Official Wake- Red Raider Game Thread

[IrishSlim]

Well of course people would be, but last year happened and you can't just throw it out the window.

Buzz - Expectations Management Extraordinaire!

 

[Schwabber89]

It gets mentioned a couple of times a page. You're joking right?

Do you seriously think you can compete in D-1 with 8 scholarship players, three of whom are freshmen? And we are, save for one ugly game.

 

[deaclite]

Do the Bz limbo, how low can you go?

 

[421Deac]

Do you seriously think you can compete in D-1 with 8 scholarship players, three of whom are freshmen? And we are, save for one ugly game.

Agreed. We are certainly competing at a higher level than last year. Take that for what it's worth but it is moving in the right direction. We see improvement in spots and I look forward to the recruiting class that Bz and the staff have coming in next year.

 

[Jroc25]

Agreed. We are certainly competing at a higher level than last year. Take that for what it's worth but it is moving in the right direction. We see improvement in spots and I look forward to the recruiting class that Bz and the staff have coming in next year.

I agree. Bz is doing a great job so far, all things considered.

 

[DEAC22]

Do you seriously think you can compete in D-1 with 8 scholarship players, three of whom are freshmen? And we are, save for one ugly game.

I keep reading that we only have 8 scholarship players. Is that right? I thought we have 9 scholarship players, one of whom is suspended until approximately 12/10 because he commited an honor code violation under Coach [Redacted]'s watch?

I think we would have had 12 scholarship players if one had not transferred, one had not been kicked out of WF, and one had not sought "rehab" on the west coast - all under Coach [Redacted]'s watch. Am I correct?

So last year it was youth, this year it's a lack of talent/lack of scholarship players, are we back to the youth excuse next year - I'm just trying to keep up during our culture change.

-22

 

[coredeac]

I keep reading that we only have 8 scholarship players. Is that right? I thought we have 9 scholarship players, one of whom is suspended until approximately 12/10 because he commited an honor code violation under Coach [Redacted]'s watch?

I think we would have had 12 scholarship players if one had not transferred, one had not been kicked out of WF, and one had not sought "rehab" on the west coast - all under Coach [Redacted]'s watch. Am I correct?

So last year it was youth, this year it's a lack of talent/lack of scholarship players, are we back to the youth excuse next year - I'm just trying to keep up during our culture change.

-22

Do you watch the video board during our football games? If not, there is a game where you have to follow the moving helmets to guess under which the prize is located once the helmets stop moving (eg, the shell game). It's a good representation of what we have here with this staff and AD.

We fired a coach because of poor post-season performance. Hired a guy who had NEVER won an NCAA tournament game. Keep up now.... here we go!

Then, our AD decides it's really not a post-season issue, it's a "culture issue" but he's staying out of things.

Then, the AD holds a kangaroo-court press conference and talks about tennis. Following the helmet here?

Then, the AD decides he does need to be involved and does multiple post-games rambling about John Wooden and socks. Apparently, we need to wear our socks better as part of the culture change.

Then, we apparently have a coach who says he has some bad apples and some of these apples transfer to USC and Oregon. On your feet Deacon fans!

Then, we are young because all of the bad apples are gone but now we are coachable and no longer need those AAU thugs with their handlers weighing our program down.

Now, to the end of this game and guess under which shell our AD and coach are hiding? Is it (1) Post-Season failures (2) Culture or (3) Incompetence?

YOU make the call Deacon Fans!

 

[CHillDeac]

We defeated a dysfunctional team by nine points. A team whose coach NEVER left his seat nor called a timeout the entire game because he apparently wanted to prove a point. Don't care whether Gillespie was hung over, mad or both.

If I'm not mistaken there was only one timeout called the entire game. So it's not like Bz was really working the boys.

 

[PhDeac]

Do you seriously think you can compete in D-1 with five freshmen? And we are, save for one ugly game.

and now...

Do you seriously think you can compete in D-1 with 8 scholarship players, three of whom are freshmen? And we are, save for one ugly game.

and then...

Do you seriously think you can compete in D-1 with six freshmen? And we are, save for one ugly game.

 

[TexasDeac10]

For all the kenpom lovers/haters, here's his follow-up post about the log5 analysis he did for all the preseason tournaments:

http://kenpom.com/blog/index.php/weblog/feast_week_log5_review/

His models predicted 5 of the 8 winners of the tournaments, and got pretty damn close on some others. He actually concedes that his model was flawed insofar as it underrated the eventual winners of the tournaments - by his original probabilities, the model should only correctly pick 3 of the 8 eventual winners, as opposed to the 5 it ended up picking correctly.

The fun WF tidbit to be taken from it is that Dayton was his model's most likely winner of the Old Spice Classic, and they ended up winning. I guess you can take from that what you will, but my interpretation was that while the ASU performance was probably our team's worst of the season, our performance against Dayton was probably our best.

 

[IAppreciateIt]

Dayton won the tourney -- they were projected by the model to be the second most likely team to win the tourney.

 

[TexasDeac10]

Dayton won the tourney -- they were projected by the model to be the second most likely team to win the tourney.

Editing the post; I misread the blog post. Thanks.

 

[Deac83]

I keep reading that we only have 8 scholarship players. Is that right? I thought we have 9 scholarship players, one of whom is suspended until approximately 12/10 because he commited an honor code violation under Coach [Redacted]'s watch?

I think we would have had 12 scholarship players if one had not transferred, one had not been kicked out of WF, and one had not sought "rehab" on the west coast - all under Coach [Redacted]'s watch. Am I correct?

So last year it was youth, this year it's a lack of talent/lack of scholarship players, are we back to the youth excuse next year - I'm just trying to keep up during our culture change.

-22

Some of the Bzz out stuff is really inane. I'm in the wait and see camp, Bzzz has not done anything to deserve the scorn and ridicule he gets at this point except accepting the job as HC.

But I will say, all the far right (or are they far left) Bzz outers puts me in a position to make rational (so I think) defenses.

I guess your point is that Bzz had calculate that he should reduce the number of players on scholarship so he has an excuse for a poor second year?

Further this was all part of his grand plan to create the 'youth excuse' in year three, so he can justify another down year.

Seriously, I'd think with a Wake education a better argument could be made.

 

[RacerDeac]

You really think we have very little talent? Other good schools wanted these guys.

While we're recruiting, these guys are great. Once they are in school, they are awful. That's the Bzzin storyline from what I understand.

Bz has never won an NCAA tournament game in his career. It is still absolutely unfathomable to me that someone who has never done so could become the head basketball coach at Wake Forest.

:werd: It still makes absolutely no damn sense.

 

[IAppreciateIt]

If you take every single coach we've hired in the 100+ year history of wake basketball, and add up their total tourney wins upon being hired, you'd get a grand total of one tourney win.

 

[RacerDeac]

If you take every single coach we've hired in the 100+ year history of wake basketball, and add up their total tourney wins upon being hired, you'd get a grand total of one tourney win.

I took Mike's comment to be within the circumstances of the hire. We fired a guy for lack of postseason success. Most importantly, expectations had been raised. Wake Forest basketball had peaked at a pretty high level and just needed to get over a hump to keep climbing. Hiring an old guy with no post-season success, within the circumstances of where Wake Forest basketball was then (not historically), makes absolutely no damn sense.

 

[deacvision7]

Wellman tried to show everyone just how smart he was by making a hire that nobody else would have made, and therefore, he out-thought himself.

Everything that has been said about "culture" has just been propaganda bullshit to cover his own ass, IMO.

 

[DCDeac]

We played a solid game against Dayton and they hit two crazy 3's to beat us.

We all know that with no inside game outside of Travis we'll have to shoot it well and bring energy on defense to be in games like that. Against ASU we did neither and got rolled. That's going to happen as well.

Bottom line is we were on track to beat Dayton and they won the thing. Plus we played poorly against Texas Tech but still won. How many times did that happen last year?

It's improvement, slow though it may be. That's how rebuilding works. You lay a foundation for a program and then add talent where it's lacking. CJ and Travis are great, talent to fill the gaps is on the way next year.

The highs and lows around here are hysterical. We play well for a game and suddenly half the board thinks we'll never get blown out again.

 

[DCDeac]

Wellman tried to show everyone just how smart he was by making a hire that nobody else would have made, and therefore, he out-thought himself.

Everything that has been said about "culture" has just been propaganda bullshit to cover his own ass, IMO.

Uh, the culture talk started up well before the DWI from JTT and the campus thefts.

Are you arguing that it was a self-fulfilling prophecy? Or were those not culture issues?

 

[deacvision7]

I don't think anything JTT did over a year after Dino was fired had anything to do with "culture" while Dino was the head coach.

For the record, I'm still not entirely convinced what Dan Collins alluded to wasn't a factor in Dino's firing. That would make sense, just as it would make sense for all parties involved to deny that story till their deathbeds.