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Updates to the Joel?

I think it’s possible to say that this is very likely true, but the ramifications of us not playing in the optimum arena don’t have to be that we missed out on national championships, which is what you alluded to. You implied that who knows, maybe we would have won a national championship with better facilities. And my answer to that is, no. At certain points we had the coaching and we had the recruits, but facilities wasn’t the missing piece that would have put us over the edge.

I’m happy for us to move forward with improvements however they may come about. They’re definitely needed. They will help along with a lot of other things in our program operating at a high level.

Agree with this. I love all of the improvements with the Baseball, football, and on campus stuff over the years. It's time for us to do something with the Joel. I am glad this conversation can start to come up again at a time when hoops seems to have a bright future.
 
The year is 2004-2005, If we had played in a better home arena we would have felt so good inside the players wouldn’t have lost those few road games, which means a one seed instead of a two seed, which means no West Virginia. It’s science!
 
The year is 2004-2005, If we had played in a better home arena we would have felt so good inside the players wouldn’t have lost those few road games, which means a one seed instead of a two seed, which means no West Virginia. It’s science!

Pitttsssssssssssssssnogggggggggggggggllllllllllllllllleeeeeeeeeeee
 
Can't remember, did people complain about the size of the Joel with Skip and Dino were head coaches? Isn't it just a matter of winning? Heck you see most teams with smaller arenas are not even remotely filling them up. Anyone know a site showing ACC BB attendance? Curious where wake falls.

You must be new here.
 
The year is 2004-2005, If we had played in a better home arena we would have felt so good inside the players wouldn’t have lost those few road games, which means a one seed instead of a two seed, which means no West Virginia. It’s science!

The year is 2022. Things have changed. Yet similar in some ways. We remain a small private school. But now we also have a decade of hoops futility.
 
The year is 2004-2005, If we had played in a better home arena we would have felt so good inside the players wouldn’t have lost those few road games, which means a one seed instead of a two seed, which means no West Virginia. It’s science!

Would it have stopped our point God from punching someone in the nuts?
 
So explain to me what the optimum arena looks like.
 
donaldross' post history is filled with detailed descriptions
 
Depends who is defining optimum. DR wants one on campus. Probably not realistic.
 
Are some people arguing that our basketball program would be totally different if Odom or Prosser had won wne or two more games in the NCAA tournament ? Because I’m not buying it.
 
So classic that you would make lifelong business decisions based on the tone of my take. That’s classic Wake Forest right there.

And of course, we can win here and there in any building. Bad investments cash all the time. Just not as often as good investments.

Sitting here in the Leon County Civic Center it always reminds me so much of all the missteps we made. And frankly the 30 year window shows nearly identical results. 2 ACC championships 4 sweet 16s and an Elite 8. We are Florida State. And you all are quite satisfied with that.

Bad reading comprehension - my problem is not based on your tone, it is based on the factual inaccuracies implicit in your exaggeration of the importance of the arena to the success of the program. That, along with your mis-characterization of the history of our program, prior to the last decade, as a failure, diminish your credibility.
 
I'm pretty sure his argument does back farther than the last decade, to the last 3+ decades to explain why we haven't ever really competed for a Championship. And to the extent that our building indicates our commitment to winning, I tend to agree with him. Despite the relative success we had for 2 decades under Odom/Skip/Dino (one of the top 25 programs in the nation for sure), the school has never prioritized basketball in the same way some of our tobacco road counterparts have. Looking back over his entire body of work, Wellman failed our men's bball program miserably...the last decade of utter awfulness was just the result of decades of failure and mismanagement coming to it's natural fruition.

Now, do I think a better building would have won us a Championship? Eh...hard to say. Do I think a better building, or even a better Joel, would have been the result of doing all the right things to try to win a Championship? Yes, absolutely.

I disagree that it HAS to be a new building. But if it's a revamp of the Joel, it has to be a massive revamp such that it's not recognizable from the inside. We need less* seats, steeper rows, less space to fill, more people closer to the action...a real dedicated basketball venue rather than a multi purpose stadium. It has to scream WFU from the time you pull into the parking lot. If the Joel can't be turned into that for less $$ than building new, then let's build new. Regardless, the time is quickly approaching now to get it done if we really do intend to build a program that contends for Championships.

You are correct that we have not made a final 4 but we have had teams that were good enough to compete for a title - a lot of stuff has to go right to go all the way and it just hasn't happened for us. It seems like we have always needed that one more good player to push us over the top - or Childress gets the flu, or Dawson dislocates his shoulder, or Rutland blows out his knee, or whatever... Luck is part of it for everyone and champions overcome - we just never got there.

*fewer

#1 factor in building a successful program, by a mile, is the coach. We've had good ones and we've had terrible ones and the difference in results was obvious - all in the same building.
 
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Your strawn men aren't helping your cause.

Answer two things:
1) Do you think the Joel is the optimum venue for Wake Forest basketball?
2) If no, do you think an optimum venue for Wake Forest basketball would contribute to better recruiting and better home court advantage?

I think we're talking past each other. I don't have a beef with anybody who believes it's time to start planning for life after LJVM. The place is over 30 years old and at some point will have to be replaced or undergo a big upgrade. I doubt that can be accomplished without a long-term (i.e., many years) fundraising effort and for several reasons I doubt it'll be prudent to launch an effort like that anytime soon. I'm sure there are people at Wake who are getting paid to crunch numbers and develop a plan along these lines.

I have a beef with people who claim that Wake's decision to partner with the city to build the Joel represented some massive failure of judgment and foresight and led to "decades" of "failure" for the MBB program--which is patently not true--and that the only true path is to mimic Duke in everything we do, including building an on-campus replica of Cameron.

dr has argued for twenty years that the Joel hurts recruiting but there's a long list of Wake alums in the NBA that suggests otherwise.
 
I'm pretty sure his argument does back farther than the last decade, to the last 3+ decades to explain why we haven't ever really competed for a Championship. And to the extent that our building indicates our commitment to winning, I tend to agree with him. Despite the relative success we had for 2 decades under Odom/Skip/Dino (one of the top 25 programs in the nation for sure), the school has never prioritized basketball in the same way some of our tobacco road counterparts have. Looking back over his entire body of work, Wellman failed our men's bball program miserably...the last decade of utter awfulness was just the result of decades of failure and mismanagement coming to it's natural fruition.

Now, do I think a better building would have won us a Championship? Eh...hard to say. Do I think a better building, or even a better Joel, would have been the result of doing all the right things to try to win a Championship? Yes, absolutely.

I disagree that it HAS to be a new building. But if it's a revamp of the Joel, it has to be a massive revamp such that it's not recognizable from the inside. We need less seats, steeper rows, less space to fill, more people closer to the action...a real dedicated basketball venue rather than a multi purpose stadium. It has to scream WFU from the time you pull into the parking lot. If the Joel can't be turned into that for less $$ than building new, then let's build new. Regardless, the time is quickly approaching now to get it done if we really do intend to build a program that contends for Championships.

Well said. And we've all heard Clawson talk about the football facilities when he got here in that same way.
 
Depends who is defining optimum. DR wants one on campus. Probably not realistic.

I disagree. I think the First assembly property would be perfect for an “on campus” arena - Wake already owns it and almost all the land and property surrounding it the main problem
Is building a different parking structure for Wake students
5e5fe7a1d61bbb974489051d157c7b94.jpg
 
I disagree. I think the First assembly property would be perfect for an “on campus” arena - Wake already owns it and almost all the land and property surrounding it the main problem
Is building a different parking structure for Wake students
5e5fe7a1d61bbb974489051d157c7b94.jpg

For many years, prospective students thought the God Dome was our home arena.
 
I don’t really understand the people who say Wake doesn’t have room to build on-campus. Wake owns so much of the surrounding land and property that it could extend the campus in multiple directions, or build next to campus. Why couldn’t we re-develop the Reynolda Business Center property? It’s currently 22 acres and could be expanded
f247c7436076931ce82e5804498dd7f2.jpg
 
I don’t really understand the people who say Wake doesn’t have room to build on-campus. Wake owns so much of the surrounding land and property that it could extend the campus in multiple directions, or build next to campus. Why couldn’t we re-develop the Reynolda Business Center property? It’s currently 22 acres and could be expanded

Last I heard there were plans for a few administrative departments to move into this building.
 
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