fence rider moving BuzzOut...

[Atlanta Deacon]

You have to take last year's team into account. Buzz shat the bed last year. I know we had some real "knuckle heads" but plenty of programs win with those players and manage to keep them out of trouble. We were an abomination last year and we shouldn't give him a pass for that. This year we look improved but have so little talent and size. I'm more willing to give him a pass this year then for last year.

 

[Haros]

If you want to analyze at a macro level, every play on offense or defense comes down to 1 of 4 things: Shooting percentage, rebounding percentage, turnovers committed/forced, and how often you get to the free throw line. Last night was a near perfect microcosm for our performance all year in that it showed in exaggerated form what we do well and what we do poorly as a team.

We don't have the personnel to be very good on defense this year, and that's being borne out. Our two best defensive rebounders (by a wide margin) are Carson and Nikita. Nikita. Scary. They grab 19.7% and 19.2% of our opponent's misses when they are on the floor. Mckie is third at 11.6%. Green, in a limited sample size, has been in the same range as Carson and Nikita. Even with that personnel, we're basically right at the average in terms of defensive rebounding, allowing 33.3% OR to our opponents (National Average is 32.6%). I expect that will get slightly worse once conference play begins, and while not good, it's not nearly as bad as I would have thought. We also allow too high a shooting percentage from both 2 and 3 point land.

On the plus side, we are 129th in turnover percentage on D, and we are generally pretty disciplined in terms of not fouling our opponents, ranking 102 of 345 in opponents.

I also don't think we have the personnel to be very good on offense either, but somehow it has been excellent in 3 of the 4 areas that every other stat falls under.
Effective FG% - 52.2%, good for 66th (Average is 48.5%)
Turnover % - 18.3%, 56th, (Average is 21.3% of possessions) and a farcry from last year's 272nd.
FTA/FGA - 47.5, 40th, (average is 37.1); we are more aggressive this year and are excellent at getting to the line. There's absolutely no reason we have to pound the ball inside with our current roster if we keep this up.
OR% - 23.1% (334th); As I've said in the past, this is probably part roster makeup, part by design. Mckie grabs 6.8% of our misses, which is ok. No one else is above 4.2% aside from Green (small sample size has him at 9.4% of our misses while he's out there). I'll mostly leave this alone other than to say while I doubt we'll ever be juggernauts on the O-boards under Bzz, we will have a better idea with next year's personnel whether or not we can be a close to average team in that area. If we can grab 30% insead of 23%, we'll still be below average but could be one of the top offensive teams in the country, assuming we stay effective in the other 3 areas. It would be tough to crack the top 50 offensively at our current OR%, it's just so far behind most other teams.

One other note related to last night's game (and road games in general): the average fan consistently underestimates the impact of playing on the road ANYWHERE. Vegas makes a killing on the general public not understanding or ignoring its impact in different situations. The swing from a home game to a run-of-the-mill road game is approximately 6 points (3 for each team's home advantage). Then, it's rare you see a major conference team ever play a game like this on the road (and I can't come up with a good reason), so when one does, fans will always compare the result to what a team would be expected to do at home against the same team. Instead, the home team comes out as motivated for the game against 'insert big conference team' here as for any game they play, and it often exacerbates even the normal 3 point home court advantage since the home team is that jacked up. The 6 point swing is on average 8 to 9 in such situations with a smaller conference team playing a major conference team in a small, sold-out home gym. Which means, in a vacuum, Wake wins last night's game by 12-13 if it's at the Joel. Seeing as it wasn't there, I'm happy to take a win last night and move along.

 

[IAppreciateIt]

There was only one guy Dino left us with a shot at that late-Sullivan. Why we didn't sign him is a puzzle....

Sullivan has been completely useless for a Clemson team that's been pretty bad this year.

 

[TBR]

Some people are just winners. Brad Stevens is a winner. Chris Mooney is a winner. [Redacted] just doesn't strike me as a winner even though he is actually very similar to the other two in many ways.


Yes, I realize that is incredibly arbitrary, but with [Redacted] it just doesn't feel right. Never did.

 

[ArlingtonDeac]

I'm just tired of the ridiculous need to throw BCS in front of every stat so we can ignore what little college success he's had. Air Force isn't a non-team. They'll probably be a BCS team in a year. It's such a transparent way to be able to only consider his Colorado years during a complete rebuild of a horrid program.

What's funny is that including Air Force doesn't even make his numbers good. It's just that you can't feed the ravenous, childish, petty [Redacted] bashing unless you throw them out.

Dude was an NBA coach. He's not a total idiot no matter how ugly his ties are or how bitter everyone gets about losing a shitload of games.

We look a little better this year. It's obvious to anyone with any knowledge of basketball. Hopefully we'll keep improving when the new class gets here. If not, fire the guy.

I did include Air Force in my numbers. That's why his career record over 250 games almost reaches .500 (but doesn't). Trust me, he desperately needs those Air Force wins to be considered even a long-shot bet at being a winning coach.

Yet at Air Force, he inherited a good team of upperclassmen, failed to win a MWC post-season game (0-2 in first rounds of conference tourney, as the higher seed both times) or an NCAA game (0-1), and left behind a roster that in years 2 and 3 post-Bzz won 1 MWC conference games combined.

I included his CO years, too. Even giving him credit for last season (dubious), the best his team ever did was 8-8 in conference and the NIT.

He was an unsuccessful NBA coach, going 73-119 (.380) over three partial seasons, with his best record at 43-29 (.524) and a post season first round loss (4-1) before being fired midseason the following year after going 13-15. His replacement later that season, George Karl, went 32-8.

Maybe Bzz-in people are right, and all that Bzz needs is some love and a full chance (4+ years) at a major BCS school. That all of his potential success were just waiting for him, had he ever stayed put. But there is nothing, zero, nada, zilch, in his resume that can reasonably lead to the assumption that Jeff [Redacted] is likely to be a high-level BCS basketball coach. If you think you can be, you're just hoping for a drastic change of events.

I hope you're right, too.

 

[DCDeac]

Again, you can't have it both ways. If you take his Air Force teams as valuable info about his abilities, you can not dismiss his first years at Wake and Colorado because "they weren't his teams" and "he inherited a bad team."

Also, as to improvement, I would hope that just practicing together for another year (even with a bad coach) they would show "improvement." The question is are they progressing as fast as they should/could.

That's fine. I think he's a system guy, so by year 2 you should see if the system is working or not.

I was shocked by our lack of improvement last year. Then again, I was shocked by Ari, JTT, and a few others complete lack of fundamentals and decision making, and all they've done since then is to prove they were a problem.

This year the system looks like it's working, since we are obviously better despite a net loss of talent (unless you are blind).

It's not enough improvement to forgive last year in my opinion, and it's not bad enough to consider ditching him before a class I think just about everyone is going to love comes in. I miss having players represent Wake that I genuinely just love watching play the game for more than a year or two, and we have one in McKie with more on the way.

I still think [Redacted] is moving us in a healthy direction, but probably won't get us where we ultimately want to be. Maybe Brad takes a 2nd look once we make a couple tournament appearances 2 or 3 years down the road and [Redacted] ends up being a stepping stone. That would be nice.

 

[pourdeac]

I'm just tired of the ridiculous need to throw BCS in front of every stat so we can ignore what little college success he's had. Air Force isn't a non-team.

Air Force was ranked very high defensively under Bzzz....#1 or #2 scoring D for example. That gave me some hope, but then I looked at the year before Bzzz and they were #1 scoring D. So under Bzz their offensive numbers improved but it was on top of an already excellent defensive team which is why they were so dangerous.

I think through all of this it's safe to say that he likes offensive flow and does not stress D or rebounding.....sort of like what you see in the NBA. I was hoping to see a different pattern here at Wake given it's the "big time", but it looks like the same old same old.....see the small margin W over HP while shooting 59% with no defensive adjustments to stop their shooter.

I don't think that's going to equate to great success in the ACC when you consider the type of talent we're recruiting. I doubt it means 0.500 in a good year. We need a team that is well coached on both ends of the court if we're not getting top talent.

 

[Fuck Your Couch]

Right now I think our program will at least be healthy when we make our next hire, a far cry from those who said he would set us back for years. He probably isn't the guy to take us to the promised land, but I don't think he is ruining us.

 

[IAppreciateIt]

I did include Air Force in my numbers. That's why his career record over 250 games almost reaches .500 (but doesn't). Trust me, he desperately needs those Air Force wins to be considered even a long-shot bet at being a winning coach.

Yet at Air Force, he inherited a good team of upperclassmen, failed to win a MWC post-season game (0-2 in first rounds of conference tourney, as the higher seed both times) or an NCAA game (0-1), and left behind a roster that in years 2 and 3 post-Bzz won 1 MWC conference games combined.

I included his CO years, too. Even giving him credit for last season (dubious), the best his team ever did was 8-8 in conference and the NIT.

He was an unsuccessful NBA coach, going 73-119 (.380) over three partial seasons, with his best record at 43-29 (.524) and a post season first round loss (4-1) before being fired midseason the following year after going 13-15. His replacement later that season, George Karl, went 32-8.

Maybe Bzz-in people are right, and all that Bzz needs is some love and a full chance (4+ years) at a major BCS school. That all of his potential success were just waiting for him, had he ever stayed put. But there is nothing, zero, nada, zilch, in his resume that can reasonably lead to the assumption that Jeff [Redacted] is likely to be a high-level BCS basketball coach. If you think you can be, you're just hoping for a drastic change of events.

I hope you're right, too.

There's more to a coach than what you read on wikipedia.

 

[ArlingtonDeac]

I don't recall you saying that about Dino Gaudio, who had a worse career winning percentage with a larger sample size.

I never said anything about Gaudio in this context. He was hired because of circumstances, not because we went out, conducted a search, and picked the best available coach. There's no way I agree with his hiring if Skip had simply retired. As to his resume, the best you could say is that he had major program experience with this exact program, was known to be a strong recruiter, and was in the right age range. He also had a perceived top-3 class attached to his hip.

But Dino actually performed well at a major BCS school, so his resume prior to Wake becomes trivia. You want to knock his post-season performance, I agree. But he won 66% of his BCS games, achieved a number one ranking, and made two tourneys. I never bothered to analyze his pre-Wake resume because it became pretty irrelevant rather quickly. He had the team ranked number one by the middle of season two. At that point, it was simply whether he could keep up such a high level. He couldn't.

The two hires aren't similar in any context.

 

[ArlingtonDeac]

There's more to a coach than what you read on wikipedia.

I stated that's there's nothing in his resume that indicates a likelihood of high level BCS basketball success. And there isn't.

What you are describing is hope. We hope he's better than his record, because his record is extremely mediocre.

ETA: I, personally, do hope he is a better coach than his record. And I think there is an argument to base such hope upon. But there isn't any evidence. At all.

 

[DeaconSig]

Right now I think our program will at least be healthy when we make our next hire, a far cry from those who said he would set us back for years. He probably isn't the guy to take us to the promised land, but I don't think he is ruining us.

Maybe. Depends on what type of commitments he gets for 2013 and whether our non-top 100 recruits in 2012 outplay their rankings.

 

[TBR]

Really hard to say what the program will look like when [Redacted] leaves. The 6 man class is great, but could cause problems if the next classes aren't strong.

 

[PhDeac]

We don't know if that 6 man class is any better than other large classes we've had. On paper, they're not.

 

[Fuck Your Couch]

We have had a abnormally high number of highly ranked busts lately, at least as far as production for Wake is concerned. On paper it would be tough to match the ranking of many of our most disappointing classes.

We are obviously in trouble if that trend continues.

 

[IAppreciateIt]

I stated that's there's nothing in his resume that indicates a likelihood of high level BCS basketball success. And there isn't.

What you are describing is hope. We hope he's better than his record, because his record is extremely mediocre.

ETA: I, personally, do hope he is a better coach than his record. And I think there is an argument to base such hope upon. But there isn't any evidence. At all.

Which is my point -- there is evidence that exists beyond what you find on wikipedia.

There was plenty of evidence, for example, that Brad Stevens would be a good coach before he coached a single game.

Re: Dino, you have called him a good coach after he was fired, despite meeting the criteria you set for Bzz, and having an even worse record over a larger sample size.

 

[ArlingtonDeac]

I think we have pretty different definition of what constitutes "evidence." Are you referring to his ability to attract top talent? His media savvy? His energetic personality? His pattern of leaving a job every three years? His ability to get a limited squad to overachieve in the face of adversity? Getting inherited players to buy into his principles and program?

I'm all ears.

I'll give you this: he seems to know a lot about basketball. Seems like an ideal scout or assistant coach.

 

[deaclite]

Shane Larkin is off to a stong start as a pg at Miami. He was ours for the taking as was J Hinds who is putting up big numbers at WVa and maybe TBurke who is looking like a star for Michigan. We shot ourselves in the foot on the recruiting trail in 2011. While 2012 is a step forward Rivals doesn't even have us in their top25 classes so I'm not sure about making a big jump next season. Sadly, the overall weakness of many other ACC teams is Bz's best hope.

 

[TheReff]

There are no excuses this year for losing to or getting outplayed by a weak team. I did not watch the game, I listened to most of it, but the box score is horrible.

Offensive rebounds: HP 12, Wake 2.
Total Rebounds: HP 32, Wake 26.
Shots taken: HP 63, Wake 48.
Assists: HP 21, Wake 19.
TOs: HP 11, Wake 13.

If they had shot decent from the FT or we had shot a little less than 59% from the 3, we would have lost this game.....to High Point...without all that "team distraction". We pretty much suck.

I'm beginning to think that all this talk about "team distraction" and "team culture" and "bad apples" was more distracting and damaging than the actual problems we had.

Many reasons ,but the least of which the Dino/Prosser era left us with nothing and Bz is having to start over. Several were removed from the team and we have been playing with 7 schollies.

 

[TBR]

Many reasons ,but the least of which the Dino/Prosser era left us with nothing and Bz is having to start over. Several were removed from the team and we have been playing with 7 schollies.

You don't know what you're talking about.