News and Observer's Luke DeCock talks about Bzzz

[deacvision7]

I cannot help but conclude that blackgold is a parody. Either that or a Wellman plant. Mods, can y'all confirm this? Even RJ would blush at writing what blackgold writes.

Astonishingly, that account doesn't share an IP with any others. So it is one of 3 options:

1) Somebody severely mentally disabled
2) Somebody that is careful to always use a proxy when signing in
3) A Wellman plant (the poster in question claims to know Ron Wellman personally, also says he used to play football at Wake.)

 

[ibleedgoldandblack]

Exactly. "Rambling soliloquy," "bizarre [Redacted] moments, bad losses and lost hope," "taking timeouts when he would have gotten a television timeout anyway, and he even had to apologize for swearing at a fan at Miami," and He doesn't appear to be getting the most out of a limited team the way Steve Donahue is at Boston College, and he exudes all the bonhomie of a funeral director at work. He's more stat geek than salesman. He's no Odom, no Prosser and no Gaudio" probably aren't quite the lines Ronny would have fed him. Not sure how anyone who read the article can think otherwise.

I will say, however, that, even posed as a hypothetical, the "no one else wanted to touch" line is absurd.

Did you stop reading after your quote? The huge "BUT../rest of entire article/"

 

[The Stig]

Is it really that hard for Wellman to come out and say "The product on the court is unacceptable. Wake Forest is not a program that will tolerate losing, by any stretch of the imagination. The coaches all know this and are working hard to correct it. What I am pleased with is the overall discipline being shown off the court. Anthony Fields recently made an All Academic team and that is exactly the type of student athlete that we want at Wake. I understand that the last two years have been difficult, to say the least. The fans are hurting, but so am I, the entire team and the entire coaching staff. I ask only for your patience in this process as we move forward towards a very prosperous future. Thank you, and Go Deacs!"?

 

[daaberry]

I thought it was a bad hire at worst/puzzling at best and I still don't think he's the long-term answer, but I'm 100% supportive of him getting next year to show what he can do in Year Three. Signficant increase in wins (I don't have a number, but probably a minimum 6 conference wins and few if any blowouts), noticeable player development, solid 2013 recruiting class and a lack of off-court issues should determine if he gets a fourth year.

We play 18 conference games next season, so 6-12 should not be considered anything other than a disaster. We at the moment have enough room for ONE player in the 2013 class, so expecting that to be an impact to the program is wishful thinking. There will be teams with 10 ACC wins next season who may be struggling to be on the bubble so he has to do a hell of a lot more for most of the fan base to be considered heading in the right direction.

 

[cville deac]

Astonishingly, that account doesn't share an IP with any others. So it is one of 3 options:

1) Somebody severely mentally disabled
2) Somebody that is careful to always use a proxy when signing in
3) A Wellman plant (the poster in question claims to know Ron Wellman personally, also says he used to play football at Wake.)

or 4) a ManU fan.

 

[ibleedgoldandblack]

Agreed. After the past two seasons, 10 conference wins and ~20 total wins is the bare fucking minimum for me next year. Cutting down on the number of double digit losses would be a nice bonus. If he can't swing that, GTFO.

If there is anything less than that and Wellman tries to justify keeping him around I might go Sterling Archer/Terms of Enragement on the Athletic Deparment

 

[KidA23]

I think 8 ACC wins (8-10 record) would keep him around for a 4th year for sure. Anything less than that and your guess is as good as mine.

 

[DirkTheDeac]

Is it really that hard for Wellman to come out and say "The product on the court is unacceptable. Wake Forest is not a program that will tolerate losing, by any stretch of the imagination. The coaches all know this and are working hard to correct it. What I am pleased with is the overall discipline being shown off the court. Anthony Fields recently made an All Academic team and that is exactly the type of student athlete that we want at Wake. I understand that the last two years have been difficult, to say the least. The fans are hurting, but so am I, the entire team and the entire coaching staff. I ask only for your patience in this process as we move forward towards a very prosperous future. Thank you, and Go Deacs!"?

It shouldn't be. And that really is all he would have to say instead of planting stories in the press to insult our intelligence.

 

[dcon69]

I disagree with with the idea that our program was in great shape under Gaudio. Time was running out on Gaudio and Wellman saw that along with things we can only surmise. The program was breaking under Gaudio, it was not healthy. Another year we would have been in despair there too. I would have been better to let that happen than make an uninspired hire it seems. Ol Dino's head coaching record is worse than almost anyone before Wake and he was living on borrowed capital from Skip. One does not need to justify the despair we are experiencing by elevating Gaudio. One more year and the wheels would have flown off our program. The trouble was with the new hire. We needed someone more dynamic and personable, and capable to get us over the retooling. We did not get it and that is on Wellman.

 

[jaybone]

I think the timeouts are a strategy since we have a short rotation. It's to keep CJ and Travis fresh in the final 5 minutes of games ... we're in.

 

[The Stig]

I agree that Gaudio's team was questionable (to put it lightly) off the court. If it wasn't, then why, after all this manure has been piled onto his name, hasn't Dino come out and said "that never happened" or "things were not nearly as bad as they have been made out to be"? That said, there was no reason for the pendulum to swing so far back the other way that we begin to resemble a bad YMCA team with kids who try their darnedest but gosh aren't they well rounded citizens.

 

[DCDeac]

I think the timeouts are a strategy since we have a short rotation. It's to keep CJ and Travis fresh in the final 5 minutes of games ... we're in.

Yeah, that was just one of the many idiotic parts of that article.

Duke does that all the time - calls a timeout one possession before a TV timeout. You get to concentrate on setting up a single play and the players know you're right back on the bench for some more rest after.

Actually in the 2nd half of the Duke game we called 2 timeouts I think around a TV timeout and it prevented them from going on a typical run to put us away. Definitely helped us get back in that game and was probably the best coaching job all year.

 

[ChrisL68]

I agree that Gaudio's team was questionable (to put it lightly) off the court. If it wasn't, then why, after all this manure has been piled onto his name, hasn't Dino come out and said "that never happened" or "things were not nearly as bad as they have been made out to be"? That said, there was no reason for the pendulum to swing so far back the other way that we begin to resemble a bad YMCA team with kids who try their darnedest but gosh aren't they well rounded citizens.

Because he is taking the high road?

 

[TBR]

I am not going to read the article because I am sure it has nothing new in it and would just piss me off. What I will say is that the culture stuff is absolute nonsense. When Dino received his extension the following four things had already happened: 1) Team chemistry fell apart. 2) Gary Clark non-scandal. 3) James Johnson reputedly didn't go to class. 4) Every single member of the 2010 class committed. If Wellman thought these issues were indicative of a cultural problem then he would not have signed Dino to an extension, even if it was only for recruiting purposes.

 

[Turd Ferguson]

I disagree with with the idea that our program was in great shape under Gaudio. Time was running out on Gaudio and Wellman saw that along with things we can only surmise. The program was breaking under Gaudio, it was not healthy. Another year we would have been in despair there too. I would have been better to let that happen than make an uninspired hire it seems. Ol Dino's head coaching record is worse than almost anyone before Wake and he was living on borrowed capital from Skip. One does not need to justify the despair we are experiencing by elevating Gaudio. One more year and the wheels would have flown off our program. The trouble was with the new hire. We needed someone more dynamic and personable, and capable to get us over the retooling. We did not get it and that is on Wellman.

I don't think anyone was saying that the program was in good shape or that Gaudio should have stayed, but simply pointing out that at the time we were improving (record-wise) and had a highly rated class coming in. If RW saw something beneath all that, so be it, but to act like our program was perceived nationally that way is revisionist history.

P.S. Hiring and extending Dino is on Ron, too.

 

[ABCDeac]

Maybe [Redacted] bailed Wellman out. He's the one who left an NCAA tournament-caliber team and a potential NBA lottery pick behind in Colorado, to preside over a flaming mess no one else wanted to touch. Maybe he's the one doing the friend a favor.

Are you fucking kidding me? Yeah, i'm sure there were no young coaches out there that wanted to coach a program that produced numerous NBA players in the last 15 years, including the best PG since isiah thomas and the best PF of all time. By they way, that flaming mess went to two straight NCAA tournaments and had a top 10 class coming in. If anybody needs to remember the state of the program when dino left, read this article. "Wake Forest is an attractive job, with talent in abundance returning and coming to Winston-Salem, N.C."

Such revisionist bullshit. Fuck you if that article didn't send you into a rage spiral.

The most troubling thing about that article is that the class [Redacted] had coming in was the 6th-ranked class in the nation. Now, for some reason, we are banking on him turning around the program with the 20th-ranked class? Dear Lord, make it stop.

 

[TwentyONE]

I try to look at it from a BOT perspective. Everyone can laugh off the fact that we supposedly had a "culture problem." But I guarantee you, no matter what actually happened or who was at fault, when the BOT caught wind of that 09 incident, they were NOT pleased. They probably told Wellman that Dino better be down to his last strike right there, or else Wellman himself would be gone. The ass-hatery continued the next year, no doubt, a lot of which we probably never heard about, along with another flame out on the court and Wellman made his move. Everything that has happened since, Woods, Tabb, JTT, Walker, has just reinforced what the BOT had suspected, that the damn bball program was a ticking time bomb that could do serious long-term damage to the university's reputation. The Woods incident in particular probably horrified them and solidified their position that men's basketball needed new priorities and a new direction. They are probably thanking their lucky stars that they were ahead of the curve a bit and the university somehow narrowly escaped becoming a major national embarassment.

Again, this is not just any institution. This is Wake Forest. To compare the state of our program, to say, NC State as Shake did is totally missing the point. The university takes pride in holding higher standards and they take that very seriously. Of course they are not going to be happy with a losing basketball program, but I'm sure that is priority #2 in their eyes.

 

[DeaconSig]

This is a great piece and I personally wrote the author to congratulate him. This is how we should all approach the situation: with the dispassionate understanding that the program has to be torn down and rebuilt.

The legacy of "big time" basketball left by Skip and Gaudio is one that we need to put behind us. Wake Forest can do better than coddling common criminals for the benefit of a few short-sighted fans.

I don't normally do this, but FUCK YOU.

 

[Ball State Deac]

Wonder what athletic department shill spoon fed him that story.

Basketball program was out of control under Gaudio. No one knew about it though because nothing of any note actually happened.

Fire Gaudio and then defend it based on a demonstrably false allegation of sexual assault that was investigated by police w/ no charges filed and a bunch of things that happened...wait for it....after Bzzz became the coach.

Exactly. That's totaly BS.

 

[RJKarl]

Again, usually "broken program" entails

A. A bunch of bad stuff happens with student athletes.
B. AD fires Coach A and brings in Coach B.
C Clean up starts.

Here it was.

A AD fires Coach A and brings in Coach B.
B. A bunch of bad stuff happens with student athletes, all of whom Coach A chose.
C. All of that bad stuff is blamed on the character choices Coach A made.

The one exception is the incident in Miami that all were exonerated. If Wellman had such an issue with that, then why did Gary Clark play at WF the following year.

The story just doesn't add up.

FIFY