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State Of The Program

Strattocaster said:
I have seen a lot of comments about our starters wearing out at the end of the year due to lack of depth and I don’t buy it. Carolina’s starters play virtually the same amount of minutes per game as ours. Now I guess you can argue that we have a big drop off in our bench players but I don’t think our starters playing too many minutes vs other quality programs is the concern.


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State played 2.5 weeks worth of minutes in five days and they were fine. I don't think it's conditioning. It's effort and motivation.
 
Yep, the only good takeaways from State winning that I can possibly come up with:
  • Carolina lost a championship they should have won to an arch rival, and Wolfpack fans will likely (and irrationally) taunt them with this fact mercilessly and endlessly
  • It should light a fire under our program to see a chief rival go out and take what they wanted
  • There should never again be a fatigue excuse. Play five days in a row, knock out the top three seeds, fight through your alleged fatigue, and claim the crown.


    That being said, I H8ST8
 
IckerDeac said:
Our play in the last 2 weeks of those seasons dictated our fate. We were every bit as good as numerous NCAA teams and HAD the resume but blew it down the stretch. If you told me after Duke that we were going to beat Clemson there was no way we'd miss the tournament. But somehow we did.

I think the portal strategy does work, but we lack depth and that is causing the fall off. So we need a slight modification to also find bench players in the portal in addition to what we have been getting,
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We also need a head coach who has the key skill necessary to build a tournament level program and win championships: in-game coaching.
 
The ESPN guys pick Princeton & Cincy (and Iowa)
 
PhDeac said:
State played 2.5 weeks worth of minutes in five days and they were fine. I don't think it's conditioning. It's effort and motivation.
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I agree that it's not a conditioning issue. However, playing fewer players does make it easier to scout us, which could lead to more losses at the end of the year when there is more tape available to review.
 
The whole narrative of the OP is also a little off-base. This year, we returned roughly 55% of both our scoring and minutes from the 22-23 season. Sure, Sallis and Reid were big transfers, but it isn't like this year's team started from scratch by any stretch of the imagination.
 
WFUWaldo said:
The whole narrative of the OP is also a little off-base. This year, we returned roughly 55% of both our scoring and minutes from the 22-23 season. Sure, Sallis and Reid were big transfers, but it isn't like this year's team started from scratch by any stretch of the imagination.
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Only 40% of the players in the starting rotation were returnees. Three of the five were new to Wake Forest.
 
LilburnDeac said:
They ought to name the bracket's after the #1 Seed. So the Wake Forest Bracket, the Seton Hall Bracket, the Villanova Bracket, and the Larry Nerd Bracket
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Yeah the “Lower Left Bracket” I did find a little awkwardly phrased
 
DeacDaddy said:
Yep, the only good takeaways from State winning that I can possibly come up with:
  • Carolina lost a championship they should have won to an arch rival, and Wolfpack fans will likely (and irrationally) taunt them with this fact mercilessly and endlessly
  • It should light a fire under our program to see a chief rival go out and take what they wanted
  • There should never again be a fatigue excuse. Play five days in a row, knock out the top three seeds, fight through your alleged fatigue, and claim the crown.


    That being said, I H8ST8
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That being said, under no circumstance is it ever okay to want UNC Cheat to win. And I mean ever.

Nothing made me happier then hearing (all the way from my house) my Hole fan neighbor yell, scream, and cuss at his tv late Saturday night.
 
Strattocaster said:
I have seen a lot of comments about our starters wearing out at the end of the year due to lack of depth and I don’t buy it. Carolina’s starters play virtually the same amount of minutes per game as ours. Now I guess you can argue that we have a big drop off in our bench players but I don’t think our starters playing too many minutes vs other quality programs is the concern.


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How about their superior talent in the starting 5?
 
I agree that it's not a conditioning issue. However, playing fewer players does make it easier to scout us, which could lead to more losses at the end of the year when there is more tape available to review.
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Carolina and State had more than one player on their bench that wasn't a total negative when they were in the game. We had PFred that we could count on, occasionally Damari. When Marsh, Keller, and MMM were in, we were basically left to hope they could be neutral at best.
 
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Deaconblue said:
Only 40% of the players in the starting rotation were returnees. Three of the five were new to Wake Forest.
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Cool. That isn't unusual for college basketball today. NC State and UNC also had starting rotations only comprised 40% of returnees.

% of Points Returned 22-23 to 23-24
Duke - 78%
Clemson - 61%
Wake Forest - 55%
North Carolina - 46%
NC State - 40%
Virginia - 28%

You can blame a lot of things on our failure this year, but experience-returned should not be one of them.
 
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WFUWaldo said:
Cool. That isn't unusual for college basketball today. NC State and UNC also only had starting rotations comprised 40% of returnees.

% of Points Returned 22-23 to 23-24
Duke - 78%
Clemson - 61%
Wake Forest - 55%
North Carolina - 46%
NC State - 40%
Virginia - 28%

You can blame a lot of things on our failure this year, but experienced returned should not be one of them.
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Our administration and fans are the kings of using circumstances that virtually every team experiences to rationalize our own continued failures and justify actively supporting the continuance of those failures. Covid, the portal, NIL, family health issues; we're the only school that has had to deal with any of those factors. None of the 64 (or 68 depending on your view) teams who made the tournament this season, or any of the previous 15 seasons, has had to deal with any of that. Four more years of Forbes! Everything is out of his control!
 
2&2 Slider To Leyritz said:
Our administration and fans are the kings of using circumstances that virtually every team experiences to rationalize our own continued failures and justify actively supporting the continuance of those failures. Covid, the portal, NIL, family health issues; we're the only school that has had to deal with any of those factors. None of the 64 (or 68 depending on your view) teams who made the tournament this season, or any of the previous 15 seasons, has had to deal with any of that. Four more years of Forbes! Everything is out of his control!
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I expect most teams' fans do this. But it feels like we work really hard to explain away failure as opposed to correcting it. Wellman very clearly tried to constantly manage (lower) expectations as a way to pre-excuse bad results. That's the number one (of many) reasons I soured (understatement) on him.

I want my administration (sports, work, life, Catan, whatever) to simply say we did bad, let's figure out why and fix it. I really don't want to hear about all the factors (the very same factors that apply to literally every team) that turned our great season into another crappy one. I think Currie is light years ahead of Wellman in this regard, but there is some institutional muscle memory we need to eradicate.
 
On Forbes: the BC game in 22 was a major coaching fail. It turns out it did not cost us a bid but that team was very good, had pieces that set up for a long tourney run and I feel our focus was lost doing a victory lap in NYC before playing.

Other than that I view Forbes failure to develop a bench the problem.

Hunter and Reid play younger than they are…another year I could see both being high first round picks. They are wildly talented, intelligent and nice kids that I feel lacked experience under fire. they also don’t have the internal nastiness of a DJ Horne or Hinson to elevate their play at crunch time So with experience I feel they could handle things much better next year without a personality transplant.

I think that this team is a Final four team next year if we can keep it together, and add two pieces.

We had a rough year. Reid, Damari, Ituka (who was a starter pre 22) then losing Marsh right when we needed him most. Coach Forbes personal situation. Then the officiating debacles at State, the non walk call and the first half of the Pitt game. Geez. I feel this team was victimized by officiating yes more so than other teams because we are more of a finesse team,

So I’m NOT giving up on this program, and see far more positives than negatives,
 
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