Month: December 2017

College basketball coaches, I found, use the most descriptive phrases, and the more old-school the coach, it seemed, the more descriptive the phrase.

One I heard from Dave Odom many times was how the Deacons would have to get into the other team on defense to have a chance.

Well Wake Forest got into North Carolina hard enough to  stay in the game against the No. 13 Tar Heels for 40 minutes today at the DeanDome. Playing the caliber of defense I’ve rarely seen from a Deacons’ team since the days of Tim Duncan, Wake came oh so close to making this a weekend to remember forever up north of town on University Avenue.

Problem was, the Deacons stayed in the game until winning time, but didn’t know what to do once there. Consequently the Tar Heels, after managing points on just 13 of their first 32 second-half possessions, scored the game’s final eight points to pull out a 73-69 victory in the ACC opener for both teams.

Wake, leading by two with a minute remaining, didn’t need that 3-point attempt from Bryant Crawford.  They needed someone other than Doral Moore – who makes 55 percent of his free throws – at the line with 34 seconds remaining in a tie game, which became all-to-evident when Moore missed the front-end of a one-and-one.

But after Theo Pinson’s basket with 11 seconds left gave North Carolina the lead, what the Deacons really needed was to get the ball into the hands of Crawford. Danny Manning of the Deacons called time, ostensibly to direct his team to do just that.

As the final play of the game unfolded, I flashed back to the ACC championship of 1987. I’m old, so my mind tends to wander like that.

In 1987, in Landover, Md., Jimmy Valvano put the finishing touches on his Wolfpack’s upset of North Carolina by entreating the immortal Kelsey Weems (hyperbole alert) to, at all costs, keep the ball out of the hands of Kenny Smith on the game’s climatic play. Weems did just that, forcing Joe Wolf to dribble awkwardly upcourt to uncork a shot that missed badly.

Ranzino Smith rebounded and missed a last-gasp 3-pointer, and there was Jimmy V cutting down some more nets.

Today, in Chapel Hill, the Tar Heels face-guarded Crawford and forced Woods to inbound the ball to Olivier Sarr. Woods got it right back, but never looked comfortable dribbling across half-court.

Maybe Woods could have gotten the ball back to Crawford in the half-court. I’m not sure. And maybe he panicked just a bit, and shot too soon. A case could be made.

But whatever the cause, Woods’ shot clanked off the rim into the hands of Kenny Williams.

Dan Dakich, as insufferable as he is, was right to say that Manning should have called time with Williams at the line with 1.9 seconds remaining. Why not?

Wake had two timeouts remaining, so why save either? And given that Williams was shooting a one-and-one, a miracle finish was not outside the realm of possibilities.

The thought apparently came too late to Manning, who tried but failed to get the time after the ball had been handed to Williams.

It’s hard to criticize a coach who loses by four on the road to a 13th-ranked team in the country, but the final moments did appear to unfold a little fast for the Wake bench.

But with Moore making his 7-foot presence felt inside, the Deacons did lock down on defense. And as I’ve said before — and will certainly say again — the story of Wake’s season will be told down at the defensive end.

Unfortunately, even the best defense can only keep a team in the game until the end. The trick is to know what to do once there.

Betting has never been my thing. While writing sports for a living, I figured that doing so might get me into ethical places best avoided.

So I avoided them.

But if the betting bug ever does bite me, I know one rule of thumb to go by. If Wake plays in a bowl, bet the Deacons.

I didn’t need to see Wake outlast Texas A&M 55-52 in today’s Belk Bowl shootout to know that the Deacons are smart money in a 13^th game played around Christmas at a neutral site. And I have a pretty good notion why.

Motivation can be an iffy commodity for some bowl teams, those used to going to this bowl or that bowl season after season.

Motivation to play in a bowl has never been a problem at Wake, and it shows in the school’s recent bowl record.

The first bowl game I ever saw Wake play, in Orlando’s Tangerine Bowl of 1979, the Deacons got crushed 34-10 by LSU. But in their nine bowl games since, the Deacons have won seven.

And as for the two they lost, to Louisville in the 2007 Orange Bowl and to Mississippi State in the 2011 Music City Bowl, it was anybody’s game going down the stretch.

All bowl victories are to be cherished at Wake, but today’s performance has to rank as one of the great wins in the history of the school. In beating an SEC opponent – albeit one that had sagged low enough to get its coach cashiered – the Deacons finished 8-5.

History, unlike betting, has always been my thing. So it’s a big deal when this team, Dave Clawson’s fourth, becomes only the sixth in school history to win as many as eight games.

It’s also a big deal when the Deacons win back-to-back bowls for only the second time, the first being victories by Jim Grobe’s teams in 2007 and 2008. Clawson has certainly proved to be everything Ron Wellman could have hoped he would be when Wellman went with him over Pete Lembo after Grobe’s fifth straight losing season of 2013.

Lembo, in case you haven’t been keeping up, last season left his gig as Ball State’s head coach – where he was 8-16 over his past two seasons – in favor of an assistant coaching job at Maryland. Reports say he took a pay cut to do so.

Work remains for Clawson to get Wake where he wants it to be.

The offense made mind-boggling strides from last season. It’s hard to believe that many of the same players we watched play offense for the Deacons in 2014 and 2015 were on the field today while Wake was rolling to 646 yards, six touchdowns and two Mike Weaver field goals.

For the longest time it appeared that 646 yards and 55 points would not be enough. Truth be told, it might not have been if that referee hadn’t decided to swallow his whistle in watching cornerback Essang Bassey of Wake pull freshman receiver Jhamon Ausbon to the ground deep in Deacon territory with 45 seconds left.

Every fan for every team in every sport always thinks their team gets a raw deal from the officials. It’s human nature, and I’ve certainly seen Wake come up on the short end of the stick more than a time or two over the years.

The break went Wake’s way today, and because of that I got to see the tears glistening in Clawson’s eyes as he was asked about the contributions of his seniors. I also got to see one of those seniors, one of my all-time favorites, John Wolford, standing on the podium afterward and accept the award as the game’s most valuable player.

When I decided to retire in August, I told Wolford to make me sorry I did. For all the fun I’ve had these past four months, today Johnny Football almost succeeded in granting my request.

Almost.

Conor O’Neill and Les Johns were both up this morning long before me. And unlike me, they were up and at’m.

Over my last days as an every day working stiff, I was lucky enough to get to know Conor and Les well. And few people on this planet know better what their day will be like covering Wake Forest against Texas A&M in the Belk Bowl, Conor for the Winston-Salem Journal and Les for Demon Deacons Digest.

Both, I feel pretty certain, were out the door by 9, wondering if they were leaving early enough. Traffic around Charlotte can be a bear, a riled, ill-tempered grizzly bear at that.

If all went well, they would be have pulled into the media parking at Bank of America Stadium by 11, leaving them the requisite (at least for me) two hours to get into the stadium, find the media workroom, check out the wireless, and woof down whatever fare the folks that run the Belk Bowl might have laid out.

The conclusion I reached early in my career was we all have to spend the two hours before a game somewhere, and for me, the best place was on site, among friends getting myself settled into the routine of the day. On the rare occasion I got to a game late, I felt like I was catching up all day.

So both were well into their assignment long before the 1 p.m. kickoff. College football games usually run between three and three and a half hours, so barring overtime or anything really crazy, they could expect it to be over by 4:30.

The big break of the day is that the game is being played in Charlotte, and not somewhere like El Paso, where N.C. State was dispatched to play Arizona State in the Sun Bowl. (Exotic trips such as those to west Texas can be fun, but especially taxing, especially during a time there’s also basketball to cover). And the 1 p.m. kickoff meant that Conor’s deadline won’t be demanding.

When the game does end is when their real work begins. The most critical hour of the day is post-game, the time to talk to the players and coaches and get the quotes that will hopefully make their stories what Conor and Les want them to be.

As my 40 years in the business passed, and media splintered into countless internet sites offering instant information, game stories became less and less about what happened. Everyone already knows that. What we could give the reader, though, was the reaction from the participants, why they dropped that pass in the end zone, why they audibled out of one play into another that led to a touchdown, why they punted on fourth and one at the opponent’s 43.

So if Conor and Les are lucky, they’ll be back at their computers in the workroom by 5:30, their heads spinning with all they’d seen, heard and absorbed. Time to put it all together in the written word – and in Les’ case, knock out a video or three.

My post-game pace was dictated by deadline. When I didn’t have one pressing, I usually needed between 60 and 90 minutes to compose, edit and transmit my offering into the Journal’s system. But don’t think I was done then.

Over my last 10 or so years, I ended pretty much every assignment by knocking out a post for my blog, My Take on Wake. The tone of this writing was less formal, more conversational, like what you’re reading right now. The blog gave me a chance to broach and amplify elements of the game that couldn’t be crammed into my 750-word lede.

So it will be dark, and cold, when Conor and Les finally get back to their cars by around 8 tonight for the drive home. I can remember how dead tired I would be by then, but I could always count on the adrenaline of the day to carry me in.

Again, if all goes well, Conor and Les will be back home and done for the day by 9:30 or 10 tonight. And they’d better not stay up too late power-gliding off the day because both will have to be up and at’m early tomorrow – that is, if they want to make it to Chapel Hill two hours before the Deacons’ noon basketball game at North Carolina.

One of the go-to jokes of my career is that working sportswriter is a contradiction of terms, but knowing what my two compadres are dealing with today belies that notion.

As for this old boy, I got up this morning when I felt like it, knocked out this post and ate a few pizza rolls, all in time to settle down in front of the TV to watch the game with an adult beverage in hand.

I did what Conor and Les are doing today year after year after year. I don’t miss most of it, but I do miss the pre-game camaraderie.

And what I miss most of all is laying my head down on a pillow after an endless, exhausting day, and knowing I had done all right.

The stories I covered with the Winston-Salem Journal didn’t end upon my retirement in August. They continued to unfold, often to my surprise but more times than not in ways that I kind of figured they would.

There may have been no story on Wake football that I wrote about more often, or in greater depth, than Coach Dave Clawson’s concerted efforts to build an offensive line capable of blocking the defenses the Deacons played.

Clawson’s concerted efforts followed those made by Jim Grobe and his staff during Grobe’s last seasons as head coach. The failure to field a winning team over Grobe’s final five seasons could be attributed, in large part, to trying to win the ACC with, at best, a Sun Belt offensive line.

It was with great interest, then, that I read Conor O’Neill’s piece in this Sunday’s Journal about the transformation of the Deacons’ offensive line into one of the most formidable units in recent school history.

For the story behind Conor’s story, you might want to check out what I wrote way back at the beginning, when Clawson threw some young kids to the wolves knowing how badly they would get mauled before acquiring the kind of strength, experience and toughness required to survive, let alone thrive in the trench warfare of the ACC.

My public school education is not sufficient to count the times Clawson reminded everyone – probably most of all himself – how the process could not be rushed, how it took time in the weight room, time in the film room, time on the field to forge five or six players into one capable unit.

Along the way, everyone had to take their lumps.

Clawson took his lumps, from the fans, from relentless scribes like me, and even from former Wake coaches such as Al Groh who opined as a television analyst that the Deacons’ line needed to ditch the two-point stance and drop a fist on the ground for better drive.

Nick Tabacca, the offensive line coach, took his lumps every time the Deacons were stuffed on a third-and-one, not to mention the one hundred or so times quarterback John Wolford picked himself off the ground after being sacked.

But nobody took more lumps than Justin Herron, Phil Haynes, Ryan Anderson, Patrick Osterhage, Jake Benzinger and Nate Gilliam, the linemen who were physically dominated game after game, season after season, before becoming strong and together enough to fight back.

The story that will be best remembered after the Deacons end their season against Texas A&M in the Dec. 29 Belk Bowl will be how Wolford survived the pounding to lead Wake to the most points ever scored in school history. But knowing Wolford as I got to know him in his first three seasons, he would be the first to say he could not have done it without the remarkable growth and maturation of his big buddies up front, Wake’s Beef Boys.

No, stories don’t end at retirement. In this instance, I covered the seeding, watering and weeding of the Deacons’ offensive line, and Conor got to write the harvest.

Even while winning 240 games and two ACC championships in his 12 seasons as Wake’s head basketball coach, Dave Odom, being the human he is, was not infallible.

Odom made mistakes.

One he regretted almost from the time he made it was agreeing to take the Deacons to Hawaii over Christmas in 1999. That’s not to say Odom doesn’t like Hawaii. He loves Hawaii, so much so that since 2009 he has gladly served as chairman of the Maui Jim Maui Invitational Tournament.

Friends of Dave, including the one you’re reading now, kid him about having the greatest gig in the world. He gets paid to spend a couple of weeks every year in paradise with the lovely Lynn, his wife, while he “entices’’ friends he has known for years in the business to bring their teams to his tournament.

But his mistake of 1999 was not where he took his team, but when. The Maui Jim Maui is played over Thanksgiving, which, as Odom was to come to learn, is the only sensible time to take a team from North Carolina almost 5,000 miles to play a basketball tournament.

And he paid for that mistake dearly. The Deacons lost to Oregon and Villanova in Hawaii, and needed two overtimes to beat Ohio. Then, upon return, they lost the ACC opener to Florida State in Joel Coliseum, accelerating a tailspin that resulted in 12 losses over a disastrous 18-game stretch.

The shame of it all was that by the end of the season, when the Deacons were winning eight of their last nine, they might well have been one of best dozen or so teams in college basketball. But having played themselves out of the NCAA Tournament, they had to prove it by winning the NIT championship.

The two losses in Hawaii hurt the Deacons’ cause that season, but what probably hurt even worse was losing so much time Odom would have otherwise had to spend with his team in a gym back home. Odom, like all good coaches, recognized how invaluable that time can be.

By Christmas, a team has already had a spate of games to highlight their strengths and expose their weaknesses. They’ve also hopefully survived exams, so classes are done for the semester.

Odom would use that time like a drill sergeant uses boot camp, to grind his team into the kind of shape needed to survive the exacting 2 ½ month war soon to come.

One lesson we should always remember – even while we’re always seeming to forget it – is that nothing in life is static. Instead everything is dynamic – the definition of which is a process or system characterized by constant change.

It took me way too long as a sportswriter to learn the most inane two-word phrase in the English language is no way, as in there’s no way N.C. State could ever beat juggernaut Houston for the 1983 NCAA title, or there’s no way the Boston Red Sox, after losing the first three games, could beat the New York Yankees in the 2004 ALCS.

Or, closer to home, there’s no way that Wake can make post-season play in 2018 after beginning the season with home losses to Georgia Southern and Liberty followed by a losses in Lynchburg to Drake and Houston.

Already we can see the change in the Deacons from that early pratfall. We saw it Saturday in the 82-53 home thrashing of Richmond and we saw it last night in the 80-57 romp at Charlotte.

As for how much change we’ve seen, that would require figuring out just how bad two of the worst teams in the recent histories of Richmond and Charlotte basketball really are. But Wake did manage to lose to Liberty, which is currently No. 211 in the RPI, as well as Drake, currently No. 180.

So progress has clearly been made.

Looking closely, I’ve seen it most clearly on the defensive end. Last night the Deacons held Charlotte to 15 field goals for the whole game (on 47 heaves) while allowing the 49ers to score on just 11 of the 33 second-half possessions played before Danny Manning emptied his bench.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. If the Deacons are going to do anything worth remembering this season, they’re going to have to improve defensively. Manning knows that. His assistants know that. And we can only hope that his players, by now, know it as well.

Wake will play Army this Friday at 7 at Joel Coliseum, then begin exams next week. Practices are sporadic during exam week, but all teams find some time for basketball. And after Army the Deacons won’t play for 10 days, until they travel to Conway to play Coastal Carolina on Dec. 18.

After they, they have five more days before playing Tennessee in Joel Coliseum on Dec. 23.

Can we expect the team that plays UT two days before Christmas to be better than the one that beat Charlotte last night? Manning and his staff will have the better part of three weeks to see that it is.