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The "Bridge" Theory

loyal2afault said:
Anyone paying attention last Saturday would have seen the long, emotional interaction between Chris Paul and Jeff Battle. This clearly exemplifies which internal candidate is best suited to take the helm when (not if) Buzz leaves.

Jeff has remained loyal through good times and bad, and continues to represent the institution well on and off the court. His sacrifices for his late wife and young son in the immediate post-Skip era demonstrated tremendous character and integrity at the expense of his career advancement.

He is an excellent role model for these young men, and I believe his time as come. If I were Ron, I would make the change immediately after the season and allow Jeff to build on this year's freshman class and Shelton Mitchell's tailwind.
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No thanks.
 
ipitytheblue said:
Consider the possibility that, unless the police were involved, we made the decision to keep quiet things which may have made RW unhappy with the direction of the program (while Dino was coach). I'm hesitant to say that since it's speculation and I try to base what I think is going on off logic/RW's words but it seems reasonable. Some "good" kids like Chennault, Desrosiers, and Fields may not have gotten along with the coach (the transition being rockier than anyone expected) and that's unfortunate. It ain't perfect and it doesn't explain everything (like Walker's continued presence on the team) but this is a thread about the Bridge Theory and I'm explaining why I hope it's what's going on.

This is all pretty much based on the premise that RW isn't as moronic as most of us here make him out to be. He's an AD of a major-conference school (and a well-respected one up until recently). I have to assume that isn't an accident.
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I would assume the decision to keep things quiet came from Wellman or higher. I seriously doubt that a member of the band could accuse a basketball player of sexual assault and the AD know nothing about it.
 
A couple of points -

Based on what I heard early on - RW told Dino to do the clean up the program - 'no more one-and-done, pre-NBA majors' and Dino push back hard (the winner of the ACC is the team with the most NBA talent). When Dino wouldn't change, RW fired him (almost 3 weeks after we lost to Kentucky). IMO, the bridge theory was a last minute curveball.

I am sure RW thought the process would be less painful and hoped Buzz would do a beter job. There may have also been hope for a Battle / LaRue legacy play as well. Nevertheless, the worse case scenario (what we got) was a bridge / transition coach that would remake the culture.

I think RW wanted to remake football to be more like Grobe and WF football. What he forgot to consider was the starting point of each program. People were willing to give Grobe time, because Wake football historically sucked so bad. The basketball program was #1 in the country 15 months earlier and no one was going to happlily accept blowing it up and starting over. Buzz is well compensated, but I actually feel a little sorry for him.
 
Honest question here: What would be so bad about Rusty as a coach? I hear people say all the time that he'd be terrible, but I don't see any evidence either way and I am curious as to why people think he'd be inadequate.
 
How does Chill fit in all these soap opera scenarios???
 
PhDeac said:
I would assume the decision to keep things quiet came from Wellman or higher. I seriously doubt that a member of the band could accuse a basketball player of sexual assault and the AD know nothing about it.
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Yeah, that's the assumption that I made. RW kept things quiet until he felt like a change was necessitated. It's possible that if Dino had been compliant and RW thought we could go in a direction that he'd like without making a coaching switch, "culture change" would never have come up as a directive.

91deac said:
A couple of points -

Based on what I heard early on - RW told Dino to do the clean up the program - 'no more one-and-done, pre-NBA majors' and Dino push back hard (the winner of the ACC is the team with the most NBA talent). When Dino wouldn't change, RW fired him (almost 3 weeks after we lost to Kentucky). IMO, the bridge theory was a last minute curveball.

I am sure RW thought the process would be less painful and hoped Buzz would do a beter job. There may have also been hope for a Battle / LaRue legacy play as well. Nevertheless, the worse case scenario (what we got) was a bridge / transition coach that would remake the culture.

I think RW wanted to remake football to be more like Grobe and WF football. What he forgot to consider was the starting point of each program. People were willing to give Grobe time, because Wake football historically sucked so bad. The basketball program was #1 in the country 15 months earlier and no one was going to happlily accept blowing it up and starting over. Buzz is well compensated, but I actually feel a little sorry for him.
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I can agree with this.
 
91deac said:
A couple of points -

Based on what I heard early on - RW told Dino to do the clean up the program - 'no more one-and-done, pre-NBA majors' and Dino push back hard (the winner of the ACC is the team with the most NBA talent). When Dino wouldn't change, RW fired him (almost 3 weeks after we lost to Kentucky). IMO, the bridge theory was a last minute curveball.

I am sure RW thought the process would be less painful and hoped Buzz would do a beter job. There may have also been hope for a Battle / LaRue legacy play as well. Nevertheless, the worse case scenario (what we got) was a bridge / transition coach that would remake the culture.

I think RW wanted to remake football to be more like Grobe and WF football. What he forgot to consider was the starting point of each program. People were willing to give Grobe time, because Wake football historically sucked so bad. The basketball program was #1 in the country 15 months earlier and no one was going to happlily accept blowing it up and starting over. Buzz is well compensated, but I actually feel a little sorry for him.
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Which was also a bad idea coming off a 5-7 2009 season in which we lost 5 straight. An astute AD would have seen the signs of decline from 2007 and 2008 but especially after 2009.
 
birdman said:
Honest question here: What would be so bad about Rusty as a coach? I hear people say all the time that he'd be terrible, but I don't see any evidence either way and I am curious as to why people think he'd be inadequate.
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He's a great guy, great basketball player, but has no experience coaching at the highest level.

We are not in a place where we can take a flyer on a guy with no coaching experience. If he wants to eventually be a basketball coach at the highest level, he should have to work his way up like every other great coach did.
 
ipitytheblue said:
Yeah, that's the assumption that I made. RW kept things quiet until he felt like a change was necessitated. It's possible that if Dino had been compliant and RW thought we could go in a direction that he'd like without making a coaching switch, "culture change" would never have come up as a directive.
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Yeah. That makes sense. Things got so bad under Bz that Wellman had to pile on Dino to stay afloat with the donors and powers that be.
 
birdman said:
Honest question here: What would be so bad about Rusty as a coach? I hear people say all the time that he'd be terrible, but I don't see any evidence either way and I am curious as to why people think he'd be inadequate.
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We're an ACC school with history and high expectations. No way people are going to be happy hiring an assistant with no college head-coaching experience. We need at the very least someone with a track record of improving the performance of the college teams they've coached at a minimum of mid-major level. Battle and Rusty need to follow the usual path: parlaying an assistant position to a HC job at a smaller school and performing until the big boys come sniffing around.
 
ipitytheblue said:
We're an ACC school with history and high expectations. No way people are going to be happy hiring an assistant with no college head-coaching experience. We need at the very least someone with a track record of improving the performance of the college teams they've coached at a minimum of mid-major level. Battle and Rusty need to follow the usual path: parlaying an assistant position to a HC job at a smaller school and performing until the big boys come sniffing around.
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You overestimate Wake fans. Even if Rusty was hired tomorrow, plenty of people would be happy about it or at least publicly happy about it. Wake fans want to feel good even at the risk of not being good. Rusty as head coach is a feel good story even if it smells like fail.

The worst thing about a bridge to Rusty plan is that it's like splitting up the Sidney Lowe failure into two parts.
 
PhDeac said:
You overestimate Wake fans. Even if Rusty was hired tomorrow, plenty of people would be happy about it or at least publicly happy about it. Wake fans want to feel good even at the risk of not being good. Rusty as head coach is a feel good story even if it smells like fail.
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God, I'd hope our fans would be a little more discerning than that.
 
Heard a new one over the weekend from Bz's yoga coach. First, he led off with the Bz introduction special that he inherited a squad of 6 or 7 guys that had been or were arrested. The man himself used that one on me at a DC booster event. Anyway, apparently there were GUNS in the locker room under Dino. I told him I was pretty sure he was thinking of the Wizards, not the Deacs. I guess I'd fight for Bz if he forked over 2 large in yoga classes a month too. This was before I ripped about 10 tequila shots and threw up on myself.
 
So Dino was pro-2nd amendment rights? Makes him a real American.
 
I can buy Bridge Theory, but not with Rusty or Battle as endgame.

Rusty makes no sense as an ACC head coach now and even made less sense three years ago, when the plan would have been concocted.

Jeff didn't need a bridge. He was ready in the Summer of 2007.

I could see Bridge Theory working without a specific endgame though, instead working toward some unnamed coach with certain qualities. This of course assumes that our AD was in fact thinking ahead, which is far from a given.
 
I have all the respect in the world for Battle and, who knows, he may make a great head coach someday, but honestly? I don't want another experiment in giving someone with an unproven record a chance. That includes Rusty and even Chill. While I guess I would choose any of those over bzz, I don't really want any of them. I want a solid coach with a winning resume to take over the helm.

This bridge theory is interesting, but I can't buy it. I always thought the culture thing was a bunch of BS Wellman construed AFTER the fact to justify his firing Dino.
 
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