Month: April 2018

One advantage of being long in the tooth is the opportunity I’ve had over my many years to get to know so many people who, among them, have a bountiful amount of collective expertise.

But what is the good of expertise if you don’t avail yourself to it?

My mistake, regrettably, was calling Al Featherston only after I had devised my formula to rate the greatest coaches in ACC basketball history, the one I presented here almost a month ago now. If I had called him before, I would probably have remained with my original formula and maybe, by now, even have written about the results.

I’m proud to say I know ACC basketball history. I’ve covered the ACC since my junior year of college in 1972-73, and have written books about both Wake and ACC basketball history. But having said that, I don’t know anyone who knows more ACC basketball history than Al Featherston.

Being a few years ahead of me, Feather was class of 1971 at Duke, and he worked in the sports information department as an undergrad. I brag about how I go back to David Thompson. Well Feather goes back to Charlie Scott and Vic Bubas.

The local paper was smart enough to hire Feather out of college and he worked for the Durham Sun, and, post-merger, the Herald-Sun until the implosion of our industry claimed another long-time stalwart in 2005. He has since shared his bottomless knowledge with readers lucky enough to catch his work in publications like Basketball Times and Duke Basketball Report.

We’ve been through a lot together in times both good and bad since we first became friends in the early 1970s. And I can’t say I agree with him on every issue of baseball, college basketball and military history – our three main overlapping areas of interests – but I know the man well enough to never dismiss anything he says out of hand.

So I wasn’t really surprised that after he had the opportunity to read and absorb my formula for rating ACC coaches that I first wrote about on March 20, he called back with a few thoughts. Coming from someone else, I might term them “objections.’’ Feather preferred the term “suggestions,’’ which sounded good to me.

To catch the uninitiated up to speed – and refresh the interest of those who have been waiting a month for me to get off my behind and follow up – I present the original formula.

1 point– For each ACC win over .500 (including ACC tournament play).

2 points – Per win in NIT play

3 points – Per win in NCAA Tournament play.

4 points – ACC Coach of the Year.

5 points – For tying for first-place finish in ACC regular season.

7 points – For finishing first outright in ACC regular season.

7 points – NIT Championship.

7 points – For National Coach of the Year.

10 points – For ACC Championship.

15 points – For appearance in Final Four (without winning title).

20 points – For National Championship.

I don’t know a reader named Joey Davis as well as I know Feather, so I’m not sure whether to term his comment an objection or a suggestion. But Joey seemed to feel pretty strongly that I was too generous in how I awarded success from the NIT – especially the modern NIT which has lost so much of its luster since the glory days of the early 1970s.

And what Joey said made sense.

Then the phone rings and it’s Feather on the line. He picked the same point as Joey, stressing out that in the modern era two points is too much to award for an NIT victory and seven points too much for an NIT championship.

But Feather, bless his heart, had some other problems with my formula as well.

One was relatively minor. As a guy who has voted for ACC Coach of the Year over the decades, Feather has learned to not give too much credence for the award. And to watch the North Carolina Press Association pass over Mike Krzyzewski every season since 2000 – during which time he has won nine ACC championships and three national titles – I tend to agree with his assessment.

But what Feather felt most strongly about the difference between an ACC title before 1975 and after. Before 1975, a team had to win the league to even play in the NCAA Tournament. So an entire season would be riding on those three days in March.

After the tournament expanded, winning the ACC title was not the same accomplishment, and shouldn’t be rewarded as such. The distinction grew ever greater with each passing season, to the degree that today most fans – and coaches – would rather see their team reach the Final Four than cut down the nets at the ACC Tournament.

I resisted breaking my formula into eras, but Feather’s points were ultimately too compelling. So I adjusted my formula.

Now any NIT win after 1974 earns only one point, and an NIT crown only five points. But the big change is, I now reward any ACC title before 1975 with 12 points instead of 10. And in keeping with the ever-increasing emphasis on NCAA Tournament success, I now reward a victory in the NCAA Tournament with four points instead of three.

The formula is now as follows:

1 point — ACC wins over .500 (including ACC Tournament.

1 point — NIT win (post 1974)

2 points — NIT win (through 1974).

3 points — ACC Coach of the Year.

4 points — NCAA win.

5 points — Tie for first in ACC regular season.

5 points — NIT Championship (post 1974).

7 points — First in ACC regular season.

7 points — NIT Championship (through 1974).

7 points — National Coach of the Year.

10 points — ACC Championship (post 1974).

12 points — ACC Championship (through 1974).

15 points — Final Four (without winning NCAA Championship).

20 points — National Championship.

As I suspected, the adjustments didn’t really affect much. The same 15 coaches whwere in my Hall of Fame are still in there. But now when another up-and-coming coach comes along – say a guy like Chris Mack at Louisville – and starts making a real name for himself in ACC circles, I can better tell how long it will take him to join the select circle of greatest coaches to ever walk the ACC sidelines.

Over days to come, I’ll trot out my selections in order. But for the time being I’ll hopefully keep the interest up by revealing my 15 inductees in alphabetical order.

Tony Bennett, Vic Bubas, Everett Case, Bobby Cremins, Lefty Driesell, Terry Holland, Mike Krzyzewski, Frank McGuire, Bones McKinney, Dave Odom, Norm Sloan, Dean Smith, Jim Valvano, Gary Williams and Roy Williams.

And a tip of the hat to Al Featherston for help in this project.

Hiring or firing coaches was never my job during my many seasons as the Wake beat reporter for the Winston-Salem Journal, so I’m certainly not looking to take on that responsibility now that I’ve retired.

And as well as I got to know Ron Wellman during my 26 years covering the Deacons to the exclusion of pretty much else during football or basketball season, he never asked me for advice on that subject.

Nor should he have.

So if Wellman wants to retain Danny Manning for a fifth season as head basketball coach – as, from every indication I’ve seen or heard, he plans to do – then no skin off my teeth. That’s Wellman’s call as director of athletics, and he’ll succeed or fail with it.

What I did do – what I felt compelled to do – was to assess the performance of the coaches Wellman entrusted his programs to. If a beat guy can’t or won’t analyze what’s going on with his beat, then there’s no need for a beat guy.

As I write this on April 19, 2018, no one knows who will trot on the court wearing Wake’s uniforms when the season begins next November.

Manning confirmed to my compadre Les Johns of Demon Deacon Digest what we all had to know, that’s he’s actively recruiting at least one graduate transfer to come aboard for next season.

And of the players we do expect to take the court next season, the five incoming freshmen, Jaylen Hoard, Isaiah Mucius, Sharone Wright, Jr., Jamie Lewis and Christian Lorng have never played a game of college basketball.

It’s a highly ranked class, and Hoard, a five-star recruit from France, really opened some eyes with 15 points and 11 rebounds in the recent 2018 Nike Hoops Summit. Even so, how good these freshmen turn out to be — and/or how fast they get their games up to major-college speed — remains to be seen.

So we might not know who will be playing for Wake, or even how well they can play. But we do know who won’t be taking the floor for the Black and Gold in 2018-19, a list that was expanded this past week when center Doral Moore announced he would forego his senior season with the intention of playing professional basketball next season for somebody somewhere.

And it’s a list that gets even longer if guard Bryant Crawford, the other junior who decided to test the professional waters, decides to hire an agent and thus move along with his career. Neither Crawford nor Moore are expected to be drafted in the NBA in June, which would suggest they’re either getting bad advice or just done with playing for Manning and Wake.

Others we know who won’t be playing for Wake next season are Donovan Mitchell, Richard Washington and Samuel Japhet-Mathias. Mitchell and Washington are transferring and Japhet-Mathias was dismissed from the team in early February for “not meeting the program’s expectations.’’

The exodus of Moore, Mitchell, Washington and Japhet-Mathias means that of the 14 freshman Danny Manning has recruited to Wake since taking over before the 2014-15 season, only five remain. And those five include Crawford, who could be gone before I finish writing this post.

The others are Brandon Childress, Chaundee Brown, Olivier Sarr and Melo Eggleston. Childress averaged 9.1 points and 3.6 assists last season, Brown averaged 7.6 points and 3 rebounds, Sarr averaged 3.2 points and 3 rebounds and Eggleston played a total of 19 minutes in ACC games.

Meanwhile, there’s the question of just what Manning has been able to accomplish on the court during his four seasons as head coach.

I’ll concede he assumed the reins of a program in turmoil after four disastrous seasons under Jeff Bzdelik, and I fully recognize that Wake is far from the only college basketball team to experience rampant attrition in this fly-by-night era of the game.

But the bottom line is still the bottom line, and in his four seasons at Wake, Manning has won 54 games and lost 72 and finished 12^th, 14^th, 10^th and 14^th in the ACC regular season. By comparison, his predecessor, Bzdelik, won 51 and lost 76 and finished 12^th, ninth, ninth and 11^th.

The most pertinent stat, to me, though, his how well did these coaches do against the coaches they were hired to beat. Manning, in four seasons, is 21-56 against ACC competition.

So even when he had John Collins and Dinos Mitoglou and Doral Moore and transfers like Mitchell, Washington and Cornelius Hudson and Rondale Watson, Manning never finished above 10^th in the ACC.

Wake fans have gone through so much since Bzdelik was hired before the 2010-11 seasons, and as the beat guy for the local paper, I feel I’ve gone through it with them. There are knuckleheads in every crowd, but I’ve found most of the Wake fanbase to be as patient, understanding and reasonable as any fan could be expected to be.

My sense is that most would be fine with Manning as head coach – even with the 21-56 record against peers – if they had a reason to believe the program was headed in the right direction.

My first question, then, would be this: Given the attrition and uncertainty going into Manning’s fifth season, does anyone really know in which direction the program is headed?

I also feel pretty strongly that if the fans knew for a certain that Manning’s fate would be determined by what happens next season, then a large majority would be down with that. My own personal opinion is that after four seasons, we can pretty much tell if the coach is the right man for the job. But if we can’t tell after five seasons, then when?

Again, I got to know Ron Wellman well in my years on the beat, and what I do know is that he does care about those who care about Wake athletics. The depths to which the once proud program has fallen under his watch has to tear him up inside.

Which leads me to the second question: What, if anything, is he willing to do about it?

Hope may spring eternal in poetry, but in college basketball there comes a time to fish or cut bait.

Back in the Golden Age of Newspapers, legendary sportswriter Dick Herbert of the Raleigh News and Observer, got to know Vic Bubas well.

That’s because Bubas, the head basketball coach at Duke at the time, not only allowed him to, but made damn sure he did.

It was a different day, before ESPN, before the internet, before Twitter. It was a day when a coach and the working stiff on the beat could form a relationship that proved beneficial to both.

I consider myself lucky today that the two men did know each other so well. Otherwise I wouldn’t fully understand why the passing of Bubas yesterday at age 91 was such a big deal to anyone who has ever cared about ACC Basketball.

Sure I knew Bubas was one of the half-dozen best coaches to ever pace the ACC sidelines. The aforementioned formula I’m working on ranks him fourth all-time, surpassed by only Mike Krzyzewski, Dean Smith and Roy Williams. In his way-too-brief run of 10 seasons as Duke’s head coach, Bubas’ teams won four ACC titles, played in the championship game eight times, finished first in the regular season four times and advanced to the Final four three times.

He was all but unbeatable at Duke Indoor Stadium, where his teams won 87 of 100 games.

Even so, the statistic I found most impressive was Bubas’ 128-38 record against ACC opponents – which told me he beat the coaches he was hired to beat.

I’m sad to say that Bubas retired – at the uncommonly young age of 42 – after the 1968-69 season, which was two seasons before I showed up on the scene as a freshman at North Carolina. I was lucky enough to meet him when I drove to Charlotte to interview him during his time as the first commissioner of the Sun Belt Conference.

I found him to be ever bit as impressive as I had always heard.

But what I know most about Bubas comes from the extensive profile Herbert wrote on him that can be found in ACC Basketball: An Illustrated History – my first go-to source whenever I start researching ACC hoops. Written and compiled by Ron Morris, a fast friend for many, many years, ACC Basketball: An Illustrated History is an overflowing treasure trove for anyone wanting to know what went on over the first 35 seasons.

Published in 1988, you won’t find it in your local bookstore. But you can pick up a copy on Amazon. I know that to be so, because I just checked.

From Herbert’s profile, I learned the following:

Bubas’ father was born in a village outside Zagreb, Yugoslavia, where the family name was pronounced Boo-bosh. The elder Bubas immigrated to the U.S. in 1915 at age 20 with empty pockets, no understanding of English and a sign around his neck telling where he was going.

In time, Bubas’ dad would gravitate to Gary, Ind., where he used his drive, skill and good sense to build a hardware store into one of the most successful businesses in Northern Indiana.
Bubas was an Army veteran when he traveled to Raleigh to play basketball for Everett Case at N.C. State. He chose the Wolfpack over Southern Cal because Case promised him that if he did all he was asked to do, then Case would help him realize his dream of becoming a coach.

Bubas was a good enough player to make All-Southern Conference twice while playing for teams powerful enough to win 111 out of 135 games, capture four conference titles and advance to the 1951 Final Four. His greatest claim to fame as a player, however, might have been scoring the first basket ever in brand-spanking new Reynolds Coliseum against Washington & Lee on Dec. 2, 1949.

But Bubas was born to coach, as Case could plainly see. So Case hired him as an assistant, the position he held from 1955 through 1959, or until Duke hired him as head coach before the 1959-60 season. Bubas replaced Hal Bradley, who left to become head coach at Texas.

Eddie Cameron, the director of athletics, reportedly screened 135 candidates over a six-week period, none of which were Bubas.

“It wasn’t necessary,’’ Cameron explained. “I knew what he could do. I knew he would be a success at anything, and he was.’’

When hired, no contracts were signed. Bubas never signed a contract at Duke, working season to season on a verbal agreement. Can you imagine that happening today?

People who knew him such as Bucky Waters, another player for Case who became Bubas’ assistant (and successor) at Duke, say they never knew a coach so organized.

“Coach Case was well-organized,’’ Waters told Herbert. “But Vic took it to a higher level. He had a total plan. Seldom did he raise his voice. He had a steely set, and you knew what he wanted. He didn’t have to scream and holler. If there was an outburst, it carried more power. Whatever field he would have gone into he would have been a success.’’

But any coach is only as good as his players, and Bubas was off-and-running as soon as he recruited the great Art Heyman out of Long Island. Heyman was one of four players who played for Bubas who ended up in my book, ACC Basketball Book of Fame. The others were Jeff Mullins, Jack Marin and Bob Verga.

Reading the profile by Herbert, I was struck by how much he reminded me of Skip Prosser – in at least one regard. Both men understood so well the value of promoting your program. Bubas was a big fan of another hero of mine, Bill Veeck, and would recommend Veeck’s classic Veeck as in Wreck to people he knew.

To sell himself and his program, Bubas spruced up the women’s restrooms in Duke Indoor Stadium, invited woman to filter out on the court after games to meet the players, upgraded the parking lot outside, and designated end zone seats to be a family section where season tickets could be bought for $10.

There’s an old saying that amateurs borrow and professionals steal. Well Bubas admitted he stole the idea of forming a Duke pep band after encountering the one that accompanied UCLA to the 1964 Final Four.

Rival coaches had to learn from Bubas to survive. What most coaches had to learn was the old days of recruiting were over.

“Vic taught us how to recruit,’’ Dean Smith acknowledged. “We had been starting on prospects in the fall of their senior year, like almost everybody. But Vic was working on them their junior year. For a while all of us were trying to catch up with him.’’

As fate would have it, it was the loss of a transcendent recruit to Smith that helped convince Bubas that his passion for coaching was waning. Bubas went hard after Larry Miller of Catasaugua, Pa., and thought he had him until Miller broke his heart by signing with Smith and North Carolina.

Rubbing salt in the wounds, Miller, as a junior, made 13 of 14 shots and poured in 32 points as North Carolina beat Duke 82-73 in the ACC championship. A new day was dawning, and Duke’s dominance was over.

Waters said the loss of Miller to North Carolina was a blow Bubas never overcame.

“That may have been the death knell as far as his zest for recruiting,’’ Waters told Herbert. “He just got tired. He said `The thought of getting on another airplane to go chase another teenage kid just was overpowering.’ It was a battle to do that.’’

Although his final team faded to 15-13 and 8-6 in ACC play, no one can say Bubas didn’t go out in style. His Blue Devils rose up to smite second-ranked North Carolina 87-81 in early March of 1969, and afterward Bubas was carried off the court by students and thrown into the shower by his players.

I know all this to be true because I learned it from someone who was there, a great sportswriter named Dick Herbert. And I learned it because Bubas allowed Dick Herbert to know who he was and what he was about.

When one of the great coaches of today, say a guy like Tony Bennett of Virginia, passes, will future fans of ACC basketball know about him what I know about Vic Bubas?

Bubas spent his days cultivating the media, to the benefit of both. Media relations people spend their days these days shielding the coaches they work for from the media. Maybe it’s necessary, given the times in which we live.

But it’s one big reason for mourning more than the passing of a great coach named Vic Bubas.

Dino Gaudio, I’m happy to see, is back doing what he did the first 30 years of his professional career.

Gaudio is back in the coaching game, having been hired this week by Louisville as an assistant to Chris Mack, a fellow protege of the late, great Skip Prosser.

Gaudio has spent the last eight seasons in a form of exile. But the truth as to why Gaudio was cashiered a Wake in 2010, and compelled to seek employment as a television analyst, has never been told.

The truth hurts, or so the cliché goes. And for Ron Wellman, the director of athletics at Wake, to come clean on why he fired Gaudio just six months after granting him an contract extension, may have indeed harmed both Gaudio and Wake.

But I’ve had plenty of time and reason to wonder how that pain would have compared to what those still invested in the fortunes of Wake basketball have endured while suffering through one of the deepest and most prolonged downturns in the program’s once-proud history.

My greatest regret is that my role, as beat reporter for the Winston-Salem Journal, was to report the real reason Wellman cashiered Gaudio back in the spring of 2010. And I tried. Heaven knows I tried.

I asked Wellman repeatedly, in as many ways as I could come up with. And though I was told not to even bother asking Gaudio, I put in repeated calls to him as well.

Gaudio was always good to me during his nine seasons as an assistant or head coach at Wake. We always got along. So we have talked since he was let go.

But he steadfastly declined to address the reasons why he was fired.

The obvious conclusion was that the two parties reached some form of a non-disclosure agreement, which, again, they saw as protecting the interests of each side.

But what about the interests of those Wake fans who woke up one day to learn that Jeff Bzdelik was the new coach – and had no earthly idea why? And what about the interests of those same fans forced to deal with the historical repercussions of a 105-148 record over the past eight seasons?

If Wellman had given no reason at all for the decision, there would have been an outcry. He needed some explanation for firing a man who had won 61 of 92 games as Wake’s head coach. Unfortunately, the one he publicly proclaimed simply didn’t hold water.

Oh what tangled webs we weave, and all that.

Wellman’s stated rationale was Gaudio’s lack of late-season and post-season success. And it didn’t really sound that bad at the time to those who had watched the Deacons lose three straight ACC Tournament games and flounder in NCAA play. I will always contend that the victory over Texas in the 2010 NCAA Tournament was one of the most forgotten wins in the program’s history, but it couldn’t totally mitigate the 15-point loss to 12^th seed Cleveland State in 2009 or the horrendous 90-60 pounding by Kentucky just two days after Ish Smith’s miracle shot extended the 2010 campaign.

I learned so much working alongside long-time compadre Lenox Rawlings, who taught me it’s never about who you fire, but it’s always about who you hire. Duke could get away with firing Mike Krzyzewski tomorrow if it could somehow, someway, hire a coach who could do a better job.

So Wellman’s most grievous mistake was hiring Bzdelik to replace Gaudio. Not only did it undercut Wellman’s rationale for firing Gaudio, in that his replacement had never won an NCAA Tournament game, but it would by 2014 rank right up with with Bob Wade and Sidney Lowe and Kevin Stallings as among the worst hires in the history of ACC basketball.

What really bothered me was that in the absence of a plausible explanation for Wellman to fire Gaudio sprouted all these alternate reasons. Some, I’ve come to learn, made sense. Others, sadly, were small and tawdry and unfounded enough to reflect the worst of us as human beings.

I’ve always despised whisper campaigns, so in the absence of an on-the-record explanation from Wellman or Gaudio, I reported none of what I heard.

People who were working at Wake at the time told me that Gaudio wasn’t always the easiest person to get along with, that he could be caustic and demanding. But if that were a reason for firing a coach then who, I wonder, would be left to do the job?

I’ve also been told on good authority that there was somewhat of a philosophical difference of opinion that had developed between the two men.

Gaudio ascribed to the belief espoused time and again by Prosser, that the college team with the most NBA players usually wins. So he was more aggressive about going after the lottery-level talent that often comes with a certain kind of baggage.

Wellman, on the other hand, had apparently become convinced by the success of Butler, Gonzaga and other programs that a college team could excel without compromising what he saw as the values and standards of the university it represented.

If that had been the basis Wellman gave back in 2010 for firing Gaudio, he would have certainly caught some flak from certain corners. But it would have least been a reason that made sense to some, that he could stand by and defend.

By trotting out a justification that collapsed the moment Bzdelik was hired as head coach, Wellman did a grave injustice to every fan who has ever cared for Wake basketball. But the greatest injustice was done to Bzdelik, who never had a chance in the waters so contaminated by the manner in which his hiring came about.

Now would Bzdelik have succeeded under less-toxic circumstances? I think we all, by now, know the answer to that. But the consequent uproar wouldn’t have been as immediate or as rancorous, and the repercussions might not have been as long-lasting.

The Wake job was far more attractive to prospective candidates in 2010, than it was four disastrous years later. If Wake’s 51-76 record under Bzdelik hadn’t inspired the most acrimonious fan revolt of my long career as a sportswriter, then Wellman might have been able to land a more proven commodity than a former All-American with a scant two years experience as a college head coach.

Dino Gaudio, I’m happy to see, is back doing what he did the first 30 years of his professional career. That much has, at least, been put right.

Now, eight long, trying seasons later, it remains up to Wellman, or someone, to finally clean up the mess left at Wake.