Danny Manning Credibility Watch

[CharlotteDeac1]

Or that's how good John Collins is. Our defense last year was so abysmal that Wake barely made the tournament.

The Clemson game last year where they scored approximately 13 in a row to end the game and Collins had no touches almost made me physically ill.

This is not something that just surfaced this year.

It's something people realized was extremely overblown once we made the tournament way ahead of schedule in year 3 and now have forgotten because all most people can think about is "right here right now". It's "it's all on him fuck Manning get him out of here" when he loses his entire frontcourt. Or it's "he shouldve done a better job recruiting" when he didn't know he would need to recruit a 4 or 5 until after all the '17 recruits were gone and the grad transfer market was depleted. Just kind of ridiculous in my opinion.

 

[knowell]

It's something people realized was extremely overblown once we made the tournament way ahead of schedule in year 3 and now have forgotten because all most people can think about is "right here right now". It's "it's all on him fuck Manning get him out of here" when he loses his entire frontcourt. Or it's "he shouldve done a better job recruiting" when he didn't know he would need to recruit a 4 or 5 until after all the '17 recruits were gone and the grad transfer market was depleted. Just kind of ridiculous in my opinion.

You are not concerned about 4 consecutive years of defensive ineptitude?

This concerns me more than all of Manning's crazy lineups or questionable in game moves.

 

[wfu22fan]

If someone took the time to go back and research the last 31/2 years for late game losses and total collapses, it would be enlightening. There are so many...

 

[CharlotteDeac1]

We were #36 in Kenpom last year, so I wouldn't say squeaking into the tournament was any sort of over achievement. Even though it felt quite good at the time after years of sucktitude.

It also is not very hard to be in the NCAA Tourney mix from a power conference. Syracuse isn't any good this year yet they're currently in Lunardi's field, and a team like BC that was horrible last year isn't far away either

So everyone here expected to make the tournament last year? I recall that was not the case, so that is exceeding expectations.

Also, not sure the point of the second part. Are you saying it isn't an achievement to make the tournament or that it should be expected in year 3 of a rebuild?

 

[knowell]

If someone took the time to go back and research the last 31/2 years for late game losses and total collapses, it would be enlightening. There are so many...

Would that be the last 16 1/2 years?

 

[thatguy2016]

It's something people realized was extremely overblown once we made the tournament way ahead of schedule in year 3 and now have forgotten because all most people can think about is "right here right now". It's "it's all on him fuck Manning get him out of here" when he loses his entire frontcourt. Or it's "he shouldve done a better job recruiting" when he didn't know he would need to recruit a 4 or 5 until after all the '17 recruits were gone and the grad transfer market was depleted. Just kind of ridiculous in my opinion.

I don't think we should fire Manning
not convinced he could have done a better job in recruiting to prepare for this
but our defense is unacceptably poor and that is on the coach

 

[knowell]

I don't think we should fire Manning
not convinced he could have done a better job in recruiting to prepare for this
but our defense is unacceptably poor and that is on the coach

I can agree with all of this.

 

[DeacDaddy]

It's something people realized was extremely overblown once we made the tournament way ahead of schedule in year 3 and now have forgotten because all most people can think about is "right here right now". It's "it's all on him fuck Manning get him out of here" when he loses his entire frontcourt. Or it's "he shouldve done a better job recruiting" when he didn't know he would need to recruit a 4 or 5 until after all the '17 recruits were gone and the grad transfer market was depleted. Just kind of ridiculous in my opinion.

You’ve got to be tired carrying this water. I mean, exhausted.

There are other things out there besides Wake Forest basketball. Most of us have been forced to accept this fact after the last eight years.

 

[CharlotteDeac1]

You are not concerned about 4 consecutive years of defensive ineptitude?

This concerns me more than all of Manning's crazy lineups or questionable in game moves.

I've posted that I think he has made the conscious decision to play an offensive lineup the last two years because it would give us a better chance to win or be in games. Our defensive lineups that people have been talking about wanting to see would have trouble scoring 50 points a game. Unless you think our defensive lineup is capable of holding offenses to that little scoring than going with an offense that can score 70-ish+ ppg gives you a better chance. Next year will be the first time Manning will have the guys on his team to play both good offense and good defense. I don't think it has much to do with scheme, as we saw last night (before the last 5 minutes).

Now, since our offense is struggling so much maybe it is time to use the defensive lineup more often. I don't know - its hard to imagine playing our defensive lineup mentioned here so often and winning basketball games this year.

 

[CharlotteDeac1]

You’ve got to be tired carrying this water. I mean, exhausted.

There are other things out there besides Wake Forest basketball. Most of us have been forced to accept this fact after the last eight years.

I grew up really caring about Wake basketball more than anything. Football came second. I recently became much more invested in football thanks to Clawson and have become more interested in our baseball, tennis, and soccer teams as well. It would take a long time of another Bz equivalent to kill my interest in our basketball team, Manning is not a Bz.

 

[knowell]

It would take a long time of another Bz equivalent to kill my interest in our basketball team, Manning is not a Bz.

BZ Lite.

 

[DeacDaddy]

Manning is not a Bz.

On this we are in agreement.

 

[CharlotteDeac1]

I don't think we should fire Manning
not convinced he could have done a better job in recruiting to prepare for this
but our defense is unacceptably poor and that is on the coach

I agree with the first two but I just posted on the last point. I very well could be wrong on it and Manning may not be able to coach a lick of defense, but the guys we put on the court consistently are not good defenders plain and simple. Keyshawn, Wilbekin, Crawford, Thompson all not good defenders - and we play the first three often because that's where we expect the bulk of our scoring to come from. As I said last night, if Collins and Dinos don't leave and we add Chaundee to that lineup in place of Arians we're probably a pretty solid defensive team. Not great because you still have Crawford/Key/Wilbekin playing tons of minutes at the 1 and 2, but i believe it'd be serviceable.

 

[wsc8521s]

So everyone here expected to make the tournament last year? I recall that was not the case, so that is exceeding expectations.

Also, not sure the point of the second part. Are you saying it isn't an achievement to make the tournament or that it should be expected in year 3 of a rebuild?

Why are you so hung up on expectations? People's expectations (self included sometimes) are constantly dumb and wrong. Everyone just assumes teams are going to perform at or about the same level as they did the previous year when that rarely proves to be the case.

And you can't really have it both ways -- if your take is last year was a great overachievement because of low expectations given how bad we'd been, then this year is a colossal underachievement given how good we were last year and highish expectations

 

[CharlotteDeac1]

On this we are in agreement.

And to be clear, I thought Bz was a God awful hire in the first place and don't think I defended him once in his entire tenure. I don't mind taking on the mantle of defending Manning because 1. I like him as a person, 2. He can actually recruit players, as it's gotten better the last two years, and 3. I think he's a good game planner and get our guys ready to play way more times than not. I recognize he is lacking in some in-game coaching aspects (subbing and minute allocations being the main one) but think he will end up being a good coach for us.

 

[thatguy2016]

I remain unconvinced that Crawford is incapable of being an acceptable defender

I am 100% convinced that Collins could have defended better last year, but we intentionally chose to not have him defend so that he could stay in the game and score for us
the capstone performance of this strategy was him scoring 26 points with 0 assists while conceding 24 points and 7 assists to Wesley Iwundu

 

[CharlotteDeac1]

Why are you so hung up on expectations? People's expectations (self included sometimes) are constantly dumb and wrong. Everyone just assumes teams are going to perform at or about the same level as they did the previous year when that almost rarely proves to be the case.

And you can't really have it both ways -- if your take is last year was a great overachievement because of low expectations given how bad we'd been, then this year is a colossal underachievement given how good we were last year and highish expectations

Okay then let me rephrase to outside expectations, aka "experts". No one expected us to make the tournament last year, and pretty sure the experts had us in the cellar of the ACC and not sniffing the tournament. Manning and the guys overachieved and proved that to be incorrect.

This year, experts predicted us to be finish 11th or lower in the ACC and that's where we are. Maybe slightly below their expectations but not compared to last year's team.

Also, I'm 100% on board with the "we should never lose any of the first four games we lost" train of thought and that was massive underachievement. No argument here. I think everyone underestimated the impact of our losses and overestimated the ability of our guards to take over the team's offensive needs.

 

[CharlotteDeac1]

I remain unconvinced that Crawford is incapable of being an acceptable defender

I am 100% convinced that Collins could have defended better last year, but we intentionally chose to not have him defend so that he could stay in the game and score for us
the capstone performance of this strategy was him scoring 26 points with 0 assists while conceding 24 points and 7 assists to Wesley Iwundu

I think Crawford is capable of being an acceptable defender but it's weird, like he's ADD or something and gets distracted really easily. I don't know what the deal there is but he's not a good defender right now.

The "Collins not playing strong defense so as not to foul" strategy for last year was the right move in my opinion.

 

[wsc8521s]

Okay then let me rephrase to outside expectations, aka "experts". No one expected us to make the tournament last year, and pretty sure the experts had us in the cellar of the ACC and not sniffing the tournament. Manning and the guys overachieved and proved that to be incorrect.

This year, experts predicted us to be finish 11th or lower in the ACC and that's where we are. Maybe slightly below their expectations but not compared to last year's team.

Also, I'm 100% on board with the "we should never lose any of the first four games we lost" train of thought and that was massive underachievement. No argument here. I think everyone underestimated the impact of our losses and overestimated the ability of our guards to take over the team's offensive needs.

The experts are pretty dumb too. How many experts had the Eagles in the Super Bowl this year? No one, because they were mediocre last year. But I did!

And I'm actually willing to forgive the Georgia Southern and Houston losses. Houston in particular is clearly a good, potentially NCAAT-caliber team, and playing a veteran, decent GaSo team right out of the gate wasn't ideal.

Just seems to me if Manning is gonna be the guy we woulda got more out of a capable team last year, but I would certainly be delighted if he proves me wrong. He's going to be our coach next year and quite probably the year after that too, so we'll all get to find out together

 

[knowell]

I remain unconvinced that Crawford is incapable of being an acceptable defender

I am 100% convinced that Collins could have defended better last year, but we intentionally chose to not have him defend so that he could stay in the game and score for us
the capstone performance of this strategy was him scoring 26 points with 0 assists while conceding 24 points and 7 assists to Wesley Iwundu

This.