Clicked on it just to cut & paste.
Tuesday,
March 25, 2014 at 6:36 by
Brett Friedlander
AD Ron Wellman and Jeff [Redacted] after the coach’s hiring in 2010
The Jeff [Redacted] era of Wake Forest basketball ended last Thursday in the only way it possibly could have ended.
Badly.
It doesn’t matter whether the embattled coach actually resigned on his own, as athletic director Ron Wellman said in announcing the move, or if he was told he’d be fired if he didn’t quit on his own.
After four years of mounting losses, dwindling attendance and increased rancor among a disgruntled fan base, it was simply time for a change. Or as [Redacted] himself said
in his final statement as the man in charge of the Deacons: “There needs to be a new energy and a positive environment for the players to realize their potential.”
There are any number of reasons why the environment surrounding the program became so toxic and plenty of directions in which to point fingers, if that’s your thing. But at this point, what purpose would playing the blame game accomplish?
With a clean break and the opportunity for a fresh start, it’s time to put the billboards, newspaper ads and flying banners away and begin looking forward, not back. At least from the fans’ point of view.
When it comes to Wellman, the man doing the hiring, it is imperative that he remember the mistakes he made the last time he went out looking for a basketball coach so that he doesn’t repeat them with this search. Specifically, he needs to be more truthful in the things he says publicly about the decisions he makes.
Dino Gaudio was fired in 2010 despite a 61-31 record at Wake
That’s what got him into trouble four years ago.
By being disingenuous in his explanation for Dino Gaudio’s dismissal, despite a 61-31 record in three seasons, Wellman set in motion a chain of events that turned [Redacted] into a villain before he ever had a chance to coach his first game with the Deacons.
At the time, Wellman cited Gaudio’s lack of postseason success as the reason for the change. While it’s true that Gaudio’s teams went a combined 1-5 in the ACC and NCAA tournaments, his downfall was more realistically the result of several off-the-court factors – many of which didn’t come to light until after he was gone.
Had the respected AD simply told his fan base and the media that he was making the change to help strengthen the foundation of the program, and that it might mean taking a step or two backward to do it, he could perhaps have bought [Redacted] a year or two of grace before fans started expecting more.
Instead Wellman set the bar unrealistically high for the circumstances. He then complicated matters by hiring a coach that had exactly one postseason victory on an otherwise pedestrian resume. In many ways, the beginning of the end came with the first game [Redacted] coached at Wake, a season-opening loss to Stetson in 2010.
Now that the real end has finally come – mercifully for everyone involved, including [Redacted] – Wellman has a chance to redeem himself. One thing he has going for him this time is that the foundational cracks that led to Gaudio’s demise have since been repaired.
Big man Devin Thomas is one of several talented returning players on the Deacons’ roster
Whoever he brings in as [Redacted]’s replacement will inherit a roster that’s hardly devoid of talent. With the return of potential stars Devin Thomas, Codi Miller-McIntyre and five other sophomores, most of which made significant improvement last season, along with two players coming back from injury and highly rated prospect Shelton Mitchell set to join them, it’s not unreasonable to expect Wake to make an immediate run at the postseason.
But that’s still a long way off, at least comparatively.
As was the case four years ago, the tone for the next new era of Deacons basketball will set in the next few weeks with the hire Wellman makes.
If the athletic director is really serious about creating a badly needed “new energy and positive environment for the players to realize their potential,” how he handles this search will be more important than who eventually gets the job.
