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Student Thoughts?

WakeForestRanger said:
I don't mean to nitpick but I would describe the end of Odom's reign as frustration not apathy. The fanbase still cared otherwise you wouldn't have seen the month long board meltdown after the Butler debacle. What we're seeing with Bz is something else entirely.
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I don't remember apathy at all for the GDO end. We had hope like every one of those years after RoK's freshman of the year campaign and with Darius.

And I had forgotten about the Butler game before this post, jerk.
 
The ROK years always seemed to end with us being the first team left out of the NCAA tournament. Frustrating.
 
WakeForestRanger said:
The ROK years always seemed to end with us being the first team left out of the NCAA tournament. Frustrating.
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For some reason I just googled the Butler game, and didn't realize that Thad Matta was the coach of them at the time. You could argue that Thad Matta did more to hurt our program than Jeff [Redacted].
 
I'm at Wake. Everyone who does care wants bz to mail in his resignation, STAT. I've yet to meet a Bzzin here. In fact, there really are a lot of students who do care... they simply act apathetic because they hate acknowledging our failure at all.

[Redacted], go the hell away. You're killing our optimism as well as our basketball program.

EDIT: Negrep me all you want for this post. Its just based on my observations as a student here.
 
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palmab03 said:
How much has the NBA product being better in the past xxx years hurt the college product? Right now there's seemingly a great professional matchup on every night. Would you rather watch UVA vs UNC or see Jeremy Lin vs Ricky Rubio.
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Personally, I barely watch NBA anymore. It's not a commentary on the product. I've just gradually had more going on in my life and less time and effort. I was one of the big NBA guys on this board until a few years ago. Was active in Jaybone's fantasy league and others as well. Back in grad school, my NBA league was a bigger deal than my NFL league.


I think it's there's more competition overall for viewers. For me, DVR made it so I didn't just watch whatever NBA game was on by default.
 
As a student on campus right now, it's pretty easy to notice what is going on. There are the kids who go to every game, the kids who love sports and would like to go to the games, and those who are uninterested in Wake sports (no matter how good they are). The vast majority of the campus is composed of the kids who care about sports, would like to go to games, but simply don't. These people all would kill to see Bzz gone. I personally don't to go to games just because I literally can't handle watching our team play, it's too frustrating - our offensive strategy is non-existent and there are so many fundamentals that we either don't do or just aren't good at. We want our team to be good, but given the restrictions that Bzz seemingly places on the team, many of us realize that achieving anything of note while he is here is unrealistic. It also doesn't help that the campus is shockingly apathetic. We unfortunately seem like a bunch of fair weather fans.
 
Sconnie22 said:
As a student on campus right now, it's pretty easy to notice what is going on. There are the kids who go to every game, the kids who love sports and would like to go to the games, and those who are uninterested in Wake sports (no matter how good they are). The vast majority of the campus is composed of the kids who care about sports, would like to go to games, but simply don't. These people all would kill to see Bzz gone. I personally don't to go to games just because I literally can't handle watching our team play, it's too frustrating - our offensive strategy is non-existent and there are so many fundamentals that we either don't do or just aren't good at. We want our team to be good, but given the restrictions that Bzz seemingly places on the team, many of us realize that achieving anything of note while he is here is unrealistic. It also doesn't help that the campus is shockingly apathetic. We unfortunately seem like a bunch of fair weather fans.
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I don't agree with this too much... give the students some credit. It's extremely frustrating to spend a night watching our basketball team getting slaughtered when we could be spending the night on coursework. It's a tough school, and there are more attractions other than sports and work. I have skipped games for homework simply because I knew it'd be another two hours of depressing tactics and another big fat "L" on our record. Sports come 2nd on the priority list for us, and it tends to drop lower when we feel like we go to games in hopes we can pull an upset at some point, or because watching the other team will be interesting. Not going to games doesn't make us "fair-weather fans". It just implies that we aren't willing to sacrifice time when we could spend it responsibly, or doing something that's actually fun.

Watching our team get embarrassed isn't our idea of fun. Ever. There's a reason why our student section looks terrible when we're doing bad. It's because this year's basketball team is, in every way, a lost cause.
 
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Turner said:
I don't agree with this too much... give the students some credit. It's extremely frustrating to spend a night watching our basketball team getting slaughtered when we could be spending the night on coursework. It's a tough school, and there are more attractions other than sports and work. I have skipped games for homework simply because I knew it'd be another two hours of depressing tactics and another big fat "L" on our record. Sports come 2nd on the priority list for us, and it tends to drop lower when we feel like we go to games in hopes we can pull an upset at some point, or because watching the other team will be interesting. Not going to games doesn't make us "fair-weather fans". It just implies that we aren't willing to sacrifice time when we could spend it responsibly, or doing something that's actually fun.

Watching our team get embarrassed isn't our idea of fun. Ever. There's a reason why our student section looks terrible when we're doing bad. It's because this year's basketball team is, in every way, a lost cause.
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Just curious Turner, how many basketball games have you attended this season?
 
Turner said:
Not going to games doesn't make us "fair-weather fans". It just implies that we aren't willing to sacrifice time when we could spend it responsibly, or doing something that's actually fun.

Watching our team get embarrassed isn't our idea of fun. Ever. There's a reason why our student section looks terrible when we're doing bad. It's because this year's basketball team is, in every way, a lost cause.
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Dude, that's exactly what a fair weather fan is. I mean it's okay, no one expects every student to be a die hard.
 
palmab03 said:
I don't remember apathy at all for the GDO end. We had hope like every one of those years after RoK's freshman of the year campaign and with Darius.

And I had forgotten about the Butler game before this post, jerk.
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Agreed. I was at Wake from 00 to 04 during the bridge between GDO and Skip. Apathy is definitely not the word I'd use to describe the tenor of student fandom in 2000 and 2001; students camped out like crazy for tickets and a huge chunk of the freshmen (at least) went to virtually every home game. The 84-53 win over Kansas was still some of the most fun I've ever had at a sporting event.

Frustration at our spring swoons is a much better one-word label for those years. We had talented players and got off to such impressive starts, students were desperate and eager to see us actually finish the job. Attendance and general awareness of who we were playing next, when the next ticket camp-out was, which ACC foes were in the next "pack" being doled out at said camp-outs, etc.--this was all stuff students kept abreast of.

Oh, and we were all fucking outraged at the Butler debacle. Now, a 30-point loss to a mediocre team is just another day at the office.
 
I remember when I was a student and bitched about mediocre seasons of going to the NIT or barely making it to the tournament and losing in the first round. I always wanted more.

Inevitably, some old timer would come on the boards and say you werent around for the Staak years. You have no idea how good you have it, blah blah blah. I could never understand how they could be so happy with what I perceived as mediocre results just because there was a time where we sucked more. Now, I get it.
 
Les Grossman said:
I remember when I was a student and bitched about mediocre seasons of going to the NIT or barely making it to the tournament and losing in the first round. I always wanted more.

Inevitably, some old timer would come on the boards and say you werent around for the Staak years. You have no idea how good you have it, blah blah blah. I could never understand how they could be so happy with what I perceived as mediocre results just because there was a time where we sucked more. Now, I get it.
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As one of those old-timers who thought the Bob Staak years were the lowest that Wake basketball could go, I freely admit I was wrong. Jeff [Redacted] makes Bob Staak look like a coaching genius. #BzzzOut
 
I remember the WVU game while on campus, I thought that the entire school was going to riot. People were on the balconies in the quad dorms screaming. Everyone looked pissed off and stunned (for good reason). I will take that "pain" over this "pain" any day, but would rather not be upset in the post season.

Cornelius Briggs stole my Crown Royale bottle that night, and in hindsight, I'm kinda glad I didn't try too hard to get it back.
 
Les Grossman said:
I remember when I was a student and bitched about mediocre seasons of going to the NIT or barely making it to the tournament and losing in the first round. I always wanted more.

Inevitably, some old timer would come on the boards and say you werent around for the Staak years. You have no idea how good you have it, blah blah blah. I could never understand how they could be so happy with what I perceived as mediocre results just because there was a time where we sucked more. Now, I get it.
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This may be why some of us that did live through the Staak years thought that firing Dino (for whatever puff reasons that were given) seemed so unbelievably foolish, made immeasurably more foolish by our A.D.s choice of his replacement.
 
I'm a Double Deacon...in my 7th straight year as a Wake student. The huge difference in the atmosphere my freshman year to now is straight up depressing. I'm from NC. I grew up on ACC bball. I was super psyched about our bball program when I decided to go to Wake (even if CP3 did end up leaving right before I got here). I went to pretty much every home game during Skip's rough last couple of years and Dino's first year. The day we beat Carolina my senior year was one of the best memories of my undergrad experience.

Jeff Bzzzfuckup has ruined Wake Forest basketball for me. It's really hard and embarrassing to explain to my law school classmates why we suck so badly and why we don't have the awesome ACC basketball atmosphere that they expected to see here. I have only been to a handful of games the past couple of years, I couldn't tell you when our next game is on TV, and if Bzz is still here I do not plan on buying season tickets (or single game tickets) when I graduate, even though I'm taking the NC Bar.

:(
 
I think it's worth pointing out that college basketball just isn't as good as it was 15+ years ago, or even 10 years ago. The AAU and NBA have ravaged the game to the point that there's only a handful of teams that are worth watching. Therefore, if you r team sucks, you're probably not watching. Additionally, if you're not watching, your kids aren't watching either. The NCAA needs to institute a 2-year or 3-year rule soon or they're going to lose even more spectators.

Regarding our current situation, I think this is even worse than the Staak years. I straddled the Staak and Odom regimes and even under Staak we had enough talent to upset a very good UNC team, even if it was just a punchers chance. Now, we don't have enough talent to beat a mediocre UNC team in comparison, even when that UNC team plays awful against us.

Bzz is going to get another year or two. I've resigned myself to that. And it really sucks for the students. If I were a student I would definitely be putting all of my eggs in the football basket, because if you want to experience any sort of exciting bigtime collegiate sports, that's where you're going to find it at Wake Forest. The classes of 2013 and 2014 are having a nightmare of a basketball experience.
 
Man, these are sad stories. I went to Wake for a lot of the same reasons here - grew up a GA Tech fan in Atlanta, lived and breathed ACC basketball and loved Tim Duncan. Even though we didn't have our best years while I was at Wake there were still some incredible games and awesome memories. Plus the CPIII years were soon after I graduated and I was still going back for games.

I played pickup ball in the gyms at Wake maybe 4-5 times a week, sometimes more. The competition was awesome and both football players and basketball players routinely came out and played. In particular I remember shooting around with Josh Howard who was cool enough to even chase down rebounds for me, or when Tim came back to fire up our team I ended up in a pickup game with Dawson, Downey, Tim, and some other guys. We had two full court games running all the time.

From what I've heard, that basketball mentality has been dying for a while at Wake, and the [Redacted] years are just making it that much worse. Current students can correct me if I'm wrong, but the pickup games and the die hard fanbase seem to be dying out. And it's not just at Wake. College basketball is suffering in a lot of places. I went to the Georgetown game last night - they're ranked 11th and barely any students showed up to see a close game against St. Johns. It was pathetic. Even Duke is selling student tickets to the public because students just aren't showing up anymore.

It's just sad to see. Even if we were a bubble NCAA team I think our support would be way down. Maybe it's how bad the NBA has become, or how stars don't stay in college anymore and the game is just watered down. But whatever it is, having 2 down years seems far more destructive now than it used to be.
 
palmab03 said:
For some reason I just googled the Butler game, and didn't realize that Thad Matta was the coach of them at the time. You could argue that Thad Matta did more to hurt our program than Jeff [Redacted].
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Thad Matta basically caused us to hire Skip Prosser from Xavier which caused Xavier to hire Thad Matta. Kind of interesting.
 
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