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Man, I miss Skip

morrison2951 said:
Skip's teams probably played even less defense than what we're seeing now, but he didn't seem to care because we lit up the scoreboard- and it was sure fun to watch! :D
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No, Skip's teams didn't play worse D than Bzdk's teams. Way worse than Odom's and worse than Dino's. His 2-3 zone was soft, and it seemed like his man was sort of halfway between overplay the passing lanes and Odom's and Dino's packline type of man and wasn't effective. The 1 thing I loved about Dave was his style of man, but then again, he also wanted to walk the ball upcourt. Dave coaching D, and Skip recruiting and coaching O would have been a great combination. But as mediocre/bad as Skip's Ds were, they're nowhere near as bad as Bzdk's. The last 2 years have been lay-up lines and wide open treys. As I've opined before, Bzdk's D is as bad as any D Westhead ever had. And I really think a significant part of his inability to coach D is he is unable to motivate his players and get them to buy into exactly what he wants.

And yeah, I do miss Skip. While I beyotched about his Ds, he was a great guy and a great face of the program. I was proud to have him as our coach and ambassador. He recruited well, had top-25 teams, had an entertaining style of play and had little to no academic or behavioral problems. His only achilles heel was his lack of defensive identity and commitment. I thought I missed him during the Dino years. But wow. How surreal it has gotten.
 
TheReff said:
I would rather have W's and really don't care if it was exciting basketball as long as we won. 111-105 in 2OT was exciting but still a loss and a bad post season loss at that.

Give me an 82-80 thrilling OT win in the ACCT finals
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Good news. You don't have to worry about picking one or the other anymore!
 
TBR said:
I am not [Redacted] fan, and he could definitely stand to be more charismatic, but Grobe isn't really a promoter either, at least not with students.
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That's probably a fair point, but I think Grobe comes across as much more approachable than Bzzz. Plus, I think it's more important for our basketball coach to be a promoter and embrace the students. Here's why, with football you've got 6 or 7 home games on Saturday (for the most part) and you've got the tailgating and it's just much easier to get students and fans to come out for football games. I think it's evident that the best thing for our football attendance has been winning. Of course that's very true for hoops too, but with hoops you got abunch of home games, several home games during the week, weeks with 2 or even 3 home games and I think it take more promoting to get students and fans to come out. Plus, our small student body can't make as much of an impact at football games as it can at basketball games. When we had tie-dye nation rocking and rolling it made a huge difference.
 
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EatLeadCommie said:
That article is right though. Tragedies tend to deify people, and Skip is no exception. We were never gonna go to a FF with him coaching, and man during JG and EW's senior years we were inexcusably bad. There were more than a few folks eager to dump him off if he didn't right the ship soon. Oddly enough, I think Dino did more with the team he inherited than Skip would have because we played some defense that year.
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I don't know. I think Skip was a smart enough man that he would have adapted over time (hell, even Grobe has seen a need to shake up his staff, even if Lobo is still around). I have a hard time believing that Dino, his right-hand man, made the change to focus on defense absolutely alone and that the coaches weren't all migrating in that direction before Skip's death.
 
I will always believe that Ty would have had a much different career if Skip had been his coach
 
Skip's teams played solid D when they had talented defensive players. Obviously part of it was that Skip played lineups that were susceptible on the defensive end, but the trade-off was usually worth it considering our personnel.
 
Correct. His 2003 team (J Ho's senior year) was awesome on D and won the conference on the back of our defense, not our offense.
 
Liquid Karma said:
I don't know if another university in the country had 2 coaches that better personified the traits of a school than we did with Skip and Grobe.
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Spurrier and K?
 
PhDeac said:
Spurrier and K?
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Can you imagine if Spurrier had stayed at Duke? If Spurrier had stayed and continued to have success at Duke, the power struggle between K and Spurrier would have been fun to watch wouldn't it?
 
Haros said:
Correct. His 2003 team (J Ho's senior year) was awesome on D and won the conference on the back of our defense, not our offense.
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Same with his first season, when we really slowed down the pace relatively speaking. IIRC, we were among the best rebounding teams in the nation both of those years.
 
Haros said:
Correct. His 2003 team (J Ho's senior year) was awesome on D and won the conference on the back of our defense, not our offense.
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All Howard. Even the Mavericks played D with Howard.
 
PhDeac said:
Spurrier and K?
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Spurrier is much more brutally honest than K is. K is kind of a weird dude and Spurrier is very bro.

Edit: Case in point:
rc_spurrier_medium.jpg
 
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Which of course makes the case that talent is an extremely important factor in how well defense is played, and that any comparisons without controlling for the level of said defensive talent are baseless.
 
Haros said:
Correct. His 2003 team (J Ho's senior year) was awesome on D and won the conference on the back of our defense, not our offense.
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I loved that team. If only Howard had stayed motivated for the tournaments, that team could have made some real noise.
 
If Skip had lived, we would be one of the top programs in the nation year in and year out. He would've taken the momentum from the AT&T class and never looked back. Wake was becoming a destination program for top recruits. He was that well liked and respected. No doubt he would've broken through in the tournament. We had some tough losses, but also some tough breaks.

The best thing about Skip (among so many incredible things) from a Wake perspective is that he is the only coach of basketball or football that didn't view Wake on a lower level than the top programs in the sport. All of our other coaches in overt or subtle ways seem to acknowledge the disadvantages we face. He wasn't going to back down to anyone and it was awesome to be a fan with a coach like that.

He was my favorite Deacon ever (except for my daughter). I miss him and I miss all of the excitement that would be surrounding our program had he lived.
 
We'll never know, but I think Skip eventually would have broken through in the postseason. He knew what kind of horses he needed in order to compete. I suspect he would have tightened things up on defense (the evidence points to the fact he was already working on this) and eventually it would have happened.
 
We will never know if Skip would have improved in post season play as time went on or not. There is evidence that shows some coaches get better with more appearances while others don't.

One thing about Skip and Odom even in difficult years I knew we would get better in a year or so. Right now I am not sure when we will get back to that level. Odom and Skip both showed they could win here. Bz has yet to.
 
unfortunately skip never won in the postseason anywhere
 
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