• Welcome to OGBoards 10.0, keep in mind that we will be making LOTS of changes to smooth out the experience here and make it as close as possible functionally to the old software, but feel free to drop suggestions or requests in the Tech Support subforum!

Danny Manning Credibility Watch

Excellent post bkf and I for the most part agree. And I have every reason to be biased for Odom considering I graduated in '96. But I do feel like some of those teams may have underachieved a bit, but ultimately that's how we were built: to keep games close and let Childress win it at the end. Too bad we didn't get to see the 1993/94 iteration with a senior Rodney Rogers dominating the league and Childress lighting it up from outside. But you're right about Duncan falling into Odom's lap. However, I will give Skip a bit more credit for his recruiting of Paul as it was not a total fait accomplit that he would choose Wake over Carolina, was it? Seemed like it was a helluva recruiting coup at the time and probably why we ended up with a pretty weak class that year as we were focusing all of our efforts seemingly on Paul.

The more I think about it and the more I discover about the state of the ACC in the 70's, the more I gotta think Tacy and Odom are at least neck and neck. But I'm starting to lean towards Tacy since he seemed to have had more challenges and less luck than Odom did during his time here.
 
"Gentleman" Carl Tacy was an outstanding bench coach, but damn could Odom's squads play some D and he got the hardware with the 2 ACCT titles. Good times!
 
Carl Tacy's 1977 team beat a 26-1 Arkansas team that had won 18 straight games. Tacy's 1984 team beat a 27-2 DePaul team.

I think the only comparable post-season win to those two games in WF history was Bones' 1961 win over a 23-3 2nd-ranked St Bonaventure team.

And Tacy won those games without the benefit of having the consensus NPOY on his squad.

(Also, as I have mentioned earlier, it's no small feat that during the regular season, Carl Tacy had 10 wins against Dean Smith-coached Carolina teams that were nationally ranked at the time....including a win against them at Carmichael when they were ranked #1 in the nation, a win against their 1982 NCAA Championship team when they went 32-2, and two wins against them in 1977 when they played in the NCAA Championship game (one of which included a 15-point 2nd half comeback at Carmichael...I was there for that one. One of Wake's greatest wins ever.)

If you were wearing a Carolina sweatshirt, you can't claim to have been at one of the greatest Wake wins ever.
 
Ahh, the olden days...
oldman.gif
 
(Also, as I have mentioned earlier, it's no small feat that during the regular season, Carl Tacy had 10 wins against Dean Smith-coached Carolina teams that were nationally ranked at the time....including a win against them at Carmichael when they were ranked #1 in the nation, a win against their 1982 NCAA Championship team when they went 32-2, and two wins against them in 1977 when they played in the NCAA Championship game (one of which included a 15-point 2nd half comeback at Carmichael...I was there for that one. One of Wake's greatest wins ever.)

Don't forget though that Odom managed to win against the eventual NC team from the ACC both in '91 and '93. And an unprecedented 9 straight against Duke, although that '95 Duke team was bad. And B2B ACC Tourneys for Odom make it a very compelling argument vs Tacy. But on paper, the impressive feats you reference above still have me leaning a bit for Tacy. I'm a sucker for higher tempo offense and more well-rounded attack. Too bad Odom always had to deal with Kentucky when trying to make a deep run in the tourney. And if Rutland's three goes down from the corner vs Okie St., we might be having a very different discussion.

BTW, when the hell is Odom gonna get his banner or did I miss his ceremony somehow?
 
I'd say that Bones & Skip were pretty obviously the best motivators. Just as obviously, Tacy & Odom were the best bench coaches....and since Odom prepped under and was basically an extension of Tacy....Carl Tacy was pretty much in a class by himself as far as being the best bench coach.

Personally, I think that Tacy was the best coach we have ever had, for really a couple of reasons. 1) He had to start from scratch & operate during the peak years of ACC strength while under the biggest competitive disadvantages as far as staff, budget, facilities, etc. went. 2) He was here for 13 years, during which time he took two completely different teams with no overlapping personnel to the Elite Eight. So Tacy's success was not dependent upon any 1 or 2 players, as was Bones' (Chappell & Packer) or Odom (Duncan & Childress...and Rogers) or Skip (Howard & Paul).

Bones unquestionably reached the highest pinnacle of success among WF coaches but had the shortest tenure of success. Under Bones, WF made 5 straight ACCT finals, won two ACC Championships, made an Elite Eight, then made the only Final Four in the school history. The obvious question regarding Bones is this: What would he have been able to do if Len Chappell & Billy Packer had not decided to come to Wake? His star faded very quickly after those two guys left.

Dave Odom was a coach who got his start as Tacy's assistant. However, his teams tended to play more deliberately than Tacy's teams on the offensive end. Defensively, they were very similar. As I said earlier, I think both of these guys were outstanding bench coaches who were capable of getting maximum results from the players they had. But where would Odom have been without Tim Duncan falling into his lap?

It's very hard to rate just where Skip should be on that list, because it is virtually impossible for WF people to make independent judgments about him without being influenced by his tragic & untimely death. That seems to have made it impossible to separate Skip the person from Skip the coach. Personally, I think that Skip was quite possibly the best example of a person of anyone who has ever been associated with Wake Forest in the school's history. The way he bonded with the students & the renewed excitement about the basketball program that he generated from them was unparalleled in the school's history....with Bones McKinney being the only other coach WF has had who might be comparable. The other side of that coin is that those tremendous positives, along with his tragic premature death, seem to have made it difficult for many to accept that he was only a very average coach who had an undistinguished record in the post-season....particularly when his teams were playing against favored opponents. Who knows what would have happened if he had lived? Many have forgotten that there were rumblings after the 8-24 ACC record with 11th & 12th place finishes in 2006 & 2007. Solid programs just don't go from 13-3 to 3-13 in the conference in back-to-back years. I think it's obvious that his future at WF would have depended on what he was able to do with the tremendously hyped (and later found to be tremendously overrated) "AT&T" class of Aminu, Woods & Walker. Also, Skip was extremely fortunate...to say the least...that he had two of the better players in WF history that happened to be "homegrown" and fell into his lap because they just wanted to stay local and play at WF. Where would Skip have been without Josh Howard & Chris Paul? We saw what happened after Chris Paul left.

Spot on! :golfclap:
 
Ya I will always have a soft spot in my heart for Odom since he used to bring us Krispy Kreme donuts when we'd camp out for seats vs Duke & Carolina.
 
I'm quite certain that you have many games to go, my friend, before you experience as many games pulling against Carolina as I have.

I go back to Yale, Canisius, Syracuse, Michigan State & Kansas in their 1957 NCAA title run. Remember those?

Nope, we weren't unfortunate enough to have been alive back then.


Your balls were around over 60 years ago. GROSS!
 
We should just have some archived posts for these discussions, there are camps on both sides.

Recruiting - shocked the 'Jabbar' recruiting story didn't surface if we are going back that far.

Tacy - Looking back now, you just have to say taking Bogues really shows some ability to identify talent. I don't think the campus was all wound up when we signed a 5' 3" PG. I don't go all the way back but, the 83 team was a huge disappointment, capped by the huge blow out to NC State to end the season. 85 started out well with talk of Tacy being coach of the year then we fell to NIT level and got bounced in the 1st round. IIRC Kenny Green had some issues with Tacy and some how was a 1st round pick and never heard from again. In theory we had some decent parts for 86, with Bogues, but with Green gone, our rising star Thomas becoming academically ineligible and Mark Cline never truly living up to his ranking we should have been able to do better in 86.

Odom - 'sigh'. One ACCT win without Tim Duncan on the roster. Every title Timmy wins in the NBA only confirms that Odom was very fortunate (i.e. he couldn't win an ACCT game with RR and Childress!) and missed the biggest opportunity for one or more Final 4's. Sure we can rationalize it all with Childress was sick, Rutland missed the shot, Rutland's knee, but who recruited the supporting cast around Duncan especially in his Sr. year. When Duncan announced he was coming back he said it was in part to win and go deep in the NCAA's. Odom said that was not a good reason to come back. If you look at Tim's Pro career, clearly Timmy is driven to win, his college coach writes a book 'It's not about the Trophy' or something like that. Finally, Odom - not fired. Offered a contract at the beginning of the season, turned it down. Team gets into the top 5, crushes Kansas, then the tip in by Haywood at UNC and it all unraveled culminating with the MD ACCT debacle and Butler disaster in the NCAAT. Shocking that he was not given a new offer at that point. How did the 'name of the state on the jersey' help him out after Wake?

Skip - I don't think most of the positives can be debated. His biggest weakness was defense. If that 2005 team plays any level of defense we would have had a real shot. Every year he said he was going to fix the defense, but that never happened. The one interesting comment he made that no ever brought up again was 'I've never finished below 5th in anything' when his first team was picked near the bottom. Never heard that comment when we finished 12th. Great motivator but not sure he could have put together a complete team (i.e. on both sides of the ball). It would have been interesting to see what Skip could have done with some of the last players he recruited. There were some articles that came out saying no ACC coach ever recovers from multiple bottom of the conference finishes. Pretty clearly he had brought in the talent to do so.
 
We should just have some archived posts for these discussions, there are camps on both sides.

Recruiting - shocked the 'Jabbar' recruiting story didn't surface if we are going back that far.

Tacy - Looking back now, you just have to say taking Bogues really shows some ability to identify talent. I don't think the campus was all wound up when we signed a 5' 3" PG. I don't go all the way back but, the 83 team was a huge disappointment, capped by the huge blow out to NC State to end the season. 85 started out well with talk of Tacy being coach of the year then we fell to NIT level and got bounced in the 1st round. IIRC Kenny Green had some issues with Tacy and some how was a 1st round pick and never heard from again. In theory we had some decent parts for 86, with Bogues, but with Green gone, our rising star Thomas becoming academically ineligible and Mark Cline never truly living up to his ranking we should have been able to do better in 86.

Odom - 'sigh'. One ACCT win without Tim Duncan on the roster. Every title Timmy wins in the NBA only confirms that Odom was very fortunate (i.e. he couldn't win an ACCT game with RR and Childress!) and missed the biggest opportunity for one or more Final 4's. Sure we can rationalize it all with Childress was sick, Rutland missed the shot, Rutland's knee, but who recruited the supporting cast around Duncan especially in his Sr. year. When Duncan announced he was coming back he said it was in part to win and go deep in the NCAA's. Odom said that was not a good reason to come back. If you look at Tim's Pro career, clearly Timmy is driven to win, his college coach writes a book 'It's not about the Trophy' or something like that. Finally, Odom - not fired. Offered a contract at the beginning of the season, turned it down. Team gets into the top 5, crushes Kansas, then the tip in by Haywood at UNC and it all unraveled culminating with the MD ACCT debacle and Butler disaster in the NCAAT. Shocking that he was not given a new offer at that point. How did the 'name of the state on the jersey' help him out after Wake?

Skip - I don't think most of the positives can be debated. His biggest weakness was defense. If that 2005 team plays any level of defense we would have had a real shot. Every year he said he was going to fix the defense, but that never happened. The one interesting comment he made that no ever brought up again was 'I've never finished below 5th in anything' when his first team was picked near the bottom. Never heard that comment when we finished 12th. Great motivator but not sure he could have put together a complete team (i.e. on both sides of the ball). It would have been interesting to see what Skip could have done with some of the last players he recruited. There were some articles that came out saying no ACC coach ever recovers from multiple bottom of the conference finishes. Pretty clearly he had brought in the talent to do so.

LOL. Bogues played on the best high school team in the country (and probably one of the best ever in terms of NBA talent) and was being recruited by Georgetown
 
Love Dave Odom. Used to talk with him a lot on game trips when he was Carl's assistant. Figured he would be named coach when Carl retired, but he took the ECU job before that happened.

I'm quite certain that you have many games to go, my friend, before you experience as many games pulling for Dave Odom as I have.
 
LOL. Bogues played on the best high school team in the country (and probably one of the best ever in terms of NBA talent) and was being recruited by Georgetown

And he was MVP of that HS team! But we were still kinda freaked out when we first saw him on campus - WOW was he short! But he could play!
 
Carl Tacy's 1977 team beat a 26-1 Arkansas team that had won 18 straight games. Tacy's 1984 team beat a 27-2 DePaul team.

I think the only comparable post-season win to those two games in WF history was Bones' 1961 win over a 23-3 2nd-ranked St Bonaventure team.

And Tacy won those games without the benefit of having the consensus NPOY on his squad.

(Also, as I have mentioned earlier, it's no small feat that during the regular season, Carl Tacy had 10 wins against Dean Smith-coached Carolina teams that were nationally ranked at the time....including a win against them at Carmichael when they were ranked #1 in the nation, a win against their 1982 NCAA Championship team when they went 32-2, and two wins against them in 1977 when they played in the NCAA Championship game (one of which included a 15-point 2nd half comeback at Carmichael...I was there for that one. One of Wake's greatest wins ever.)

The Arkansas game featured a great comeback...seems like we were down 17 or so at one point in that game.
 
LOL. Bogues played on the best high school team in the country (and probably one of the best ever in terms of NBA talent) and was being recruited by Georgetown

Nice example of using half the information to try and support your point.

"By senior year of high school, few college coaches were anxious to take on a five-foot-three basketball player. Bogues nonetheless was being recruited by both Georgetown and Wake Forest."

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3407900065.html

Since Reggie Williams did go to G'Town I'm sure they saw a lot of Bogues.

ETA: We certainly didn't roll the quad when they signed him.
 
Last edited:
Georgetown never offered...John Thompson always referred to Bouges as "my mistake"
 
Nice example of using half the information to try and support your point.

"By senior year of high school, few college coaches were anxious to take on a five-foot-three basketball player. Bogues nonetheless was being recruited by both Georgetown and Wake Forest."

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3407900065.html

Since Reggie Williams did go to G'Town I'm sure they saw a lot of Bogues.

ETA: We certainly didn't roll the quad when they signed him.

Of the many examples you could have used to demonstrate Tacy's LEGENDARY ability to find diamonds in the rough (and build Wake Forest's program from scratch at the longest of odds, apparently) Bogues was probably one of the worst.

Noone doubted his talent, they were concerned with his size.
 
If memory serves, Bogues was our fallback position after Amaker picked Duke. Muggsy ended up being ranked higher. He was 24th on one list.
 
My gut tells me DM will recruit well and underachieve on game day. I think he improves the program and is off to another place in four years. We'll rise to a middle of the conference team under his tenure. Wellman will call it a success and then we'll hire a mid-major coach with lots of promise and the experiment starts again.

The more I think about Dino, the more I miss the guy. He bought into Skip's philosophy and he never really had a shot at growing into a head coaching slot. And we'll never know if he could have. I was the first to say he should have been given interim status and make a proper search, but I'm rethinking that after all these years. When you watch him break down a game it is crystal clear the guy understands basketball like few other people. He just had no experience at dealing with future NBA stars coasting in the spring. Well, that's not the worst problem to have as a new head coach. I think he could have figured it out.

But that's just me. Wake sports are just too depressing to lose sleep over these days. It would be nice to get back to a place where we were, say, 10-1 before hitting the ACC and going .500 and scratching out a bid.

Done.
 
Back
Top