Strickland33
Well-known member
I think Ron Wellman, regardless of a lot of Wake Forest fans opinions, is still highly respected by most in the coaching/AD world. Nothing solid to base that off of, just my opinion.
I disagree that RW isn't a coach's AD. He has proven himself to defend a coach almost to a fault. I agree that the Dino Gaudio firing was extremely questionable, but I think that could be explained away if the coach asks him point blank about why that decision was made. Once again, we do not know the whole RW vs. DG story and there could very well be a lot more to it than the public knows about. If the coach has serious concerns about that I believe that RW will have no problem at all explaining to him exactly what happened and why it happened.
You have to keep in mind that the opinions and knowledge that we have as fans are not necessarily the same views that potential coaches would have coming into a possible coaching position here.
I'm not as sure that we can land Shaka Smart as RJ is, but I do think we can land a coach that has won on a fairly high stage at the NCAA level before.
On an aside...a lot of people here acknowledge that Ron Wellman identified Brad Stevens as a potential coach before he even reached back to back Final Fours. While he was unable to secure the deal, potentially because Stevens went to the Final Four that year, it does say a lot about RW and his ability to distinguish talent in an up and coming basketball coach. That right there is half the battle. This time, he needs to complete the second step and actually hire said coach.
I agree that there are a fair amount of questions surrounding our basketball team and the AD that led us into this situation. I, however, am not completely willing to write off his ability to right the ship and turn it around to where we need to be.
Fair points.
This point is ridiculous. Of course, Wellman identified Stevens as a potential coach prior to the Final Fours. So did everyone else. Any coach who takes a mid-major to an at-large caliber seed is going to be on ADs' radars. As of the time of Gaudio's firing, Stevens had done it three years in a row - the first as the second-youngest coach in D1, the second after losing four starters from the previous year's team, and the third as a preseason top-10 team (thanks, Wikipedia!) - and he was all of what, 33?. The ability to distinguish an up-and-coming coach in Stevens is about equivalent to the ability to distinguish Michael Jordan as an up-and-coming player after he hit the jumper to beat Georgetown - you might not know just how great they'll become but you know they're going to be pretty damn good.
Also true.