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MTOW, Country Dan is Thinking Along With Ron

childressfor3 said:
You guys think its going to be shaka?? Please you know that is not going to happen. It just hurts to see us get up our hopes like this when we all know that its going to be Mack, or a similar type of hire.
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I'm in the "tempered optimism" group if there is one. Not really confident we'll get him but pleasantly surprised if we do. The worst thing is that around a decade ago Prosser turned down Pitt to stay at WF. Now, we're supposedly on par with a school that is in a non-Power Five conference, and we are in what is transitioning to becoming the best league college basketball has ever seen. Sure, Marquette is a name and it spends a ton of money on basketball, but that's where it stands going forward. Makes me sick.
 
IMissRandolph said:
"The better way of looking at it is that Wellman will never hire coach he's not comfortable with, or one who is not comfortable with him. And as long as he's the boss, he shouldn't. That's a recipe for disaster from Day One."

Disagree with this philosophy. He should have some baseline comfort with a candidate, but this philosophy almost always translates into a "safe" hire. The biggest decisions most of us face in life are those that we are not always comfortable with and can't predict the outcome. There should be some risk taking going on here if you can't get a Smart or Howland. Gamble on a Mike White, gamble on a Massiello, gamble on someone who is not going to be the vanilla candidate just so that Ron Wellman can be comfortable with it. This program hasn't been to a Final 4 in 52 years and is coming off the worst coaching hire in modern ACC history, take a chance on someone who can make a splash here. Ron Wellman will most likely depart Wake Forest in the next few years, if he truly has Wake's best interest at heart - he'll have some balls here and not just pick someone who he as individual is "comfortable" with.

In Wellman's distorted view, Jeff [Redacted] was a "safe" hire because he knew him and was familiar with his body of work. A much, much better hire and somebody we could have gotten was John Groce but my guess is that Ron was not comfortable with Groce and didn't even consider him (despite Groce's Ohio background).

He owes it to WF to do what's best for the school and not with what makes him comfortable
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And Ron didn't feel comfortable I guess with the guy that won him 2 ACC titles, so he got rid of him for a guy with no post season success and on it goes since 1996. Same with baseball.
 
I think part of the problem is Skip became bigger than Wellman. I'm not sure Ron's ego can allow that to happen again. I wait patiently to see how this plays out. I think the guy that is in Ron's comfort zone is Wright. But the chances of wedging him out of Villanova are minuscule. Ron is between a rock and a hard place.
 
DirkTheDeac said:
I think part of the problem is Skip became bigger than Wellman. I'm not sure Ron's ego can allow that to happen again. I wait patiently to see how this plays out. I think the guy that is in Ron's comfort zone is Wright. But the chances of wedging him out of Villanova are minuscule. Ron is between a rock and a hard place.
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Agree completely with your thought on part of the problem being that Skip became bigger than Wellman. Also think Wellman and his ego loved the fact that everyone gave him so much praise for "discovering" and hiring Jim Grobe and Grobe then taking Wake to unforeseen heights. I think one of the several flawed reasons for hiring [Redacted] was that he was trying to duplicate that. My hope this time is that Wellman and his ego realize he really needs to nail a homerun this time to recover; that there is significantly more oversight and input from others this time; and that Wellman is more worried about his legacy than the new coach being bigger than him since Welman will likely retire in the next couple of years.
 
DirkTheDeac said:
I think part of the problem is Skip became bigger than Wellman. I'm not sure Ron's ego can allow that to happen again. I wait patiently to see how this plays out. I think the guy that is in Ron's comfort zone is Wright. But the chances of wedging him out of Villanova are minuscule. Ron is between a rock and a hard place.
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I think the problem is that Skip became bigger than the anti-athletic factions in the Wake academia.
 
bobknightfan said:
Good points. Skip's untimely death has screwed up everyone's minds about what kind of a coach he was...which really wasn't very good at all. Great guy. Very mediocre coach...but these guys can't handle that reality. The strongest part of Skip's coaching was the power of his personality, which enabled him to recruit good athletes who liked to play his undisciplined offensive style of game. Whatever success that Skip was going to have would have been due to that ability to attract good athletes....not due to his ability to coach those athletes when they got here. That's why he had a measure of regular season success...when he had better athletes than his opponents much of the time...and why he had a poor post-season record...when the quality of the players became more equal and coaching ability from the bench became a much bigger factor in the outcome.
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I don't think it's fair to say that Skip was a "not very good at all" coach. Coaching college basketball is equal parts having the x and o ability, the ability to recruit the best basketball players and motivating them to play the best they can . Skip may not have been a great x and o coach but he was an excellent recruiter and motivator. And that makes him far more than a not very good coach.

Dave Odom was probably the best all-around coach that Wake has had in the modern era (since 1975). He understood the game, recruited some of the best players in WF history, and motivated them enough to win 2 ACC Tourney championships, reach 3 Sweet 16's and an Elite 8.
 
Even then, it was pretty clear that Odom wasn't going to recreate his run of the mid 90s.
 
LilburnDeac said:
I don't think it's fair to say that Skip was a "not very good at all" coach. Coaching college basketball is equal parts having the x and o ability, the ability to recruit the best basketball players and motivating them to play the best they can . Skip may not have been a great x and o coach but he was an excellent recruiter and motivator. And that makes him far more than a not very good coach.

Dave Odom was probably the best all-around coach that Wake has had in the modern era (since 1975). He understood the game, recruited some of the best players in WF history, and motivated them enough to win 2 ACC Tourney championships, reach 3 Sweet 16's and an Elite 8.
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College athletics is more about recruiting than X's and O's. College basketball maybe more than any other sport.
 
bobknightfan said:
Good points. Skip's untimely death has screwed up everyone's minds about what kind of a coach he was...which really wasn't very good at all. Great guy. Very mediocre coach...but these guys can't handle that reality. The strongest part of Skip's coaching was the power of his personality, which enabled him to recruit good athletes who liked to play his undisciplined offensive style of game. Whatever success that Skip was going to have would have been due to that ability to attract good athletes....not due to his ability to coach those athletes when they got here. That's why he had a measure of regular season success...when he had better athletes than his opponents much of the time...and why he had a poor post-season record...when the quality of the players became more equal and coaching ability from the bench became a much bigger factor in the outcome.
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Which is why we blew out the national champions in 2005 :rolleyes: Goddamn I know I shouldn't be responding because you're just a fucking troll but this post is so full of shit.
 
DirkTheDeac said:
I think part of the problem is Skip became bigger than Wellman. I'm not sure Ron's ego can allow that to happen again. I wait patiently to see how this plays out. I think the guy that is in Ron's comfort zone is Wright. But the chances of wedging him out of Villanova are minuscule. Ron is between a rock and a hard place.
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Think there is any chance at all that Wright's interest in Wake has been tested in back channels?
 
MTOD - My take on Dan

- Just about anybody from this board could have written that piece
- Dan pointed out how critical this hire is but not a lot of info come out of him, certainly nothing that we already don't know
- I'm wondering how much the NCAA is paying Ron to be the NCAA committee chair, I'm sure it's not as much as Wake is paying him to be our AD, if as implied here, the NCAA is distracting Ron from making a coaching hire/decision, that's a huge problem
- What they heck does the NCAA Selection Committee chair have to do after the selections were made, beside making appearances at the games and being interviewed? I would think his NCAA work load is zero now.

Maybe everything is being worked behind the scenes and Ron is not sharing, as is his custom, but to imply that our coaching search is taking a back seat to his NCAA Chair duties is a pretty major issue.

I wonder who Dan is calling. Does he call anyone outside of Winston? Does he call people at VCU for comments? Best I can tell he's just waiting around like us for the announcement of a press conference.
 
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