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Why Manning has a tough road to rebuilding Wake Basketball

PhDeac said:
How many Wake students would choose to take classes at another Winston area college? Hard to imagine it would be that many.
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As Wake starts to offer undergrad classes in Innovation Quarter I could see this being a possibility 5-10 years from now. Wake Forest and WSSU already have some partnerships at the graduate and postgraduate levels centered around Innovation Quarter so it's not a huge leap to think something similar might be developed at the undergrad level.
 
RChildress107 said:
This is a load of shit. A degree has always been a back-up plan for the best college players, that didn't suddenly change in 2010. Players needed to win championships have always put their basketball careers above their educations (as they should btw).

The average stay of top players may be shorter than it was in the 90's but if anything that should work in our favor. It's a lot harder to hide a poor student at Wake for 3-4 years than it is for 1-2.

Our academic "standards" haven't restricted who we recruit and I doubt they have scared away many recruits (at least when compared to other top 50 academic institutions).
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Absolutely.

BUT the number of players entering the draft early has risen in the last decade. There were 50 (give or take) in 2015. There were 39 in 2000 (and that includes players who declared directly out of HS and community college players).

The landscape has changed. Duke has had 5 or 6 one/two and done players since 2010. Prior to that, they had (maybe) 5 freshman or sophomores declare early entry. Wake was about equal with Duke in early entrants prior to 2010. The Duke/NCCU partnership began around 2007-2008...Prior to that, K had a history of developing kids over 4 years (long enough to hate them). He changed what worked for him for so many years to fit the current climate of college basketball. His AD trusts him and has allowed him to make necessary changes in order to win.

While our restrictions may not be the sole reason top recruits don't choose Wake, they certainly don't make the entire Wake package more attractive- 6 years of historical lows, an unproven coach who hasn't won, high rate of player transfers, no players drafted in the last 6 years...how does a coach sell that to a recruit who has ten other more attractive options?

I've said it 100 times before- coaches will tell you that WFU operates under self-imposed sanctions. This doesn't just apply to academics and it's affects on recruiting, but it does play a big part.
 
RChildress107 said:
As Wake starts to offer undergrad classes in Innovation Quarter I could see this being a possibility 5-10 years from now. Wake Forest and WSSU already have some partnerships at the graduate and postgraduate levels centered around Innovation Quarter so it's not a huge leap to think something similar might be developed at the undergrad level.
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IIRC, this is how the Duke & NCCU partnership started.
 
KVegasDeac said:
Absolutely.

BUT the number of players entering the draft early has risen in the last decade. There were 50 (give or take) in 2015. There were 39 in 2000 (and that includes players who declared directly out of HS and community college players).

The landscape has changed. Duke has had 5 or 6 one/two and done players since 2010. Prior to that, they had (maybe) 5 freshman or sophomores declare early entry. Wake was about equal with Duke in early entrants prior to 2010. The Duke/NCCU partnership began around 2007-2008...Prior to that, K had a history of developing kids over 4 years (long enough to hate them). He changed what worked for him for so many years to fit the current climate of college basketball. His AD trusts him and has allowed him to make necessary changes in order to win.

While our restrictions may not be the sole reason top recruits don't choose Wake, they certainly don't make the entire Wake package more attractive- 6 years of historical lows, an unproven coach who hasn't won, high rate of player transfers, no players drafted in the last 6 years...how does a coach sell that to a recruit who has ten other more attractive options?

I've said it 100 times before- coaches will tell you that WFU operates under self-imposed sanctions. This doesn't just apply to academics and it's affects on recruiting, but it does play a big part.
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I just don't buy it. While it's pretty clear that WFU has been operating under self-imposed sanctions since Dino left there is no evidence that a clear-cut, uniform academic standard has played a part in that.

K has always been about getting the best players. K's embrace of one-and-done's is mainly a media fiction. He's been recruiting potential early entrants since Elton Brand. Even after he was "blindsided" by the departures of William Avery and Corey Maggette he kept recruiting potential one-and-done guys.

Shaun Livingston, Luol Deng, Josh McRoberts and Kyrie Irving all come to mind.

Not to mention the battles K lost like: John Wall, Brandan Wright, Kevin Love, Greg Monroe, Patrick Patterson, Kris Humphries etc.

In fact it's hard to find a year where Duke wasn't pursuing a potential one-and-done player.
 
BudatWake said:
You look at some of the mid major teams that are playing well this time of year and wonder why we are having so much trouble resurrecting our program. We tend to just blame Manning and Wellman, but there are a few other problems,

1. Tough admission standards-- hard to get some marginal players in school
2. Our requirements. Some kids don't want foreign language, math and actually be expected to attend class.
3. Difficult transfer rules
4. Located in a small southern town
5. Actually enforce academic and conduct rules.

These factors and others it seems to me significantly reduce the pool of players Manning can recruit and on top of that we play in a tough conference.

Maybe of the higher ups at Wake would realize the importance of having success in sports to the rest of the University we could show some flexibility on some of these issues and be more competitive. I am not suggesting we lower ourselves to, say, Louisville level, but there can be a happy medium.
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I'm sure this has already been mentioned, but how does Duke do it? Stanford, in past years? Notre Dame?

Small southern town? Winston isn't Broadway, but it's hardly small.
 
Wake Forest doesn't have a "system" for student athletes. Not a UNC system of academic fraud and cheating, but a system that helps our student athletes in the classroom and on the court/field that is within NCAA guidelines.

In order to have a system like this, you must have willing participants who understand the game of big time college sports. Wake Forest doesn't employ many of those.

Someone said that we should be able to hide an athlete who struggles academically for 1-2 years, and while this is true, it's much harder to hide them when the student body is 3500 than it is when the student body is 15,000.

We are also scared to death of doing something wrong in regards to recruiting and retaining players that we suffocate ourselves with rules and are perceived as uptight. So many other programs toe the line of NCAA violations that we put ourselves in a deficit. Our social media activity is a prime example.
 
Virginia is a great school but it is not on the same level of academically challenging as Wake is.
 
duke players taking classes at nccu!!!! is one of the dumbest, bitchiest lines I've seen around here. Any student can take 1 class per semester at nccu, unc, state, etc. if it's not offered at duke. That isn't keeping kids eligible, a good academic support program is.
 
KVegasDeac said:
Wake Forest doesn't have a "system" for student athletes. Not a UNC system of academic fraud and cheating, but a system that helps our student athletes in the classroom and on the court/field that is within NCAA guidelines.

In order to have a system like this, you must have willing participants who understand the game of big time college sports. Wake Forest doesn't employ many of those.

Someone said that we should be able to hide an athlete who struggles academically for 1-2 years, and while this is true, it's much harder to hide them when the student body is 3500 than it is when the student body is 15,000.

We are also scared to death of doing something wrong in regards to recruiting and retaining players that we suffocate ourselves with rules and are perceived as uptight. So many other programs toe the line of NCAA violations that we put ourselves in a deficit. Our social media activity is a prime example.
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You're just grasping at straws here. How did we win the ACC Championship in football 9 years ago without this "system" you describe? How were we ranked #1 in the country in basketball 7 years ago if we didn't have a system? How did the soccer team go from unranked to #1 in the country for the most of the season without this "system," just this year? We've been bad in basketball because of coaching - that's it. The rest is just excuses.
 
BDL said:
duke players taking classes at nccu!!!! is one of the dumbest, bitchiest lines I've seen around here. Any student can take 1 class per semester at nccu, unc, state, etc. if it's not offered at duke. That isn't keeping kids eligible, a good academic support program is.
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So they need to be eligible for a semester right? That's one for the summer when they get there, and then another in the fall. That makes 2 classes at Duke, and 2 classes at NCCU for 12 credit hours.

I think you are correct in the fact that academic support is what is needed the most, but the NCCU partnership no doubt helps out.
 
I'm sure there's some truth to the idea that Wake has it tougher than many programs - but most of these posts are blowing it completely out of proportion. Nor are we anywhere close to unique - Wake is just one of many universities that has conflict between successful sports programs and rigorous academics. Take jucos for example. Sure, Wake doesn't take non-qualifier jucos and some other programs do. But plenty don't, and the whole idea is overrated anyway. If you're a legit player who can't cut it in the classroom you go to a prep school. If you go the JUCO route as non-qualified it generally means you suck. Sure, every now and then a few players come out of juco land and have an impact, but it's a farce to think focusing on jucos would have any real impact on our program long-term.

As for the "shadow sanctions" we've put ourselves under, I think anyone who attended Wake during the Odom/Prosser years knows that there were athlete classes at Wake, and that plenty of players got in with minimum qualifications. Maybe the [Redacted] debacle was an overreaction to a perceived loss of control or maybe it was all bullshit excuses, but clearly Wellman (foolishly) believed we could ignore talent, focus on 4 year student-first athletes, and succeed. To that end KVegas is right that those days are long gone - particularly for a school like Wake in the ACC.

That being said, both Clawson and Manning do not seem to be operating under the same restrictions as [Redacted] and Grobe. They're reaching out to more talented players, receiving more exceptions, and Wellman has pretty much shut up about all the winning-in-the-classroom crap. Sure Hudson got booted and Giles chose Duke - but the fact that both were green-lit for admission (and that none of our 4 rising sophomores had any issues at all) says a lot about the current atmosphere.

There will always be tension between admissions and athletics at Wake - but to act like we're at some huge disadvantage right now or that our coaches' hands are tied is ridiculous.
 
Isn't there currently some degree of reciprocity with Salem and WSSU? When I was at Wake (mid to late 90s), I had a fraternity brother who would take classes at Salem. Supposedly, if you could prove the Wake class doesn't fit in your schedule, you could take it at Salem or WSSU.
 
The 4 year plan would work if we had coaches who consistently recruited top 75 talent that was a good fit in the ACC and helped them develop their skills over the years. But that's clearly not what is happening.
 
PhDeac said:
The 4 year plan would work if we had coaches who consistently recruited top 75 talent that was a good fit in the ACC and helped them develop their skills over the years. But that's clearly not what is happening.
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I would be down with this. Also add that we can't keep recruiting monster classes every couple of years.
 
Schools ranked ahead of WFU in USNWR that regularly do well in athletics: Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, Cal, UCLA, USC, UVA (you could also add Rice and Georgetown for baseball and basketball, among other sports, but obviously not football).

Schools ranked just below WFU that regularly do well in athletics: Michigan, UNC (*snicker), Georgia Tech, Illinois, Wisconsin.

USNWR isn't the end-all, be-all and obviously there are other factors - school size, tuition, location, conference, etc - but the academics argument is, and always will be, crap.
 
I'm not quite sure why you love to shoot the messenger. The topic of this thread is "Why Manning Has a Tough Road to Rebuilding Wake Basketball". I'm giving you reasons that have been expressed to me when I've asked similar questions over the last 6 years. Believe it or not, this topic has been discussed by individuals in the athletic department for several years. Sure, it's appears to be an excuse, but sadly it's reality at Wake. We always think that our admission standards are a roadblock for recruits, and while they have been in some cases, they are actually a small part of the problem.

As far as grasping at straws- we don't have a system. If we had a system, we would experience sustained success instead of a few good years every once in a while.

When was our last ACC championship in basketball? Our last final four?

Football...prior to 2006, when was our last sustained run of bowl games and winning seasons? Every squirrel finds a nut once in a while...but in order to enjoy the type of long-term success in revenue sports like Duke, WFU needs to make several necessary changes in how they view the student athlete. The traditional student athlete that Wake covets is near extinction.

Revenue sports are affected more than non-rev for many reasons. The population of basketball and football players differs greatly from the soccer, baseball, golf, tennis population and a system of degree programs or a consortium with local universities would greatly benefit basketball and football.

Duke's athletes benefit greatly from the NCCU consortium. They take MORE than one class there (mostly gen-Ed) and it is a form of academic support for their athletes. It is a huge selling point for recruits...something that Wake could offer if we wanted.
 
I think you pretty much have to exclude large state universities, even those very highly ranked, because there are easier programs in which you can hide athletes. UCLA is a top 10 ranked public school, but you can't tell me athletes are not loading up on classes/programs you don't have at WFU or other highly rated smaller private schools.
 
The fact that some feel we are "above" what the likes of Duke, Vanderbilt, Notre Dame and Stanford do to stay competitive in high-level DI athletics is pathetic.
 
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