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Bob Staak vs. Jeff Bzdelick

So which one of you is going to arrange for Bzz to meet up with a cheerleader at Village Tavern?…it may be the only way out of this
 
Never thought I would say this but GIVE me Staak!
 
Azdeac said:
The one thing Staak did right was take a perennial loser like Xavier and turned them into a respectable program. He earned his shot at Wake - he just didn't have what it took to compete in the ACC.
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Remember what a terrible situation Wake basketball was in during Staak's tenure. Home games 30 miles from campus at Greensboro Coliseum. Wake can't put 15000 in Joel in Winston-Salem in a very good year. Imagine what things were like in a larger Greensboro Coliseum with a not-so-good team. Then imagine trying to recruit into that situation. Staak might have done better had he had a home court. As mentioned, he did well at Xavier.
 
The transition to Staak from Tacy was a horrible situation. Tacy quit in the summer after all the coaching moves had been made. Kenny Green our star Soph, opted for the NBA. Charlie Thomas our next upcoming star, IIRC, flunked out in his soph year, hence the eventual transfer. Robert Siler, who could jump through the roof and I believe also was a fairly highly recruited football player, blew out both knees on separate occasions. Keys did his knee something like game 1 or 2 of his freshman year and I don't think every played again. We also had Mark Cline, who I believe was on the HS AA team but never took it to the same level in college. Sam Ivy who looked to be a potential star but contracted some mysterious illness that took them several years to figure out. Staak did have a 5' 3" PG rising Jr who turned into an NBA player which was the only thing that saved him. Staak had a lot of bad luck, but if he didn't have Bogues we probably don't win an ACC game for hist 1st two years. Bogues blew out all the assist records and he had no one to pass the ball to.

State ACCT game, the Bogues call was a double foul. Memory is foggy but may have also fouled him out or given him 4 fouls late in the game. In his last year, the State 4OT game came when we fouled to prevent the 3 point shot and they make one and get the rebound to tie the game. We lost to Sienna at home, but also beat UNC at 'home' in his first two years.

Surprised that no one mentioned that Tucker was 'officially' the reason he was fired. There was a minor NCAA violation in his recruitment. Something like driving him off campus too far or something like that. That was the excuse they needed to finally fire Staak.

Attendance was much better, but it was the dark ages back then. Al Gore really hadn't invented the internet yet and if you were lucky enough to have a computer it ran on MS-DOS and you could either work in Lotus 1-2-1 or WordPerfect but not both at the same time. For the most part if you didn't go to the game you had to listen on the internet, ESPN hadn't started broadcasting 99% of ACC games. So we went to the games so we could see most of them and yell at Staak.

Supposedly, Staak was already recruiting RR when he was canned. If I could ask him one question, I'd ask him about the recruitment of RR and where we were with him when he was canned.

Even if he's given no credit for RR, he brought in Tucker (cup of coffee in the NBA), Chris King (NBA role player). Siler finally with healthy but reconstructed knees, McQueen a serviceable PG, and a senior Sam Ivy.

And FWIW, that first Odom team actually broke into the top 20 rankings right before going to AZ for a holiday tournament where we were beat down by Purdue and then lost to Penn State. After that, IIRC we lost 11 straight ACC games before winning our last 3.

Like it or not Staak did leave Odom with some working parts to build his first class on.

Hopefully Bzz has left some parts for our next coach to build his first class on.

And just for the humor of it, Gary Williams turned us down for the HC job before we settled on Odom.

Good times.
 
Deac83 said:
And just for the humor of it, Gary Williams turned us down for the HC job before we settled on Odom.

Good times.
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Gary Williams turned us down before we hired Staak, not Odom. As I recall, Odom was pretty much the first choice. He had a history at Wake and had some success filling in for Terry Holland when we missed a few games at UVa due to illness. Odom beat UNC in one of those games.
 
LilburnDeac said:
Gary Williams turned us down before we hired Staak, not Odom. As I recall, Odom was pretty much the first choice. He had a history at Wake and had some success filling in for Terry Holland when we missed a few games at UVa due to illness. Odom beat UNC in one of those games.
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I think this is correct - although I remember Dr. Gene Bartow from UAB being the other hot name when we hired GDO.
 
Deac83 said:
Supposedly, Staak was already recruiting RR when he was canned. If I could ask him one question, I'd ask him about the recruitment of RR and where we were with him when he was canned.
.
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I believe Staak's assistants had already been in touch with a number of kids Odom later signed. Remember Odom held onto Jerry Wainwright when he took over. Also as a measure all of Staak's assistants the first year, Jerry Wainwright, Dennis Wolfe and Jeff Capel, went on to be Division 1 coaches.

I may be a bit biased as I found Staak personable and a good floor coach, but no talent to put on the floor. Tacy left the cupboard bear when he left, a far cry from the talented "bad character guys" Bz inherited.
 
LilburnDeac said:
Gary Williams turned us down before we hired Staak, not Odom. As I recall, Odom was pretty much the first choice. He had a history at Wake and had some success filling in for Terry Holland when we missed a few games at UVa due to illness. Odom beat UNC in one of those games.
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That's right, he turned us down when he was at BC because he didn't want to leave his kids, then he took the Ohio State job after that.

Kind of fits in with the wanting to hire the anti-Tacy coach.
 
Azdeac said:
I think this is correct - although I remember Dr. Gene Bartow from UAB being the other hot name when we hired GDO.
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Wonder where Pelfrey (sp?) is now, one of the local board favorites when Skip was hired.
 
STAAK had been recruiting both Rodney and Randolph, Odom sealed true deal with both, but we horns lucky, Duke and INC both wanted Rogers but decided not to wait on grades.Chill we Maryland's for the taking but Wade was worst acc coach ever. .even worse than Buzz. BOb was snake bit, injuries to Keys,SIler ,MIke Scott left after his parents somehow landed great jobs back in Kentucy, Rod Watson and Larkin s got into some trouble or fight,one of them cut their hands very bad. Both left, IVey got the strange illness. Another big kid left I think he had an Italian name. The kid from Kentucky that transferred to Wake, but broke his foot and then went to Pikeville Todd May,I think was a star,played pick up with him and he was nasty,incredible shot and range. BOb's team played hard but he near had a fighting chance
 
this thread has me longing for the days of Bob Staak...geez. I know I watched every game back then and now I barely turn on the TV when the Deacs play (different eras I know but still).
 
Dino Gaudino said:
Did Staak get endorsements from ACC coaches?
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Lol - actually yes. I remember my freshmen year (86-87) Staak had a town hall type meeting. He brought up that he and Jim Valvano were very good friends and Valvano helped him land the job.
 
Azdeac said:
Lol - actually yes. I remember my freshmen year (86-87) Staak had a town hall type meeting. He brought up that he and Jim Valvano were very good friends and Valvano helped him land the job.
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Ha ha, yep. Every game the announcers remarked how Staak was "good friends" with Valvano (apparently a talking point supplied by the Wake AD). It was a running joke between me and my dad that we never heard anything about Staak, ever, coming from Valvano's side of this "friendship". It was the lamest talking point I've ever heard to this day.
 
RangersboysWFBB said:
I have no Agenda with this thread. I created it out of pure curiosity.

A lot of posters compare BZ's tenure to the Staak years. I was not around during the Staak years and really know nothing about his tenure except that he lost a lot of games and never had a winning season just like BZ. I guess what I am asking for is context. How do the tenures compare?

I know the ACC was a lot more competitive during his years. So specifically:

1. Was he routinely blown out in ACC games?
2. What was his personality like? Was he socially awkward and standoffish or was he engaging?
3. What was our OOC like? Did we play competitive teams? Did he ever have any OOC waterloo's like Bz's Stetson or Presbo?
4. What was recruiting like?
5. What was attendance like?
6. How was Odom able to turn things around so fast, record wise?
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Regarding #6, Staak left Odom with Derrick McQueen, Chris King and Anthony Tucker. Cupboard wasn't exactly bare. Odom then added Chill and Rogers, and Wake had a very strong team.
 
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