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Odom

SC DEAC said:
Imagine our next coach getting us into the NCAA tourney in his second year and then being in the postseason every single season afterwards. Imagine our next coach winning back to back ACC tourneys. Imagine him recruiting some of the absolute best players ever to set foot on wake"s campus. And be an all around good guy through it all. Holy cow, we would love that guy and want him to baptize our children. That was Odom and the fans that went through the Staak era certainly appreciate him more than the younger post Staak fans did.
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And then Butler happened. There was no saving the marriage after Butler.
 
quadrupledeac said:
And then Butler happened. There was no saving the marriage after Butler.
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that was just the final straw, there had been a growing restlessness among a portion of the fanbase since the end of the Duncan era. Mainly a feeling that he failed to capitalize on the success of the Rogers/Childress/Duncan years from a recruiting standpoint (ala Grobe/OB). Also there was a sentiment that he would not be able to take our program to the Duke/UNC level because he couldn't/wouldn't compete with them on the recruiting trail. Odom was more apt to take chances on less regarded recruits which resulted in a ton of transfers. He not only coined but also represented the term LOWF for many fans. There were also frustrations with his slow paced offense which many fans felt contributed to his recruiting deficiencies. Our difficulties inbounding the ball at times used to drive me crazy.

in retrospect Odom's recruiting was much better than he was given credit for. In 10 classes, he brought in 4 retired jerseys along with 5 additional All-Acc players plus a bunch of quality guys like Dawson, Scooter, Blucas, Levy & Taron. Odom had some bad luck getting a few key recruits qualified/admitted and then Loren Woods was such a fucking head case that Odom became jaded about elite recruits and focused mainly on europeans & sleepers. Still, he left Skip with upper level ACC talent along with commits from Joyce & Strickland plus a foot in the door with Gray & E.

Overall a very good coach (arguably our best ever). He rescued our program from a dismal 4 years, took WF to national prominence and kept us there for the majority of his tenure.
 
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Good post, devi8.
 
I'll wonder about three things with Odom:
1) the lost recruiting class of Blom, and Shon Colman (sp). I don't think Blom ever played in the US but he played professionally in Europe and I think I remember he made some all star teams.. Coleman ended up Juco and played SEC ball. IIRC. Not that either would have been all acc-but they would have contributed and to whiff on an entire year of recruiting is a hard thing to overcome.
2) If Loren Woods didn't have weak hands and a weak head. If Loren could have just stayed in the center and played the role of rebounder and shot blocker to let Tim go the 4 his senior year. He had talent, just aghrhh. Damit.
3) Jason Parker. Odom coached him over the summer for an all-star team. UNC kicked him out over an error on their reading of his transcript. He wanted to come here, but we were asked to back off and we did. He ended up playing at KY and being a 9 and 9 kind of guy for his career at KY. He could have easily been the same for us. Again, just a huge potential talent lost to us.
 
Agree that Odom is the best coach in Wake history. Prosser might have surpassed him had he lived, but we'll never know.
 
I haven't thought about Jason Parker in many years. Good memory.
 
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Parker was only at UK one year, 2001-2002. They lost in the Sweet 16 to USC. He had his best game that night, a double double. Pretty sure after that he failed another piss test and Odom tried to get him in at South Carolina but it never worked out. Odom was close to his parents through all of the recruiting years.
 
Odom did end up getting him at South Carolina and he promptly either flunked out or pissed out before he ever played a single minute.
 
The other thing that is wish we could have watched play out for Odom/Wake was Mahkter Ndiaye, . Never became a star but he was tough and played hard. He also would have played the enforcer role, letting Tim play power forward. I think those 2 would have been hard to hand ,defensively,on the boards, and Tim was such a great passer he would have added about 6 points/game to Mahkter's ave. I know a lot of wake people got passed when he ended up at INC. But my dad was still broadcasting for Wake at that time, and Mahkter was crushed when he was forced out by the NCAA.
 
devi8 said:
that was just the final straw, there had been a growing restlessness among a portion of the fanbase since the end of the Duncan era. Mainly a feeling that he failed to capitalize on the success of the Rogers/Childress/Duncan years from a recruiting standpoint (ala Grobe/OB). Also there was a sentiment that he would not be able to take our program to the Duke/UNC level because he couldn't/wouldn't compete with them on the recruiting trail. Odom was more apt to take chances on less regarded recruits which resulted in a ton of transfers. He not only coined but also represented the term LOWF for many fans. There were also frustrations with his slow paced offense which many fans felt contributed to his recruiting deficiencies. Our difficulties inbounding the ball at times used to drive me crazy.

in retrospect Odom's recruiting was much better than he was given credit for. In 10 classes, he brought in 4 retired jerseys along with 5 additional All-Acc players plus a bunch of quality guys like Dawson, Scooter, Blucas, Levy & Taron. Odom had some bad luck getting a few key recruits qualified/admitted and then Loren Woods was such a fucking head case that Odom became jaded about elite recruits and focused mainly on europeans & sleepers. Still, he left Skip with upper level ACC talent along with commits from Joyce & Strickland plus a foot in the door with Gray & E.

Overall a very good coach (arguably our best ever). He rescued our program from a dismal 4 years, took WF to national prominence and kept us there for the majority of his tenure.
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Odom recruited well at the beginning and the end but horribly in the middle. A lot of that I blame on Ricky Stokes. After Stokes left, and Haith came in, that's when we landed that ROK class and JoHo.
 
chill43 said:
The other thing that is wish we could have watched play out for Odom/Wake was Mahkter Ndiaye, . Never became a star but he was tough and played hard. He also would have played the enforcer role, letting Tim play power forward. I think those 2 would have been hard to hand ,defensively,on the boards, and Tim was such a great passer he would have added about 6 points/game to Mahkter's ave. I know a lot of wake people got passed when he ended up at INC. But my dad was still broadcasting for Wake at that time, and Mahkter was crushed when he was forced out by the NCAA.
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We bemoan the number of (almost) "in-the-bag" recruits that UNC has swiped from us at the last minute (and with good reason), but that does afford the occasional opportunity for the Holes to take a Neil Fingleton or Orlando Melendez off our hands. IIRC, the 7'7" (!)Fingleton could hardly get up/down the court at UNC b/c of conditioning, transferred to Holy Cross and averaged less than 5 pts/rbs a game.
 
chill43 said:
The other thing that is wish we could have watched play out for Odom/Wake was Mahkter Ndiaye, . Never became a star but he was tough and played hard. He also would have played the enforcer role, letting Tim play power forward. I think those 2 would have been hard to hand ,defensively,on the boards, and Tim was such a great passer he would have added about 6 points/game to Mahkter's ave. I know a lot of wake people got passed when he ended up at INC. But my dad was still broadcasting for Wake at that time, and Mahkter was crushed when he was forced out by the NCAA.
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Screw Mahktar. I think we dodged a bullet with him too. He would have somehow corrupted Duncan. He seems like the kind of guy who would have planted his weed in Duncan's bag on trips and let Duncan take the fall if he got caught.
 
Odom surrounded Duncan with Rutland, Braswell, Allen, Peral and Goolsby as sixth man. I mean read those names!


Rutland was the only one who deserved to be on an ACC court. Sean freakin Allen?


Ultimately, that's my overriding memory of Odom; a complete failure at putting together a team around Duncan that could win a national championship.
 
Ralph Medlin said:
Odom surrounded Duncan with Rutland, Braswell, Allen, Peral and Goolsby as sixth man. I mean read those names!


Rutland was the only one who deserved to be on an ACC court. Sean freakin Allen?


Ultimately, that's my overriding memory of Odom; a complete failure at putting together a team around Duncan that could win a national championship.
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agreed how did that happen with duncan staying 4 years?
 
Ralph Medlin said:
Odom surrounded Duncan with Rutland, Braswell, Allen, Peral and Goolsby as sixth man. I mean read those names!


Rutland was the only one who deserved to be on an ACC court. Sean freakin Allen?


Ultimately, that's my overriding memory of Odom; a complete failure at putting together a team around Duncan that could win a national championship.
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My recollection is that Rutland was the only 4* out of that lot. I believe he played HS ball in the same backcourt with Iverson, and I think we were recruiting Iverson till the bowling alley incident. But yes, you are correct. Odom and Stokes weren't able to recruit shite outside of Rutland (well, I liked Goolsby as a 6th man) to play with the best player in college ball.
 
He also had a 5* recruit.
120405124714_loren-woods.jpg
 
Even more funny, in a not so funny way, is that Sean Allen was a transfer and Wake at the time was all uppity about transfers.

I mean if you are going to break some unwritten rule about transfers do it with a badass from a community college in Texas not Sean "I can't tell if he actually played by the boxscore" Allen.
 
qcdeac said:
He also had a 5* recruit.
120405124714_loren-woods.jpg
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As I said, the only 4*.:D My bad, though. How could I forget Loren Woods? While I think we all agree that Lute Olsen used him better than Odom did, Woods just had zero lower body strength. He may have been the easiest big ever to push out of the lane.
 
qcdeac said:
Screw Mahktar. I think we dodged a bullet with him too. He would have somehow corrupted Duncan. He seems like the kind of guy who would have planted his weed in Duncan's bag on trips and let Duncan take the fall if he got caught.
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Not sure if serious. But if so, if Mahktar planted his weed in Duncan's bag, it would have had plenty of company.
 
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