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Dino Gaudio charged with extortion

Wasn't there a keep the great recruiting class together angle?

Yes. Skip died in late July 2007. Skip's HS class of 2007 recruits (entering WF when Skip passed) was Jeff Teague (still in the NBA), James Johnson (still in the NBA) and Gary Clark shot 43% from 3 for his college career. Could be wrong, but I think that WF had an early commitment from Aminu (still in the NBA) from the 2008 HS class when Skip died . They may have also had a commitment from Tony Woods (class of 2008), who at the time was highly rated as well. There was a concern that WF could lose some of these recruits if a staff member was not hired. Recruiting is important, but not as important as making the right hire.
 
Really? People were fine with Dino getting let go, it was the hire. In retrospect, if our options were [Redacted] or Dino, firing Dino was so dumb.

Yes. Skip died in late July 2007. Skip's HS class of 2007 recruits (entering WF when Skip passed) was Jeff Teague (still in the NBA), James Johnson (still in the NBA) and Gary Clark shot 43% from 3 for his college career. Could be wrong, but I think that WF had an early commitment from Aminu (still in the NBA) from the 2008 HS class when Skip died . They may have also had a commitment from Tony Woods (class of 2008), who at the time was highly rated as well. There was a concern that WF could lose some of these recruits if a staff member was not hired. Recruiting is important, but not as important as making the right hire.

The verbal commits (class of 2008) at the time of Skip's untimely death were Al Farouq Aminu, Ty Walker and Tony Woods. It was a highly rated class, although, in retrospect, two were highly over rated. Keeping those three was a driver for hiring Dino. Jeff Battle would have been the preferred choice, but he had family medical issues that caused him to decline the head coach job.

The 2007 class wasn't as likely to go because they had already signed LOI's. Some may have already been on campus. They would have needed to sit a year or gotten waivers from NCAA if they left. Keeping them happy was a consideration.

The ludicrous extension and firing followed by abysmal hires sent the Wake basketball into the downward spiral. This season should let us know if the downward spiral has stopped.
 
Yes. Skip died in late July 2007. Skip's HS class of 2007 recruits (entering WF when Skip passed) was Jeff Teague (still in the NBA), James Johnson (still in the NBA) and Gary Clark shot 43% from 3 for his college career. Could be wrong, but I think that WF had an early commitment from Aminu (still in the NBA) from the 2008 HS class when Skip died . They may have also had a commitment from Tony Woods (class of 2008), who at the time was highly rated as well. There was a concern that WF could lose some of these recruits if a staff member was not hired. Recruiting is important, but not as important as making the right hire.

I believe the recruiting class they wanted to keep coming to Wake when Skip died was Al-Farouq Amino, Tony Woods and Ty Walker.
 
There are people in this thread (and a few more on the other board) saying Dino should have gotten another year, even AFTER the extortion charges. Anyone who remembers Dino's firing as obvious, fully supported by the fanbase, or essentially without controversy is way off base. Just glancing quickly at a couple articles a day or two after he was fired it's called a snap decision, curiously timed, lots of talk about how good his record was and the rankings Wake reached. There were hugely bitter fights in the Dino Gottago days.
 
The verbal commits (class of 2008) at the time of Skip's untimely death were Al Farouq Aminu, Ty Walker and Tony Woods. It was a highly rated class, although, in retrospect, two were highly over rated. Keeping those three was a driver for hiring Dino. Jeff Battle would have been the preferred choice, but he had family medical issues that caused him to decline the head coach job.

The 2007 class wasn't as likely to go because they had already signed LOI's. Some may have already been on campus. They would have needed to sit a year or gotten waivers from NCAA if they left. Keeping them happy was a consideration.

The ludicrous extension and firing followed by abysmal hires sent the Wake basketball into the downward spiral. This season should let us know if the downward spiral has stopped.

We will never know what Ty Walker could have become if he'd had a different coach. Gaudio quickly wrote Ty Walker off and in my opinion made life miserable for Ty by not playing him at all. I always believed he wanted Ty to transfer but Ty wouldn't. Ty was the NC Gatorade Player of the Year before coming to Wake but he never had a chance under Gaudio. In one of his years, if I remember correctly, Gaudio let him play in the UNC-Wilmington game early season, only because it was his hometown. I don't think Ty played in another game until the last game of the post season for only a few minutes when we were beat by Kentucky. Ty Walker was one of the Gaudio casualties as was the entire Wake Basketball program. Again, just my opinion and observation.
 
Not sure if you looking for hotel receipts and videos of transgressions. Good luck with that.

Back when Dino was at WF (and as was stated at that time), the word was that he was a rockhead and treated those that he didn't perceive as directly helpful to him like crap. Just not smart or a particularly good guy.

Those that closely observed the program could see that the team cratered at the end of the year each of the three years he coached (and he had NBA talent) and recruiting was declining. Prior to WF, Dino had a horrendous record as a HC at Army. Then drove the Loyola program off a cliff (Dino was fired after 3 years; his last year Loyola went 7-21). It wasn't about whether or not Dino was banging coeds or committing crimes. He lacked the ability to lead an ACC level program as he had already twice demonstrated he couldn't lead a low level program. He had no business coaching WF after the one interim year following Skip's passing; there was no way it was going to end well. Some people chose to look past Dino's ineptness because Buzz was also massively unsuited; so, with that pathetic comparison, to some, Dino appeared to be palatable (or at least more palatable), but he was in over his head from Day 1 at WF.

As for the L'ville mess, that simply underscores the man's stupidity. No reason to feel sorry for him. He was gifted into a three years of salary for the WF head job (something he did not deserve and would have never been considered for if not Skip's unexpected death); he parlayed the WF job into a sweet gig at ESPN (no way ESPN would have given Dino the time of day if not for the WF HC job); then, after being out of the game for seven years, Lville (who pays well) hires Dino as assistant for 3 years. Rather than appreciate how he went from just another low-major loser as HC, to an ACC HC, ESPN TV guy and a high level assistant at a top program, Dino felt he was entitled to more. Clown.

I mean recruiting wasn't really on a downturn, he had a top 10 class in the country coming in at the time he was fired.

Now that class ended up in shambles with Buzz at the helm but it's hard to say recruiting was down.
 
Dino did attempt to strong arm me (directly on the phone), and the boards in general, over getting posts taken down that directly said he had an extramarital affair. He said he would get his lawyer involved if necessary. He said he needed those removed as they popped up on a search for his name and he didn't want lies like that out there as he was looking for a new coaching position. The mods did edit those comments out figuring a charge of slander wasn't worth it since we couldn't prove anything like that to be true.

No physical violence or anything like that was ever communicated towards me in our three phone conversations. So I had that going for me, which was nice.

So Gaudio threatened to report allegations that Ogboards and more specifically DV7 were operating a ponzi scheme. Gaudio said he would expose this allegation if DV7 didn’t delete posts and edit the boards to reflect him in a favorable light. Seems familiar.
 
We will never know what Ty Walker could have become if he'd had a different coach. Gaudio quickly wrote Ty Walker off and in my opinion made life miserable for Ty by not playing him at all. I always believed he wanted Ty to transfer but Ty wouldn't. Ty was the NC Gatorade Player of the Year before coming to Wake but he never had a chance under Gaudio. In one of his years, if I remember correctly, Gaudio let him play in the UNC-Wilmington game early season, only because it was his hometown. I don't think Ty played in another game until the last game of the post season for only a few minutes when we were beat by Kentucky. Ty Walker was one of the Gaudio casualties as was the entire Wake Basketball program. Again, just my opinion and observation.

Ty Walker got another chance under Redacted and ended up getting kicked off the team.
 
Ty Walker got another chance under Redacted and ended up getting kicked off the team.

I don't think [Redacted] is the "different coach" Barber was talking about.
 
Dino was an absolute tool to everyone within the athletic department. He also couldn't keep his players from acting like idiots, and he lost complete control of his team when it mattered. I don't know for certain if the banging students thing was true or not, but how do those rumors get out there without SOME kind of questionable behavior?

All of that together is why Dino was fired.

Ron made a couple poor decisions over the next decade that put us where we are, but firing Dino was not one of those bad decisions.
 
Hell, you could listen to the LD Williams/Bobby Hoekstra podcast and they mentioned how lightly the team took Cleveland State. From a basketball standpoint, that's a really bad look. Character issues are a totally different ballgame.
 
Dino did attempt to strong arm me (directly on the phone), and the boards in general, over getting posts taken down that directly said he had an extramarital affair. He said he would get his lawyer involved if necessary. He said he needed those removed as they popped up on a search for his name and he didn't want lies like that out there as he was looking for a new coaching position. The mods did edit those comments out figuring a charge of slander wasn't worth it since we couldn't prove anything like that to be true.

No physical violence or anything like that was ever communicated towards me in our three phone conversations. So I had that going for me, which was nice.

I do recall something like this. I don't think it was me who originally floated the affair story, though.
 
I do recall something like this. I don't think it was me who originally floated the affair story, though.

The entire affair thing got started b/c Disco Dan decided to write a MTOW in response to some random rumbling on Pack Pride, which lead to mass deletions over on Scout, which lead to the creation of this board. Thanks, Pack Pride?
 
There are people in this thread (and a few more on the other board) saying Dino should have gotten another year, even AFTER the extortion charges. Anyone who remembers Dino's firing as obvious, fully supported by the fanbase, or essentially without controversy is way off base. Just glancing quickly at a couple articles a day or two after he was fired it's called a snap decision, curiously timed, lots of talk about how good his record was and the rankings Wake reached. There were hugely bitter fights in the Dino Gottago days.

First, the extortion charges of 2021 are independent of what happened when Dino was fired a decade ago. So if somebody thinks it was the wrong decision back then, what happens this week shouldn't really change that assessment unless it is somehow tied into his reasons for being canned (and if he was trying to extort Ron Wellman with pictures of Ron fucking goats, I say good for him).

Second, my recollection is that Wake fandom was very much in favor of him getting canned and that it was the usual media talking heads who didn't really watch the games who were left questioning his dismissal. But the rank and file hot takes on fan message boards were so POed about getting Cleveland Steamered in the tourney that he had to be fired. In that respect, his firing was widely supported. Not universally, but by the vast majority of Wake fandom.
 
First, the extortion charges of 2021 are independent of what happened when Dino was fired a decade ago. So if somebody thinks it was the wrong decision back then, what happens this week shouldn't really change that assessment unless it is somehow tied into his reasons for being canned (and if he was trying to extort Ron Wellman with pictures of Ron fucking goats, I say good for him).

Second, my recollection is that Wake fandom was very much in favor of him getting canned and that it was the usual media talking heads who didn't really watch the games who were left questioning his dismissal. But the rank and file hot takes on fan message boards were so POed about getting Cleveland Steamered in the tourney that he had to be fired. In that respect, his firing was widely supported. Not universally, but by the vast majority of Wake fandom.

Kind of. There was also talking heads who thought Wellman was a good AD making a home run play to hire a coach with postseason experience to take Wake to the next level. That Andy Katz column comes to mind. Wellman still had a lot of good will in the media after Grobe and the ACC Championship.
 
Kind of. There was also talking heads who thought Wellman was a good AD making a home run play to hire a coach with postseason experience to take Wake to the next level. That Andy Katz column comes to mind. Wellman still had a lot of good will in the media after Grobe and the ACC Championship.

Brad Stevens was the rumored home run hire as I recall. NOT! :(
 
Ron gets a pass for hiring Dino. Every call he made after that was disastrous, but hiring Dino was the best of the few options, all of them bad, he had at the time. If Battle had been up for the job the last ten-plus years probably look very different.
 
Dino was fired after Ish got us a win (!) in the NCAAT, followed by a Kentucky beatdown.

That is why the national press was so confused - it's pretty rare to fire a coach after he wins an NCAA tournament game, even one involving two teams who are imploding
 
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