Wake Forest @ NC State Game Thread

[knowell]

I'm enjoying the new spin from the Fire Manning folks - that Bz beating Duke, UNC and State in his 4th year was somehow a better measuring stick of success than Manning making the tournament in year 3. Nevermind the fact that only Duke would end the season as a ranked team that year of those 3, or that those 3 ACC wins were half of our total ACC wins that year cementing a 4th year of zero postseason invites of any kind, and that no players left early or were even a threat to leave early, and that no impact players were on the way into the program for year 5.

But yeah, those were the good old days. Not beating #8 Louisville and winning our first round ACC tournament game, and not getting named on Selection Sundfy finally after so many years of not even sniffing the bubble. We just miss those meaningless wins during god-awful years.

The problem is that there is an argument that can be made. That should not be the case in year 4.

I would never willingly go back to the BZaster days but that does not mean we should close our eyes to what is happening now. Manning has a lot to improve on as a coach. He gets next year, but if things do not appear to be headed in a completely different direction from this year, it would be foolish just keep "waiting til next year".

 

[ChrisL68]

Next year is a big year for Manning.

 

[DeacDaddy]

The problem is that there is an argument that can be made. That should not be the case in year 4.

I would never willingly go back to the BZaster days but that does not mean we should close our eyes to what is happening now. Manning has a lot to improve on as a coach. He gets next year, but if things do not appear to be headed in a completely different direction from this year, it would be foolish just keep "waiting til next year".

This is right.

Next year is a big year for Manning.

This is too.

 

[WFU Lurker]

I'm enjoying the new spin from the Fire Manning folks - that Bz beating Duke, UNC and State in his 4th year was somehow a better measuring stick of success than Manning making the tournament in year 3. Nevermind the fact that only Duke would end the season as a ranked team that year of those 3, or that those 3 ACC wins were half of our total ACC wins that year cementing a 4th year of zero postseason invites of any kind, and that no players left early or were even a threat to leave early, and that no impact players were on the way into the program for year 5.

But yeah, those were the good old days. Not beating #8 Louisville and winning our first round ACC tournament game, and not getting named on Selection Sundfy finally after so many years of not even sniffing the bubble. We just miss those meaningless wins during god-awful years.

[Redacted] should not be a measuring stick. Despite that, Manning's 4th year is shaping up to be worse than [Redacted]'s. That isn't a good sign.

Last season, RChildress was talking endlessly about the trajectory of the rebuild under Manning and how it was better than Bennett's UVA rebuild. With this season almost half way done, it looks like it wasn't a trajectory as much as an outlier and, unfortunately, the outlier was barely scraping into the tournament with the most efficient offensive player in the country.

So far, we have fallen short of expectations two of the four years and exceeded them one of the four years.

 

[DCDeac]

The blind "year 4" argument boils down to whether you give Manning any leeway at all for having his starting front court leave on him, and whether you give him any advance credit for the class coming in next year.

To draw any semblance of equality between the two, you have to look at year 4 by itself in a bubble, which to me is absurd. Manning won 9 ACC games last year and made the dance. Year 4 isn't the culmination of his efforts the way it was for Bz. It's a completely flawed, transparent argument to argue otherwise.

There's plenty of fair criticism to be had around Manning. There's no need to dismiss last year as if the Louisville win with the tourney appearance on the line wasn't awesome. It was. The crowd was great, the coaching was excellent, the players came through. If Collins and Dinos pulled a Tim Duncan and decided to come back we'd be enjoying another awesome year with tons of talent coming. But shit happens, and while there's a fair argument to made about whether we should be 12-6 instead of 8-10, some of the arguments being thrown around are insane.

 

[PhDeac]

Next year is a big year for [insert Wake coach here] .

Amended

 

[wfu22fan]

Year 2 and so far this year= total suckage. Let’s see if DM can get some scalps for the remainder of this year and fight until the end. And next year is critical for both DM and the program. 5 years is plenty of time to get things turned around and headed in the right direction.

 

[WFU Lurker]

The blind "year 4" argument boils down to whether you give Manning any leeway at all for having his starting front court leave on him, and whether you give him any advance credit for the class coming in next year.

To draw any semblance of equality between the two, you have to look at year 4 by itself in a bubble, which to me is absurd. Manning won 9 ACC games last year and made the dance. Year 4 isn't the culmination of his efforts the way it was for Bz. It's a completely flawed, transparent argument to argue otherwise.

There's plenty of fair criticism to be had around Manning. There's no need to dismiss last year as if the Louisville win with the tourney appearance on the line wasn't awesome. It was. The crowd was great, the coaching was excellent, the players came through. If Collins and Dinos pulled a Tim Duncan and decided to come back we'd be enjoying another awesome year with tons of talent coming. But shit happens, and while there's a fair argument to made about whether we should be 12-6 instead of 8-10, some of the arguments being thrown around are insane.

It isn't a blind year 4 argument. It's recognizing that in year 4, a coach is responsible for his roster. Manning is responsible that our roster could not absorb those loses more gracefully. To be fair, he did have a ACC ready player to replace Collins in the line-up, but our problems at power forward are as much Manning's fault as they are Dinos'. Dinos was the only ACC ready player between 6'5" and 7'. Not only that, but there was talk about Dinos leaving early from basically the day he stepped on campus. Obviously the timing of his decision was unexpected, but I don't think it was a huge surprise to anyone that he didn't stay for 4 years. It shouldn't have been. Danny admitted as much in the press so you have to put at least some of the blame on him.

Dinos wasn't good enough to cause us to miss expectations by this much. The problem is that 2016 recruiting did not go well. Next year, in that position, we will be counting on freshmen (and would have been even if Dinos stayed 4 years). Hopefully that works.

Louisville was a good win. Dino had wins against #2 ranked Duke (2008), #3 North Carolina (2009), #10 Clemson (2009), and #1 Duke (2009). You were happy to see him go. [Redacted] had wins against #2 ranked Miami (2013) and #4 Duke (2014). You were happy to see him go. Obviously Louisville was more dramatically timed, but in total the year was not awesome. Again, we scraped into the tournament with the most efficient offensive player in the country. We then proceeded to give up 95 points to the 42nd most efficient offensive team with the 268th fastest pace. According to one prominent poster, though, we would have been better off if we had just benched John Collins ( https://www.ogboards.com/forums/sho...LAY-DEFENSE!?p=2787135&viewfull=1#post2787135 ). In fact, apparently we actually overrated his impact all season ( https://www.ogboards.com/forums/sho...ohn-Collins!?p=2787550&viewfull=1#post2787550 ).

 

[PhDeac]

In addition to the 2016 argument, even if things had gone well and Giles came to Wake and was a stud, we'd still be in this same situation. We would have just lost 3 PFs to the pros instead of 2.

Makes you wonder why we didn't emphasis PF more in 2018 recruiting. We had Lazsewski in, but we supposedly backed off of Nate Roberts who is going to Washington.