up 48 to VT, but scored 53. 48 to UVA, but scored 45. Does that mean Gottfried, Williams, and Bennett were unable to react to Manning's halftime adjustment? I don't know, but that seems like the flipside of "Manning let them score so much."

The Clemson and Syracuse games really pissed me off. Toss in maybe Richmond and those are the three really bad losses I see, though. Yes we've given up chances to win other games (particularly Xavier, Louisville, and UVA), but I don't really understand the sentiment of blaming the coach. To the extent the coach is responsible for the results on the court, DM should get as much credit for putting us in a position to pull off what would have been a big upset in each of those games as he gets blame for not ultimately securing the win. The VT game is one where we weren't a big underdog (if at all), but the second half actually involved us scoring 53 points to get to a 2 point game. It sucks that we have to go back to OOC to find good wins, but we did beat Indiana (and at this point somewhat less impressively, UCLA, Arkansas, and LSU).

There are not a lot of games we are or will be favored to win in the ACC, so it's hard to put all the blame on the coach when we go 0-4 in a row against ranked teams. Then again, that's a bit of chicken and egg, because ultimately what we expect from our coach is to get us to the point where we aren't always an underdog and can at least consistently beat the bottom third of the ACC. For now, I guess I just hope that when some of DM's guys become upperclassmen next year, we really see some results despite losing DT.

How many of you actually think the right move is to fire DM in or after his second year?

Brangus said:

It is aggravating because I remember getting flamed pretty hard for disliking the Manning hire. The negatives were pretty obvious. I hope things improve but there is little reason to think they will. All this losing will hurt recruiting, and the results of mediocre recruiting classes and a weak coach are easy to predict.

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I got flamed pretty hard as well for questioning the hire especially with the way the first season got going. I put his credibility as a coach on watch immediately and it looks like it turned out to be true. Unfortunately Ron Wellman's credibility is really the one that needs to be on watch for destroying WF athletics.

I'm not ready to mail it in on Manning, but the turn this season has taken has been disturbing to say the least. I do realize it's been against a brutal first half conference schedule. Hopefully he can build some momentum toward next year. I do like that his first real recruiting class has contributed. Hopefully he can keep that going.

SpringChicken said:

How many of you actually think the right move is to fire DM in or after his second year?

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I think he gets 2 more years under any circumstances. The only circumstance that I don't think he should get 2 more years is the unlikely scenario that we can make an impact hire before then.

He gets until the new AD is hired. I don't want Wellman to do anybody searches.

We would be 12-10 if games ended after the 1st half, and 7-15 if games only contained the second half. It should be noted that one of those second half "wins" is against UNC, when the second half was mostly garbage time.

PhDeac said:

He gets until the new AD is hired. I don't want Wellman to do anybody searches.

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I kind of wonder if Wellman has an "I told you so" attitude about Manning and what you'll mainly get is radio silence. There was a lot of chatter by insiders that Manning was not his type of coach - big name to lure recruits but suspect coaching history - but that the [Redacted] failure caused him to relent and have others drive the search.

Kind of amazing if by targeting "his kind of guy" then going the opposite direction he manages to fail with both hires.

I'm almost sure he does. Wellman probably thinks [Redacted] would have this team in the NCAA Tournament.

Just one short month ago many had us as an NCAA Tourney bubble team.... and then the bubble burst with the first half of the ACC slate.

RaleighTriad said:

I got flamed pretty hard as well for questioning the hire especially with the way the first season got going. I put his credibility as a coach on watch immediately and it looks like it turned out to be true. Unfortunately Ron Wellman's credibility is really the one that needs to be on watch for destroying WF athletics.

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You deserved every flame you got for putting any coach's credibility on watch at the point you did in his first season.

morrison2951 said:

Just one short month ago many had us as an NCAA Tourney bubble team.... and then the bubble burst with the first half of the ACC slate.

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Burst like a broken condom in Haiti. Scary stuff everywhere.

Still think it's crazy how if that bank shot doesn't drop and VATech doesn't shoot 90% from the line how different things would seem. But they wouldn't be different at all.