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A little trip down memory lane courtesy of NC State...

myDeaconmyhand said:
To be fair, Tony Woods stepped on a crack and broke his baby mama's back during Dino's tenure. If any of that culture stuff is true, it was probably the Teague/Clark-Bandgirl situation that may have gotten Dino fired.
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The Tony Woods incident happened after Dino was fired. And the Teague/Clark stuff wasn't made public until after he was fired. If you are going to fire someone after three years for one behind the scenes culture incident (or you know for not winning in the postseason) you better be damn sure you have a replacement lined up that is going to be better at those things.
 
DCDeac said:
Completely agree - zero returning starters with some hyped freshmen. But when you take a coaching position and replace the entire staff you can never count on recruits staying. Coaches that wanted their own staff were more hesitant to take the job. And that fact I REALLY hold against Wellman because I think he's made that mistake twice. Once by promoting Dino to save our recruiting class, and once when hiring [Redacted] because he knew he could get him and keep Battle/Rusty to keep our recruits. But yeah, I don't excuse Ty in the least for his attitude and damage he caused Wake, and I don't excuse [Redacted]'s crap handling of Dino's recruits even though I really hated JTT and Ari's attitude/style.

But for about the 10th time, a criticism of Dino is not a vote in favor of [Redacted]. You actually can criticize Dino for Ty and criticize [Redacted] handling Carson as well. I will say whether Ty was overrated or not has nothing to do with whether Dino handled his freshman year well. People act like you have to declare a redshirt. You don't. You just don't play the kid. He basically redshirted him without getting the benefit of redshirting because Ty ordered him to.

Anyway, enough of this tired stuff. Dino is a good dude and was a great assistant coach and recruiter for Skip. He could make a great head coach some day and I hope he gets his shot and works his way up to a position like Wake again. I hope now that [Redacted] has "his guys" we are all shocked by a great year this year.

The reality is we will probably struggle and we'll probably fire [Redacted], and it'll be in Wellman's hands again to right the ship - if he makes it that long.
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You said their ranking as a class turned out to be bull. Implying that they were overrated and that bz's coaching had nothing to do with their success or failure.

You also said wellmans biggest failure was not firing Dino after year one. That makes a comparison to [Redacted] and a discussion about the timing and reasons surrounding Dino's firing appropriate in refuting that claim.

Dino was not an elite coach, and he should have done more with what he had, but he was light years ahead of what we have now.

You act as if firing Dino after year 3 was a no brainer and that we just screwed up the next step. In reality the firing of Dino was questionable at best and absolutely horrid given the replacement. Saying otherwise is revisionist history.
 
RChildress107 said:
Dino was not an elite coach, and he should have done more with what he had,
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That's a hell of an understatement. I can admit that our half court offense looked like shit most of the time while Dino was here, but I think a lot of that has to do with shooting. Most people don't consider the fact that he had no reliable shooters during his tenure, so when Dino's entire team of slashers couldn't break a zone or beat their man, they all stood around waiting for Ish to do something. I don't think our 2009 team ever makes the tournament without the shooting ability of CJ and Ari.
 
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DCDeac said:
I could give a shit what his "coaching style" was. He took one of the best runs of talent in Wake Forest history over a 3 year period and won ONE postseason game. And that one was over a horrid Texas team and it took a hero shot by Ish to save it. I remember the commentators describing that game as a battle of who wanted to lose more.

He wasn't going to succeed. He was already handed the most talent he'd ever see in his career on the court at one time and he couldn't get out of the first round of the ACC tournament with it.

You can continue posting about how wonderful Dino is all you want - I imagine you had a personal relationship or something which would explain the denial. DeacLaw nails exactly what it was like under Dino, and the results speak for themselves. I'd bet if you look at all the programs in history who had 4 NBA players (3 being top 20 draft picks) in the course of 3 years you won't find a single example of a team managing only one postseason win.

As for your refusal to understand that any mention of Dino's failures is not a defense of [Redacted], I assume you just do that to mask your weak Dino defense. The point is retaining Dino after his first failure of a year put us on the road to [Redacted] and our current hell. I really wonder how close Wellman was to pulling the trigger after that year. I wonder who we could have gotten at the time.
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This is where you lose me. You can argue that Dino shouldn't have been hired and that he underachieved but his performances here did not put us on the road to Bz. The only thing that put us on the road to Bz was Wellman when he hired Bz. As I said, Dino had his faults here, no questions, but he did nothing that should have led us to Bz. Period. Wellman's hiring of Bz remains a truly horrible decision and the only one person responsible for it is him.
 
myDeaconmyhand said:
That's a hell of an understatement. I can admit that our half court offense looked like shit most of the time while Dino was here, but I think a lot of that has to do with shooting. Most people don't consider the fact that he had no reliable shooters during his tenure, so when Dino's entire team of slashers couldn't break a zone or beat their man, they all stood around waiting for Ish to do something. I don't think our 2009 team ever makes the tournament without the shooting ability of CJ and Ari.
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Pretty spot on.

Dino was certainly not a great coach, but his W/L record didn't warrant firing at the time he was let go, and certainly not if you don't have a sure thing replacement. I said at the time that this would be a risky move that could end up completely blowing up in our face.

When the same people who insisted on calling Dino the worst coach ever are now trying to rationalize why he is responsible for our current state when he won 70% of his games and left the program of our stature in as solid of a state as you can leave a program that has 3 senior starters and an early NBA departure is just ridiculous rationalization. They have set it up nicely so that they can't be wrong in hindsight.
 
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myDeaconmyhand said:
That's a hell of an understatement. I can admit that our half court offense looked like shit most of the time while Dino was here, but I think a lot of that has to do with shooting. Most people don't consider the fact that he had no reliable shooters during his tenure, so when Dino's entire team of slashers couldn't break a zone or beat their man, they all stood around waiting for Ish to do something. I don't think our 2009 team ever makes the tournament without the shooting ability of CJ and Ari.
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I remember winning at Carolina that year and I sent a friend of mine a text and said "Wow look how good we are when we can hit 3's (9-16 that game)." The problem was we didn't do it with any consistency and zone defense worked against us more often then not.
 
ProbationDeac said:
I remember winning at Carolina that year and I sent a friend of mine a text and said "Wow look how good we are when we can hit 3's (9-16 that game)." The problem was we didn't do it with any consistency and zone defense worked against us more often then not.
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CJ hit a wall about midway through ACC play. That's when we started to lose games.
 
Caturday said:
There should be a single thread with all of these remarkable statistics. My favorite is Bzz's road record vs BCS schools. I forget what it is exactly but it's pathetic.
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Great idea. A tacked thread with various stats on head basketball coaches from Tacy on would be outstanding.
 
And people thought Odom underachieved with the talent we had then... ouch.
 
bobknightfan said:
DC's thinking is evidently just too deep for some people to follow....but he is dead-on in his analysis, whether some of you understand it or not.
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you've become a parody of yourself, congrats.
 
ProbationDeac said:
This is where you lose me. You can argue that Dino shouldn't have been hired and that he underachieved but his performances here did not put us on the road to Bz. The only thing that put us on the road to Bz was Wellman when he hired Bz. As I said, Dino had his faults here, no questions, but he did nothing that should have led us to Bz. Period. Wellman's hiring of Bz remains a truly horrible decision and the only one person responsible for it is him.
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Let me put it another way and see if you agree. Let's say that Wellman was pretty much cornered into letting Dino take over after Skip's tragic passing. I think this is fair, because we were reeling as a school and a fanbase as was the team, and replacing the whole staff would have been brutal.

Now let's say Wellman watched our team and Dino that year and decided, as many of us did on the boards, that while we liked Dino he simply wasn't going to be the head of the Wake Forest basketball program.

Do you think there is any way on this earth that Jeff [Redacted] or anyone of his stature would have been chosen as Wake's next head coach when we had Teague, Johnson, and Ish returning with Aminu in the wings? I think the answer is obviously no. And I think that Dino's firing after year 3 when he actually won an NCAA game is proof that Wellman didn't believe he was our guy, and probably suspected it from year 1 despite being extremely supportive publicly (which is his job).

Nothing excuses the [Redacted] hire. But you set yourself up as an AD for a failed hire when you hire at a low point versus hiring when you return a strong team. My point is that I think Wellman suspected Dino wasn't the guy after year 1, I think we were in good shape then for an awesome hire at that point, and I think he balked. Then he pulled the trigger in year 3, gave a suspect explanation for why that pissed off the fans, talked himself into [Redacted] as a rebuilder who'd do things "the right way" and had NBA ties, and the rest is history.
 
BobStackFan4Life said:
I hear Brad Stevens is going to be our next coach.
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That would bring a lot of fans back, but it most likely would cost 2 or 3x what it would have cost for us to get him 3 years ago. The program has been so tarnished by Wellman/[Redacted] these past 2 years that It'll be hard to get any top tier coach now. :(
 
DCDeac said:
Now let's say Wellman watched our team and Dino that year and decided, as many of us did on the boards, that while we liked Dino he simply wasn't going to be the head of the Wake Forest basketball program.
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Since when was firing Dino after his first season even a possibility? I honestly think you are revising history by continuing to bring that up as if it almost happened. Dino was not going to get fired coming off a 17 win season with the ATT class coming in. I had a front row seat from that entire season, along with other insights into the program and I have no idea where you're coming up with this.
 
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myDeaconmyhand said:
Since when was firing Dino after his first season even a possibility? I honestly think you are revising history by continuing to bring that up as if it almost happened. Dino was not going to get fired coming off a 17 win season with the ATT class coming in. I had a front row seat from that entire season, along with other insights into the program and I have no idea where you're coming up with this.
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Oct. 22, 2007

GREENSBORO, N.C. - Wake Forest was picked to finish 11th in the Atlantic Coast Conference this season by a vote of the media members attending the 2007 ACC Operation Basketball on Sunday at the Grandover Resort and Conference Center.
The Demon Deacons are coming off a season in which they finished 15-16 overall and 5-11 in the ACC. Wake finished tied for 10th in the final conference standings but still advanced to the quarterfinal round of the ACC Tournament. The Deacs were picked to finish 10th in last year's preseason poll.
Wake Forest returns four starters from last year's squad. The Deacs will feature a young team this season with just two upperclassmen in senior Cameron Stanley and junior Harvey Hale.
The Deacons received 157 points in the voting, finishing just five behind Virginia Tech for ninth. Wake Forest was picked as high as seventh on two ballots.
The Deacons were shut out of the preseason teams for the second straight season. Freshman James Johnson received two votes for ACC Preseason Rookie of the Year.
Kyle Singler of Duke was voted as the 2007 ACC Preseason Rookie of the Year, beating out NC State's J.J. Hickson who took second in the voting.
North Carolina's Tyler Hansbrough was the ACC Preseason Player of the Year for the second straight season. Hansbrough received 60 of the possible 64 votes. Virginia's Sean Singletary received the other four votes.
Hansbrough and the Tar Heels were a unanimous selection as the preseason favorite in the league. Duke and NC State followed in second and third in the poll.
Clemson, Virginia, Maryland, Georgia Tech, Boston College and Florida State rounded out spots 4-9. Miami was picked to finish last.
Wake Forest opens the 2007-08 season against Fairfield on Friday, Nov. 9, at 7 p.m.
Preseason ACC Poll
1. North Carolina (64), 768
2. Duke, 653
3. NC State, 641
4. Clemson, 514
5. Virginia, 492
6. Maryland, 447
7. Georgia Tech, 389
8. Boston College, 332
9. Florida State, 284
10. Virginia Tech, 162
11. Wake Forest, 157
12. Miami, 153




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ACC Preseason Team
Tyler Hansbrough, Jr., North Carolina
Sean Singletary, Sr., Virginia
Tyrese Rice, Jr., Boston College
Brandon Costner, So., NC State
Ty Lawson, So., North Carolina ACC Preseason Player of the Year
Tyler Hansbrough, Jr., North Carolina (60)
Sean Singletary, Sr., Virginia (4)
ACC Preseason Rookie of the Year
Kyle Singler, Duke (36)
J.J. Hickson, NC State (15)
Nolan Smith, Duke (5)
5 others with 8 votes
 
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