FUCK YOU, RON WELLMAN

[morrison2951]

Yep, Jeff who??!

 

[WFU Lurker]

Every march flame out the boards explode with demands for more x&o's coaching. At the time (and still to this day in NBA circles) [Redacted] was respected as an x&o's guy. The problem is he has zero charisma or energy. He can't communicate. Can't recruit. He can gameplan. Folks won't admit it, but he's getting a ton of credit for the defense in Houston this season. Buried on a staff as an assistant is where he belongs. However, even now, just look at the threads on the sports board and see what folks are demanding. [Redacted] was a terrible hire. There's really no getting around that, but he's the type of coach reactionary fans demand in March. As for me, give me 'crootin over every other tangible quality in a coach all day.

Yes, people demanded an Xs and Os upgrade. Everyone but Ron was smart enough to know that other things matter too.

 

[Deacfreak07]

Um, no.

People were not clamoring for a coach with a career record of 184-224 who was 1 year away from being fired at Colorado. Not even close.

Hindsight says that outside of Brad Stevens (and then-High Point assistant Wes Miller, obviously), there was not a really good hire to make by Wake when Wellman fired Gaudio. Brownell, Mooney, Groce- all of those guys would have probably sucked. You can blame Wellman for either a) firing Gaudio before Stevens was in the bag or 2) firing him a year early. But you can also blame Wellman for hiring about the worst possible coach he could find.

Only the most blatant "In Wellman I trust" fans (the types that believed Daniel Green and Myles Overton were going to be legit ACC players), weren't horrified when [Redacted] was hired. He was an objectively bad hire at the time.

Hard to argue with any of this. I tend to think over confidence about Stevens was the problem. Logically plan B should have been Brownell. Probably yields marginally better results than [Redacted]. It will be interesting to see what Clemson does next.

 

[Deacfreak07]

Yes, people demanded an Xs and Os upgrade. Everyone but Ron was smart enough to know that other things matter too.

Yep. It was dumb to assume that Wake recruits itself. Also a little insulting to work that Skip and Dino (though he wasn't as good an evaluator/developer of talent) put into the recruiting trail.

 

[Lohengrin]

Technically "et al." means "and others" and is used in place of "etc." (which means "and the rest") when preparing a list of names. The usage wasn't inappropriate. The punctuation was though.

Actually, "etc." means "and so on", so it's not equivalent to "et al." Similar though, of course.

 

[DeacinBama]

As an uncouth Rube, I am going to confess I don't find the usage inappropriate. I get the punctuation issue, but isn't that acceptably close to the correct usage? Save me from my public school education here.

I'm splitting hairs here, but I was taught that et al. is supposed to be used in lieu of a list. It seemed like it was being used to mean "and everybody else". That's pretty close to its literal translation, but not how it's intended to be used, at least how I learned it. But hey, only the highest standards will do for DR.

 

[EatLeadCommie]

Yep. It was dumb to assume that Wake recruits itself. Also a little insulting to work that Skip and Dino (though he wasn't as good an evaluator/developer of talent) put into the recruiting trail.

There are only a handful of schools that recruit by their name alone and Wake is not even close to being one of them, nor was it ever.

 

[donaldross]

Any lawyer that even thinks about getting out a blue book is by definition a loser. The Judge isn't going to rule against you based on blue booking. All you are doing is raping your clients--at least the ones I haven't stolen from you already for wasting time on crap like punctuation. Your law firm is probably named for dead guys too and none of the 243 lawyers have picked a jury in a decade.

 

[DeaconBrews]

Alright! Here's who you pick for some $$$.

UNC-Wilmy +7.5
ETSU +10.5
MTSU -1

1-1 so far, MTSU looks good. expected more from the champions of the mighty SoCon, but then again they lost to a real coach like Mike White. Are you sick of winning $ dr?

 

[IrishSlim]

Any lawyer that even thinks about getting out a blue book is by definition a loser. The Judge isn't going to rule against you based on blue booking. All you are doing is raping your clients--at least the ones I haven't stolen from you already for wasting time on crap like punctuation. Your law firm is probably named for dead guys too and none of the 243 lawyers have picked a jury in a decade.

Could I get a ruling on whether this is a SICK BURN or not?

 

[DeaconBrews]

Could I get a ruling on whether this is a SICK BURN or not?

as the great legal mind PFTCommenter says, "if u care more about SPELLING then TELLING than theyres the door"

 

[IrishSlim]

as the great legal mind PFTCommenter says, "if u care more about SPELLING then TELLING than theyres the door"

PFTCommenter would approve of Mr. Ross's recent e-work on these here boards, I think

 

[scooter84]

Any lawyer that even thinks about getting out a blue book is by definition a loser. The Judge isn't going to rule against you based on blue booking. All you are doing is raping your clients--at least the ones I haven't stolen from you already for wasting time on crap like punctuation. Your law firm is probably named for dead guys too and none of the 243 lawyers have picked a jury in a decade.

I'm seriously starting to think that someone has stolen the donaldross ID and this is really just a random parody. I can't imagine a serious, supposedly successful, attorney posting some of the crap this poster has posted recently.

 

[DeaconBrews]

PFTCommenter would approve of Mr. Ross's recent e-work on these here boards, I think

the #grit undertones are there, and plentiful. all we need is dr to formally suggest we need to copy the St. Mary's model of recruiting and PFT would sue for copyright infringement. All Dellys!

 

[donaldross]

I'm seriously starting to think that someone has stolen the donaldross ID and this is really just a random parody. I can't imagine a serious, supposedly successful, attorney posting some of the crap this poster has posted recently.

This is how it is in 2017. Gotta speak the truth coldly or you're left behind. Speaking of cold, Wake is completely irrelevant again this NCAA Thursday. No one cares. Ron Wellman is probably hanging out with his grandkids again while we are getting further left in the dust. The only people that care about us are the 20 random dudes reading this thread. We suck. Looking forward to reading this month's Gold Rush & hearing what a great year we just had.

 

[Deacfreak07]

This is how it is in 2017. Gotta speak the truth coldly or you're left behind. Speaking of cold, Wake is completely irrelevant again this NCAA Thursday. No one cares. Ron Wellman is probably hanging out with his grandkids again while we are getting further left in the dust. The only people that care about us are the 20 random dudes reading this thread. We suck. Looking forward to reading this month's Gold Rush & hearing what a great year we just had.

I bet Wellman is at the Women's NIT game tonight.

 

[WFU Lurker]

Hard to argue with any of this. I tend to think over confidence about Stevens was the problem. Logically plan B should have been Brownell. Probably yields marginally better results than [Redacted]. It will be interesting to see what Clemson does next.

Mooney is what Ron thought [Redacted] was. He built a program that 'does things the right [OWG] way' at a challenging academic school and was the #2 when Joe Scott did the same thing at Air Force.

If anyone is interested, for unclear reasons (/procrastination for something much more important), I wrote 1600 words about the [Redacted] saga and posted it on a Texas A&M message board (coaching carousel season makes me go crazy):

Let me tell you the story of Wake Forest basketball.

It's 2010. Dino Gaudio just finished his third season after taking over just days after Skip Prosser, his predecessor, boss, and mentor, died. Results had been mixed. Year 1 the team marginally exceeded fairly low expectations, but was snubbed from the tournament. Year 2 was magical... at least through January. Both UNC and Duke were top 5 ranked when Wake toppled them at the Joel. Also on the kill list was Clemson, which may not seem significant but it made Wake the last undefeated team in the country and locked in the program's first #1 ranking since Chris Paul. But the wheels came-off, with the season ending in double digit losses to 7th seeded Maryland in the ACCT and 13th seeded Cleveland State in the NCAAT. Utterly disappointing, but not enough to stop Dino from getting an extension the following fall, for the usual recruiting purposes. Year 3 the team actually exceeded expectations again, making the NCAAT after losing a bunch of talent off the previous year's team (James Johnson and Jeff Teague) and winning a game against University of Texas in the NCAAT after again getting blown-out in the first round of the ACCT.

Regardless, Dino was fired after the championship game. The rationale, the program wasn't doing well enough at the end of the season. Three poor showings in the ACCT, one terrible showing in the NCAAT, and one mediocre showing in the NCAAT (UT was an 8 seed, we were a 9 seed). Well, that was the public rationale, but underlying was also the notion that a better coach wouldn't need to recruit early entrants, and Wake's AD, Ron Wellman was the guy to prove it. He was a basketball wiz after all, presiding after Duncan's four years at Wake, forcing out Dave Odom at just the right time, and then making a solid hire in Skip Prosser. Dino was just bad luck. Besides, hadn't Brad Stevens just proven the hypothesis? Of course, Gordon Hayward declared after his sophomore season and was picked significantly higher than Teague and Johnson had been the previous year, but at least he wasn't one of this awful four stars. That's besides the point anyway, the last thing Wellman wanted people to do was to get to bogged down in his logic. Just trust him.

We can't know for sure how many times we struck out, popular opinion is twice, failing to land Brad Stevens and Steve Alford (he made that sweet sixteen that one time at Southwest Missouri State so I guess he would have qualified as a post-season upgrade?). Not nearly as many times as you would think given that the eventual hire was Jeff [Redacted]. The Jeff [Redacted] fresh off a 15-16 season at Colorado. To be fair, that was a lot better than the 9-22 season the year prior. As far as post season success, supposedly a key reason Dino was fired, well [Redacted] had coached in a single NCAAT, winning no games. Similarly he lacked success in conference tournaments, but he did have a Final 4...in the NIT (while at Air Force).

So why was this coach due to be on the hot seat the next season instead hired by a prestigious ACC program? Two important facts: 1) He was an assistant coach at Northwest for 6 years. 4 of those years happened to coincide with Wellman's tenure as the head baseball coach. 2) He held a 1-0 record against Wake Forest, beating the Deacs 94-58 in Colorado Springs. Of course, a keen observer will note that Joe Scott and Chris Mooney built that team while [Redacted] never did anything meaningful with it (besides leverage it into two different high major jobs) and left the program vacant of all talent as he scrambled for a bigger paycheck. These, again, are just details. Not for anyone to worry about. Trust in Ron Wellman.

There was cautious optimism. So this guy had a great Xs and Os reputation. He tutored under Pat Riley after all. He coached Carmelo. A bunch of NBA guys knew his name! And, in keeping the entire staff of his predecessor, surely the top 10 ranked recruiting class would stay together.

Given the title of the thread and the word count so far, I am sure you can guess that the cautious optimism was entirely unfounded. It was a disaster. Sure enough, all of those prized recruits stayed on board. It didn't matter. The first season, an 8-24 (1-15) affair, kicked off with a 10 point loss to Stetson (not the hat, but the Atlantic Sun member). You may not remember Stetson having a Cinderella season because it did not. It went 8-22, and its head coach was fired mid-season. Ron, and fans alike, made the argument that the team was young and that the talent was overrated. It would take time to build the necessary experience. And the murmurs about work ethic and other off-the-court items began to rise.

There were multiple defections immediately after the season mercifully ended. Then a DWI inspired transfer before the next season began. A blessing in disguise for Wellman and his pal. Quickly the narrative was re-written. Dino wasn't replaced because he couldn't win in the ACCT or NCAAT. [Redacted] wasn't hired as an Xs and Os upgrade. He was hired as an agent of culture change. The program was morally bankrupt. Hell, there might even have been a threat of NCAA sanctions (those brave souls dropping this news couldn't possibly expose the details). The timeline was scrambled. Wellman expected people to forget that the only incidents that occurred under Dino's watch occurred before his extension (amounting to a blow job of questionable consent...[Redacted] honored the offending player as a team captain). Similarly, Wellman expected people to also forget that the entire staff had been retained specifically to hold on to that 2010 class...the players that were just overrated but are now bad people too. Hell, this was addition by subtraction. Somehow the big boosters bought it. And the fans who actually paid attention...who weren't transfixed by every word (/ butt covering lie) coming out of Ron Wellman's mouth...couldn't do a damn thing about it.

Despite the mid-major grade recruiting class (Anthony Fields averaged 24 mpg as a 5th year grad transfer at Liberty, Daniel Green averaged 7 mpg at Arkansas State, and Chase Fischer averaged 34 mpg at BYU), the team was actually better! Thanks to a down ACC, an incredibly weak OOC schedule (a 10 year commitment to play Xavier in honor of Skip was mysteriously postponed), and the world's two most patient men (Travis McKie, who experienced all four years of this, and CJ Harris, who experienced three years after being an instrumental part of Dino's NCAAT team as a freshman), [Redacted] managed to scrape together a 13-18 (4-12) season. And, hell, with a clean slate and a promising top 25 ranked (7 man) class coming in, you would have to be crazy to throw away [Redacted]'s progress. Year 3 here we come.

Well, some more transfers first. Now that top ten, 5 man class that [Redacted] inherited was down to 1. Tony Chennault transferred to Villanova, where he won 1 more NCAAT game than [Redacted] ever did, and Carson Desrosiers transferred to Providence, where he made one of those illustrious NIT final 4s. Anthony Fields left too, but not as if he was ever consequential to winning basketball.

Things came to a boil at the end of year 3. There was a full page ad in the ACCT edition of the Greensboro newspaper. That was just the start, things really started to hop in year 4. There were billboards. There was a failed attempt at an air banner (those guys apparently aren't reliable). Wellman doubled down. He talked about unrealistic expectations; he made sure every announcing team had his culture change talking points; he was condescending at every opportunity. He eliminated live questions from the radio show. He even covered for [Redacted] by taking the post-game interview after a particularly bad loss. A national writer called it a "seminar in mass alienation". [Redacted] meanwhile insulted fans, both with his words (paraphrasing here: "anyone who criticizes our performance has probably never built anything in their lives") and his ridiculous wardrobe (probably hasn't bought a tie since 1986, and his watch is likely the biggest ever sold). And the losses.

Actually, year 4 was a winning season. Just. 17-16 (6-12). Thank goodness for creampuffs. But, within conference, Wake beat a highly ranked Miami team as well as sweeping the other NC teams at home. There was legitimate fear that somehow that would be enough. That Wellman, and the inexplicably supportive major boosters, would grab onto those four wins as a reason to keep him. After all, the team was still young (four years in a row,.. now that's hard to do). But, the heat from the fan base was enough to force Wellman's hand. He reluctantly announced [Redacted]'s resignation (a dignity Dino was not allowed by the way, it was made very clear that he was terminated). It could have been a wake.

 

[PhDeac]

I'm seriously starting to think that someone has stolen the donaldross ID and this is really just a random parody. I can't imagine a serious, supposedly successful, attorney posting some of the crap this poster has posted recently.

His sudden return is curious.

 

[DeaconBrews]

His sudden return is curious.

With the 2 #winners I gave him (knowing full well he wouldn't dare bet ETSU due to recently developed resentment), he should have acquired enough capital to build the dorm

 

[zqglass]

I'm seriously starting to think that someone has stolen the donaldross ID and this is really just a random parody. I can't imagine a serious, supposedly successful, attorney posting some of the crap this poster has posted recently.

I've been thinking that as well.