Sports

Living the Dream of Wall-to-Wall ACC Basketball

A problem with covering ACC basketball for a living is you don’t get to see all the ACC basketball you want to see.

The paradox has to do with the time required to cover an ACC basketball game. While others are watching all those great games on television, the beat guy is getting to his assigned game, preparing for the game, watching the game, and then conducting the interviews and gathering the material required to write about it.

So often I’d leave the hacienda at 9:30 for a noon home game, and when all was said and done, come dragging back in around dinner time. And if the game was on the road – say in Charlottesville or Atlanta or Tallahassee or Boston — then my entire weekend would be consumed with the logistics of getting there, covering the game and getting home.

To find out what transpired elsewhere in the footprint, I’d have to rely on reading the accounts written by others, or talking to friends fortunate enough to see the games.

All of which is why I’ve never watched as much ACC basketball as I have since retiring from the Winston-Salem Journal 18 months ago. That’s also why I’m loving pretty much every minute of it, especially on days such as we had this past Saturday.

I climb out of bed warning my bride Tybee that it’s going to be wall-to-wall basketball. How she puts up with me, I’ll never know.

Nor will I cease to be ever grateful.

But what a slice of heaven this past Saturday proved to be, watching ACC basketball from the tip of North Carolina’s noon game against Miami to the conclusion of Duke’s at Virginia at around 8. Retirement truly has its rewards.

Having spent my career in Chapel Hill and Winston-Salem, I’m drawn more to the Big Four schools. And on this occasion, I was actually happy that Wake had the day off. The Deacons of this day and time, sadly, are rarely worth watching.

But the three Big-Four games played Saturday were classics, with the Tar Heels outlasting in overtime an inspired Hurricanes team playing out of its mind, the Wolfpack gutting out a game at Pitt it absolutely could not afford to lose and the Blue Devils hitting enough 3-pointers to hold off the Hoos in what I always considered the ACC’s most fabulous show place, John Paul Jones Arena.

My only real chore of the day was figuring out what window to run out and procure dinner from a near-by restaurant. I chose the first half of the four o’clock Louisville at Florida State tilt and got back (with take-out lasagna in tow) in plenty of time to see the second half and overtime of the Seminoles’ hard-fought victory over Chris Mack’s high-flying Cardinals.

Conclusions drawn from this wall-to-wall ACC basketball were four-fold.

With Coby White playing like a 6-5 Phil Ford, the Tar Heels are one team no one wants to face come NCAA Tournament time.

State still appears to be running on fumes, though one has to give Jeff Capel and the Panthers plenty of credit for giving the Pack all it could handle.

The Duke freshmen, particularly R.J. Barrett, were highly inspired and motivated by the front-row presence of LeBron James and (to a lesser-degree) Rajon Rondo and wanted to give those guys a sneak peek of what to expect in the NBA come next season.

The best play-by-play/color man combo calling ACC basketball these days, by far, is that of Evan Lepler and Dave Odom.

Here’s where I admit I’m not the most objective critic to be found. Both Evan and Dave are good friends.

I’ve known Dave well since he became Wake’s head basketball coach in 1989 and he always treated me the way any beat guy would love to be treated. And I’ve known Evan since his under-graduate days at Wake going on 15 years ago, and have followed his career with great interest.

It’s been really cool this season to see Evan getting more and more high-profile games. He’s earned those opportunities, and, to my mind, he continues to make the most of them. He’s a bright guy quick to learn, and you can just sense him gaining confidence and polish with every game he calls.

I expect Evan Lepler to be on the ACC scene for years to come, and all of us ACC fans will continue to be all the more fortunate for it.

And Dave Odom has forgotten more basketball than most of us will ever know. He’s also the ultimate people-person, and his love and appreciation for the game he devoted a life to comes across so loud and so clear.

Dave, like Evan, is a bright guy quick to learn. And Dave’s great challenge as a commentator was not in knowing what to say, but learning when to not say anything.

Anyone who knows Dave knows he’s a talker. Any sportswriter who was ever around during Dave’s time will recount the time Dave took 10 minutes to answer a question that another coach would have dispensed with in 15 seconds.

And that’s why every sportswriter I ever met loved Dave Odom. He held us in high regard, and the feeling was mutual.

Dave is also a naturally funny guy prone to say things as only he can say him. To me, that’s a plus in this new pursuit of him.

There’s a natural rhythm in every good play-by-play/color man team, and Dave, as he gains experience, is learning not to step on the comments of his teammate. But I also noticed a natural rapport between Evan and Dave, which warms the heart of a good friend of both.

Like when Dave observed player taking a flop in an attempt to draw a charge and giving up a basket.

Odom: “A lingering question with contact is when do you fall back and give up a shot – not that time.’’

To which Evan responded: “And that’s a question that will linger forever.’’

But my favorite moment of the whole day was a line by Dave that had me laughing out loud. Now Dave is an old-school guy. So I was hardly surprised to find he’s not a fan of the infestation of the Euro-step in modern basketball – which would have been called walking during Dave’s days of coaching high school basketball in Goldsboro and Durham and would still be today if called correctly.

“That Euro-step all these guys are working on – that needs to be left in Europe.’’

What could be better than watching ACC basketball with two great friends like Evan Lepler and Dave Odom? If I find out, I’ll let you know.

But don’t expect an answer anytime soon.

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Gordianus The Finder

Besides being one of the most influential figures in the history of baseball, Bill Veeck was also one of the most fascinating.

Want a great read? Find, if you can, a copy of Veeck As in Wreck and dive in. There’s very little being done to promote the game of baseball that didn’t spring from the twisted, but oh so fertile and clever mind of one William Louis Veeck, Jr.

BV, or Before Veeck, the game and those who ran it took itself and themselves way too seriously. It needed a good goosing, and nobody was more up to the task than Veeck.

“I try not to break the rules,’’ Veeck once explained, “but merely test their elasticity.’’

One great regret is that I never met him. I know he was full of himself, and that enemies who described him as a huckster and a gadfly weren’t entirely wrong. But anybody who loses a leg fighting as a Marine in the South Pacific, and then carves an ashtray out of his wooden prosthetic to snuff his cigarettes in is OK by me.

He dropped out of Kenyon College when his father – a sportswriter hired as general manager of the Chicago Cubs – came down with leukemia, the same scourge that did in my own mother. But he never lost his love for the written word.

When he’d come across an author who caught his attention, he would do his diligence and read the writer’s output in the chronological order that it was written. He wanted to see what evolution, or perhaps devolution, the author had experienced and soak in everything that had been offered.

I’m drawn to Veeck for at least three reasons – his love of baseball, his love of the written word, and his love of stirring up the established order in the pursuit of pure unadulterated fun.

My own taste in literature runs toward historical fiction. I love reading those books where if you’re not careful you might learn something worth learning.

Favorites are Bernard Cornwell, Conn Iggulden, Edward Rutherfurd and Ken Follett. If ever tortured to the point I’d have to name my favorite historical fiction work of all time, I’d probably scream out Follett’s Pillars of the Earth.

Whoever thought a tale about building a cathedral in 12th Century Britain could be so spell-binding?

But a writer who, in my mind, is giving them all a run for their money is one I came across a couple of years back named Steven Saylor. He writes about a period I find infinitely engrossing, Roman history in the final century BC, the time of Sulla, Cicero, Spartacus, Pompey and, of course the great one himself, Julius Caesar.

His hero is a Roman citizen named Gordianus the Finder, who over past couple of years has become one of my all-time favorite literary characters. If there’s anyone reading this who has any say in the development of television or cinematic entertainment, I’m going to give you the best advice of your career.

Take the character Gordianus the Finder and make a series out of him. You’d be rich and famous and I’d be happy and grateful to have something good to watch.

Gordianus was called The Finder because his powers of deduction were so uncanny that he – and ostensibly only he – could unlock the deepest, darkest secrets of the deep and dark Roman Empire. And everyone knew it, so they would hire him to glean the kind of information that could make a society rumble and an empire crumble.

He was, in short, a PI, a Private Investigator centuries before the term was coined.

So the series would have that element, and even those who have little interest in Roman history would have trouble resisting a good mystery. And Saylor, besides having researched his history to infinite detail, also writes a good mystery.

Best I can tell, Saylor has trotted out 16 tales of Gordianus The Finder so far in a series titled Roma Sub Rosa. In Latin, a matter deemed Sub Rosa meant it was confidential.

Unless I’m mistaken I’ve read six of the 16 Gordianus the Finder. Every one has been a page-turner.

Only I never read them in any particular order, just whenever I could find one on the shelves of a local library or second-hand book store. So by the closing chapters of The Judgment of Caesar, which I polished off over the holidays, I decided to take a Veeckian approach to the series and read them in order.

By The Judgment of Caesar, Gordianus was an old man riddled by the aches and pains and frustrations that I, at 66, know all too well. I could relate.

But it’s been fun starting back at the start, with The Seven Wonders, when Gordianus is a fresh-faced whippersnapper of 18 years old who had just donned his toga signifying adulthood. He travels the ancient world with a celebrated poet gone incognito named Antipeter of Sidon solving mysteries from Ephesus to Rhodes to Olympia to Babylon to Memphis.

I’ve already checked the local library’s catalog to find that most of the books are in one branch or another. And here in Winston-Salem, those running the library are great about transferring a book from a far-away branch to one much closer.

Another trick I’ve learned is to buy a book used on-line and have it sent to your house. You can usually find a decent copy for less than 10 dollars, postage included.

The Seven Wonders closes in Egypt where Gordianus finds and buys the love of his life, a slave named Bethesda. So obviously he remains there for the second book of the series Raiders of the Nile, which I’ve yet to read but am looking forward to with great anticipation.

What I’ve found is retirement is boring only to those who allow it to be.

Sports, Uncategorized

Cardinals “Embarrass” Deacons

Embarrassed was a word we learned to tread carefully around, those of us who wrote sports for the Winston-Salem Journal while Terry Oberle was our editor.

Every time the word showed up in our copy, Terry would strike it out.

“To say a person was embarrassed assumes you know what they were thinking,’’ he explained. “You can’t assume you know what someone is thinking.’’

“But Terry,’’ we’d sputter, “they just got annihilated at home by the the worst team in the league. They were never in the game. The fans were booing. Even the cheerleaders were holding their noses. Of course they were embarrassed.’’

“I’m not saying they shouldn’t be embarrassed,’’ Terry would saying, sticking to his guns as he was known to do. “I would be embarrassed. You would be embarrassed. But that said, you still can’t assume you know what’s in someone else’s mind.’’

So bless Jaylen Hoard’s heart last night after Wake’s 82-54 blood-letting at the hands of Louisville. He came right out and said what everyone knew to be true.

“Obviously we lost – it was embarrassing,’’ Hoard said. “It was just an embarrassing loss.’’

There’s so little I find worth watching on television these days that I was chagrined to find out that Wake would be playing at the same time as the season finale of The Vikings. I’m a sucker for history – especially early British history for some reason — so I’ve really gotten into the tale of Ragnar Lothbrook and his sons on the History Channel.

It can get pretty gory at times, but nothing I saw when I watched the repeat at midnight matched the carnage I witnessed from Joel Coliseum. The Cardinals made the return of Chris Mack and Dino Gaudio one to long remember by scoring on 28 of the first 42 times they had the ball en route to a 64-29 lead.

You read that right. The Cardinals, picked to finish 11th in the ACC and playing for a first-year coach, led 64-29.

If Danny Manning was embarrassed by his team’s performance, he did his usual superb job of hiding it. Of course he’s had plenty of practice over his 147 games (62 wins and 85 losses) as Wake’s head coach.

He even kept his cool while fumbling with the microphones in front of him as he sat down to address the assembled media. The questions, you’ve probably noticed, have gotten sharper as the losses have mounted, as should be the case given the Deacons’ 1-7 record in ACC play.

But there was nothing Manning said that we haven’t heard so many times before.

We heard how the Deacons have to win each possession.

We heard how Manning played 15 years in the NBA, despite blowing out his knee three times.

And we heard how Wake has a young team. In fact, we heard the word young five different times. Young team. Young group. Young this. Young that.

I don’t know about you. But to me this stuff about how Wake is a young team has long since gotten old. There are plenty of young teams in this day of the fly-by-night player who are faring far better than the trainwreck know as Wake basketball.

Manning came up with a new spin last night, how his senior class is playing professional basketball. That’s a deft way of saying it, considering only one of them, John Collins, is living his dream of playing in the NBA.

Another, Doral Moore, is playing in the G-League, and yet another, Bryant Crawford, is playing in Egypt. Both chose highly uncertain prospects over another season of playing college ball for Danny Manning.

What Manning didn’t mention, mind you, were the six other players he and his staff recruited – Donovan Mitchell, Melo Eggleston, Rich Washington, Jamie Lewis, Samuel Japhet-Mathias and Keyshawn Woods – who would be on the roster if they hadn’t either transferred or been dismissed.

The best question, to my mind, was asked by Les Johns of Demon Deacon Digest concerning what Manning himself might do to get the team on track down the stretch.

“Yeah I’ve got to continue to – I’ve got to do a better job,’’ Manning said. “I think we all have to do a better job. It’s not – it’s everybody. Obviously I’m the head coach and it starts with me.’’

If he had stopped there, I wouldn’t have been as bothered as I shortly thereafter. What I heard next sounded mighty close to “Don’t blame me. Blame the players.’’

“But when we go into the games, we have an understanding of what the teams are going to do,’’ Manning said. “We just have to go out there and do a better job of executing it.’’

Sitting on the opposite bench were two coaches – head coach Mack and assistant coach Gaudio – I had the pleasure of getting to know fairly well during their times at Wake. It was good to see Dino back in the game after sitting out the eight seasons following his dismissal as the Deacons’ head coach..

I thought Dino handled the build-up to his return to Joel Coliseum well when Conor O’Neil caught up with him for the advance story. He took the high road, and came off looking all the better for it.

That said, I know there had to be some satisfaction for Dino to know what one person in the stands was suffering through as the Cardinals ran the Deacons out of their own building. That, of course, would be Ron Wellman, the director of athletics who extended Gaudio’s contract in the fall of 2009 and fired him in the spring of 2010.

Wellman never sufficiently explained the dismissal, leaving one to assume that Gaudio’s 61-31 record at Wake wasn’t good enough.

Sorry Terry. There I go assuming again.

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The Burned-Out Husk That is Wake Hoops

So as we could see again from last night’s first-round knockout at Virginia, all Danny Manning needed was five years to assemble a Wake team this bad.

Does rock bottom have a trap door? We’re getting ready to find out with Saturday’s visit from Boston College.

What we know already is that Manning’s fifth team at Wake is his worst. We know that from the KenPom rankings and we know that from the naked eye. Back-to-back blowouts at Virginia Tech (87-71) and Virginia (68-45) have dropped the Deacons to 8-10 overall and 1-5 in ACC play, with little to no relief in sight.

Last night’s fiasco reminded me all too well of a lost weekend spent in Atlanta in Jan. of 2013, in the third season of Jeff Bzdelik’s ill-fated four-year run. I drove down on Friday, got a room and made it to McCamish Pavillion well before the 3 p.m. tip.

As it turned out, I could have packed my computer and headed back up I-85 at the first media timeout without missing anything worth watching. Georgia Tech scored the game’s first 16 points and that was that. The final carnage was Yellow Jackets 82, Deacons 62.

So I had to feel empathy last night for my buddy Les Johns of Demon Deacon Digest, as well as Stan Cotten and Mark Freidinger of the IMG Broadcast team. They drove up I-29 yesterday, had to get a room because of the 9 p.m. tip, and drove back today.

And for all that bother and effort, the game was over by the first media timeout. The Cavaliers led 17-3 and again, that was that. Virginia extended its lead to 25-3 and the Deacons never got closer than 14.

I read somewhere recently where legendary reporter Bob Woodward, he of Watergate fame, expressed gratitude he didn’t have to cover another scandal like the Russia probe. Eighteen months into my blissful retirement, I’m thanking my lucky stars I no longer have to cover the burned-out husk that is Wake basketball.

For as much empathy as I have for Les, Stan and Dinger, I have all that much more sympathy for the fans who have tried somehow to remain faithful to the once-proud Deacons basketball program. Let’s just say their faith is stronger than mine.

I keep hearing that Manning is a good man. You’d think I might have an idea one way or the other, having covered him for his first three seasons. But truth be told, I never knew him well enough to find out.

Danny being Danny, I never got the chance.

But I have to say I was bothered by his comments after the drubbing at Virginia Tech.

First he clearly threw Ikenna Smart, the grad student transfer from Buffalo, under the bus the Deacons drove to Blacksburg for the beat down.

“He wasn’t feeling good the last day or so,’’ Manning explained. “I reflected back on playing 15 years in the NBA and there were a lot of days I went to the gym and didn’t think I was going to play – and ended up getting into your routine and feeling good and going out there and playing.

“I was hoping for that – to be honest with you – when we got on the bus coming to the game, that he was going to find a way to give us a minute.’’

And then he implied strongly that Wake got a raw deal by the officials after Mike Eades was sidelined early with a knee injury.

“Today’s game was a lot different with the dynamics of the referees,’’ Manning said. “We only had two out there. So you know that’s going to change some of the things in terms of that last set of eyes out there and calling some different things.’’

Listen, in 45 years as a sportswriter I never met a coach who didn’t feel in his heart of hearts that he got shafted by the officials from time to time – if not all the time.

But Wake, a team that couldn’t beat Houston Baptist or Gardner-Webb at home, went into last night’s game having scored a larger percentage of its points from the free- throw line than any team in the country. More to the point, Manning had all that to say after the Deacons shot 38 free throws on the road against the ninth-ranked team in the country.

The other attribute I’ve heard about Manning is that he is a good recruiter. And that, to me, is a fallacy.

Good recruiters recruit players good enough to win games, and Manning’s record at Wake is 62-83 overall and 21-57 in ACC play.

The tag “good recruiter’’ is often determined by the prep rankings of the players they recruit. I never quite understood that. To me, recruiting has always been a means to an end – which is to win games.

Jaylen Hoard is a nice player who will be playing basketball for many years. But he’s a freshman in need of muscle and polish still feeling his way through the rigors of major-college basketball, as we’ve seen so painfully in the last two games. On the swing through Virginia, Hoard made 4-of-15 shots from the floor while averaging 6.5 points and 6.5 rebounds.

Sharone Wright, Jr., and Isaiah Mucius also appear to have talent, and may someday develop into decent ACC players. But ask yourself, could either crack the rotation of any ACC team with NCAA Tournament aspirations?

Besides, the term recruiting has taken on a much different connotation in this day of fly-by-night players. There’s a booming market for transfers and grad students, one that coaches such as Kevin Keatts at N.C. State and Jim Larranaga of Miami have taken full advantage of.

When circumstances – such as a mass exodus of veteran players – have forced Manning out on the open market, who has he returned with?

Torry Johnson and Ikenna Smart.

Last night’s loss actually elevated Wake’s standing in the KenPom ratings, all the way up to No. 154. Manning’s previous worst team, his first in 2015, was ranked No. 120. There’s plenty of basketball left to be played, but it will take some effort for the Deacons to reach their previous low-water mark under Manning.

It’s also worth noting that Wake has easily the lowest KenPom ranking in the ACC. Boston College is next, at No. 108.

So what is there left this season to look for. For me, it’s signs that Ron Wellman and the powers that be at Wake have recognized that Manning, like Bzdelik before him, is woefully over-matched as an ACC coach.

I know it. You know it. When will Ron Wellman know it?

And if he already does, what will he do about it? And when will he do it?

That’s not much to keep one’s interest in college basketball, but at Wake, that’s all you’ve got.

Sports, Uncategorized

Down on NFL, Down on Myself

As down as I am on the NFL about now, I’m even more disappointed in myself.

See, if there’s anybody who knows that sports should be about enjoyment and fun and not frustration and angst, it should be one who spent a professional life writing about sports for a daily newspaper.

The best lesson for any sportswriter to learn is to not become emotionally invested in who wins or loses a game. You can be a fan or you can be a sportswriter, but you can’t be both if you want to do your job the way it should be done.

I’ve seen too many try, but in my eyes at least, they all failed.

But here I sit at age 66 all wound up about the way the NFC Championship between the Saints and the Rams came down. The taste is so sour in my mouth I’m not sure I can even tune in to the Super Bowl – not that anybody cares, or should care.

The big joke on me is that I’m not even all that into pro football. With each passing year as a sportswriter, I drifted further and further from those sports that I wasn’t directly responsible for covering, to the point that I rarely, these days, watch NFL until the playoffs begin.

If it’s every other year and the Panthers are on the prowl, then I might tune in. But invariably by the third time Cam Newton is called for delay of game my mind has wandered off to my music, some computer game or the two or three books I’m reading at any point in time.

But other than the Panthers, my favorite team is the Saints. I love the city, I love how the city has rallied around its team and I really love how Drew Brees and Sean Payton, et. al., rallied around the city after Katrina stomped through.

Plus they do gold and black better than any sports franchise I can think of.

So to see the Saints get so close to the Super Bowl, and to see how they were denied was such a bitter pill that now, even two days later, I’m having trouble choking it down.

Speaking of choking. . .

No, we’ll get to that later.

By now we’ve all seen the play and replays and heard all the commentary. The verdict is unanimous. The Saints got screwed. Even the perpetrator, Nickell Robey-Coleman, the cornerback who steamrolled receiver TommyLee Lewis, acknowledged that the Saints got screwed.

“Yes, I got there too early,’’ Robey-Coleman said. “I was beat, and I was trying to save the touchdown.’’

Of course that’s a bit like Bill Buckner admitting he botched the grounder in the 1986 World Series. Robey-Coleman is only telling everyone what everyone saw.

Everyone, apparently, except those who matter most – the officials responsible for making the call.

What’s mind-boggling is that replay should not have even been needed. We all saw what we saw. And when we did see the replay, the no-call was even more egregious — in that a strong case could be made that Robey-Coleman should have been called for helmet-to-helmet contact.

A distraught Peyton revealed his conversation with Al Riveron, the NFL’s vice president of officiating, and how Riveron admitted both penalties should have been called. But I have to say it bothers me to no end that the NFL has yet to officially address the issue.

And had they been called, the Saints have the ball inside the 10-yard line with 1:49 remaining. With only two timeouts remaining, the Rams would have had no way to prevent the Saints from running the clock almost out before attempting a short field goal to win the game.

Here’s where I admit that I was impressed with the Rams, and how they capitalized on their great fortune to take control in overtime. They’re a great team, and if they can beat the Patriots, they’ll be a great champion.

And I also freely acknowledge that there were other blown calls in the game. But seldom in my career have I seen a call or no-call so directly affect the outcome of a game.

My heart bleeds for the Saints and their awesome fans, the fans that simply wouldn’t let their team lose in the NFL semi-final against Philadelphia and who made life so miserable on the Rams. But to be charitable, I also feel sorry for the seven officials who called the game – and particularly the one (ostensibly either the back judge or the side judge) who was most responsible for making the call.

In their gut they have to know they they or he – and not Jared Goff or Drew Brees or Sean McVay or Sean Payton – were most responsible for extending the Rams’ season and, as Saints’ owner Gayle Benson put it, unfairly depriving one team from playing in the Super Bowl.

And that has to be a horrible feeling.

To date I’ve not seen the official or officials most responsible outed, and I’m glad for that. No need for lynch mobs, whether it be on social media or in public.

That said I really don’t see how the official or officials most responsible should ever call another NFL game. I know that’s harsh, in that we’re talking about people’s livelihood.

But to pursue a livelihood, one has to prove they’re up to the responsibility. And faced with that responsibility, at least one official and possibly two choked for all the world to see.

They can’t be counted on not choking again.

I wish I could say I felt a little better after getting all this off my chest, but in my mind, until the NFL improves its officiating it will remain a joke – a bad joke at that.

What I’d like to write is that I’ve evolved past the point where an outcome of an athletic event could get me so riled up.

But one no call in New Orleans clearly proved I’ve not.

Sports, Uncategorized

Desperate Times, Desperate Measures

Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems to me that in the modern game of college basketball there are only two reasons for a coach to play as much zone as Wake played in Tuesday night’s 71-67 victory over No. 17 N.C. State.

One is by design. Go the Syracuse route and recruit enough active, long-armed players to make the zone a real pain in the posterior to face.

The other is by necessity. Play zone because your man-to-man presents no more impediment than a busted turnstile on the Green Line.

Danny Manning, by lineage, is a man-to-man guy. He said so when he became head coach at Wake to the surprise of no one who knows his background at Kansas – one of college basketball’s most staunch man-to-man programs.

But desperate times call for desperate measures and Manning has seen the need for this, his fifth team at Wake, to be a zone team. Good for him. Something had to be done as the Deacons sunk ever lower in rankings of defensive efficiency and shooting percentages and point totals of the opponents continued to soar.

And if he can find a few more teams that attack the zone as poorly as N.C. State did in the first half last night, he might even win a handful of ACC games in this – again – his fifth season as the Deacons’ head coach.

I’ve been really impressed with what Kevin Keatts has done in his first two seasons as the Wolfpack’s coach. He’s one of many examples why it doesn’t always take three, four, or even five seasons to turn the fortunes of a program around.

But I couldn’t, for the life of me, understand why he didn’t get more grips on his team in the first half last night when Wake packed its zone back and just dared N.C. State to heave it up from outside. Not until halftime – by which point the Pack had missed 13 out of 14 3-pointers to fall behind by as many as 22 points – did Keatts get his message across that the way to beat Wake is to take the ball to the hoop.

N.C. State took the ball to the hoop after the break and roared back into contention, scoring on 13 of the first 19 second-half possessions to tie the game at 58. If you were like me, you probably thought Wake’s goose was cooked. But to the Deacons’ considerable credit, they showed enough grit and fortitude to get six straight stops in winning time and make the plays needed to pull out their first ACC victory over.

Yeah, I know. Markell Johnson, probably the Pack’s best player, missed the game with a back injury. But my position is and has always been that you play with and against who is available. Once you start factoring in the impact of an injury you’ve entered the hazy, slippery realm of conjecture.

Say Johnson had been available, and was as bad against Wake as he was against North Carolina, when he 1-for-7 from 3-point range with five turnovers? We’ll never know, so it’s useless to speculate.

The team Danny Manning put on the floor beat the team that Kevin Keatts put on the floor, and that’s all that matters. And he did so by out-coaching Keatts. His strategy of playing a compacted zone worked.

And maybe you also noticed that with the Deacons clinging to a 67-66 lead, Manning called timeout and hustled Torry Johnson into the game for Sharone Wright, Jr., and that it was Johnson who not only sank the runner but also nailed the two free throws with 13 seconds left to all but clinch the victory.

Manning also showed flexibility on offense with a lineup that had freshman Jaylen Hoard essentially playing center for key stretches. Hoard was certainly up to the task, finishing with 16 points, 10 rebounds, three assists, three blocks and two steals for a stat line that would have done Josh Howard proud.

Danny Manning hasn’t had all that many good nights as head coach at Wake, but he had one last night. Good for him.

Now if he can just carry that momentum into the next two games at Virginia Tech on Saturday and at Virginia on Tuesday.

And maybe, just maybe, he can pack his zone back into the lane and tempt Buzz Williams and Tony Bennett to allow their teams to launch one brick after another from 3-point range.

If there’s another way Wake can escape falling to 1-5 going into the Jan. 26 home game against Boston College, perhaps you can see it.

Because I certainly can’t.

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The Big Four — Sans One

Dean Smith could be petty, and he could definitely be persnickety. But like many people who achieve greatness, Smith had many facets to his personality.

In the proper setting, he could be exceedingly polite. He was taught to be polite and he wanted to be polite, whether he achieved his goal or not.

So it was Dean just being Dean when he walked out onto the Greensboro Coliseum court before North Carolina’s game against N.C. State early in the 1974-75 season. He noticed that directly behind the Tar Heel bench sat a fan of Wake Forest, which would play Duke in the second game that evening.

“I want to apologize in advance,’’ Smith told the Wake fan. “My players stand to acknowledge a teammate’s good play, and you may have your view blocked.’’

Hugh Strickland, a fan so devoted to have set some kind of record by attending 339 straight Wake basketball games – home and away – looked up from the newspaper he was perusing.

“Oh that’s OK, coach,’’ Strickland replied. “I’m just going to sit here and read my paper until the varsity game starts.’’

It’s important to remember that there was a time – once upon a time – when one devoted to Wake basketball had not only the temerity, but the well-earned right to rib a fan, player or even coach of a rival ACC school – and get away with it.

“Good one,’’ Smith acknowledged with a grin.

It’s also important to remember that the occasion was an early-season tournament played from the 1970-71 season through the 1980-81 campaign called the Big Four Tournament. The coaches hated it, but the fans loved squaring off against their traditional rivals so early to start establishing bragging rights for the next three months.

The Big Four, at the time, was as select a group as there was in all of college basketball. To be in the Big Four meant that you not only played in the ACC, but were a member in good standing of the inner ring of the ACC.

If you don’t believe it, check out the first 17 seasons of ACC play. Teams from the Big Four – N.C. State, North Carolina, Duke and Wake – won 16 championships.

And while you’re at it, check out the next 13 seasons, when teams from the Big Four won 11 more titles.

To be a member of the Big Four meant you were the crème de la crème of college basketball.

Wake was never the scourge of the Big Four. Of those 16 championships before 1970-71, N.C. State won six, Duke and North Carolina won four each and Wake won two.

But Wake had a way of rising to the occasion against its blood rivals, and teams from N.C. State, Duke and North Carolina knew from experience to expect a game when they played the Deacons. Wake really made its mark in the aforementioned Big Four Tournament, winning the event four times and making the finals twice more.

In short, Wake was never the class of the Big Four, but there was no doubt that the Deacons belonged.

One doesn’t hear the term Big Four very often anymore in basketball, and for good reason. The sobriquet is as antiquated as another term used back then for ACC basketball as played by North Carolina schools, Tobacco Road.

Just how antiquated the term Big Four is happened to be on full display last night on ESPN, with the doubleheader of Duke playing at Wake and North Carolina playing at N.C. State. I watched both games intently, and was impressed by the play of three of those teams.

The Wolfpack didn’t have its best showing, and will struggle to beat anybody of note this season with Markell Johnson making only one of seven attempts from 3-point range. But the team clearly has a new spring in its step under second-year coach Kevin Keatts, enough so to be ranked No. 15 going into ACC play.

And unless I miss my bet, the Wolfpack will enter the final week of the regular season with at least a shot of earning a double bye at the ACC Tournament. I’ll also be surprised if either Duke or North Carolina are playing before Thursday in Charlotte.

All of which make the demise of Wake basketball that much harder to take for those of us old enough to remember who the Deacons once were and realize how far they’ve fallen. What we saw once again last night is that given the downward trajectory of the last eight (going on nine) seasons Wake is lucky to even belong to the ACC, much less an aggregate extolled enough to be called the Big Four.

Les Johns, to my mind, nailed his lede when he wrote in Demon Deacon Digest that “Duke played with its food a bit Tuesday night.’’ Les noted how the Blue Devils, hardly known for their 3-point eye, spent the first half launching 15 3-pointers and turning the ball over nine times.

And still led by eight at halftime.

Mike Krzyzewski hasn’t won 1,040 games and five national championships at Duke by being slow in the uptick, which rendered the adjustments made at halftime so thoroughly predictable. The message was clear: Take the ball to the rack and dare Wake to stop you.

Barely more than a minute into the second half – by which time Duke had scored four point-blank baskets on its first three possessions en route to a 50-36 lead – the game was over and settled. Unfortunately for the Deacons, the carnage continued.

The Blue Devils crossed mid-court with the basketball 36 times in the second half, and scored on 22 of those excursions. But here’s the real indictment against the defense as played by the Deacons.

Sixteen of those 22 successful possessions resulted in points scored from inside two-feet. And many of those were uncontested.

To get shredded by Duke is going to happen from time to time, even to good teams. The Blue Devils are that potent.

The problem at Wake is that it doesn’t take a Duke or North Carolina or N.C. State to eviscerate the Deacons’ defense. On a good night, even a Houston Baptist or Gardner-Webb can do it.

The bigger problem is that the inability to stop the other team from scoring has persisted from the day that Danny Manning became head coach before the 2014-15, infamously belying his boast that his program would be one that would “hang its hat on defense.’’

And as Conor O’Neill astutely noted in his game story for the Winston-Salem Journal, the Deacons’ defense – instead of improving – continues to regress dramatically.

Wake has never been ranked bv KenPom better than No. 125 in defensive efficiency. This season’s team, the fifth with Manning at the helm, was ranked No. 213 even before last night’s blood-letting.

Conor also pointed out how in three games against teams from Power Five conferences, Wake has been torched for 92 by Georgia Tech, 82 by Duke and 81 by Tennessee.

If there’s an explanation for the implosion of a once-proud program I have yet to hear it. Krzyzewski was asked on this week’s ACC teleconference leading into last night’s game why Manning was having such a hard time righting the Deacons’ ship in basketball.

“You should ask Coach Manning that,’’ Krzyzewski replied. “He’s on later.’’

Les Johns, to his credit, did exactly that to conclude last night’s post-game presser.

“What’s it going to take – micro-level – to get the Wake Forest program to where it can compete again with the Dukes of the world?’’

And Manning’s answer?

If you heard one, that makes one of us.

“We don’t have enough time,’’ Manning said, presumably meaning the amount of time it would take to answer the question. “There are a lot of different things that go into it. The bottom line is that when you step out on the court, you have to find a way. You’ve got to find a way.

“You have to be able to compete, and compete every possession. And I thought there were some possessions when we did a good job competing. But it’s got to be the mindset that ‘We’re going to win every possession.’

“And there were too many empty possessions for us tonight.’’

Hugh Strickland died 18 years ago and I still miss him, though I am lucky enough to know his son Gary – the long-time scorekeeper for Wake basketball – and his grandsons David, Michael and Scott. The one solace I have is Hugh didn’t live long enough to see what has become of his beloved Wake basketball, or have to listen to Danny Manning try to explain it away.

Sports

Wake Basketball: Who Cares?

One of the most significant figures of Wake basketball was sitting courtside today at Georgia Tech’s McCamish Pavillion for the Deacons’ all-too-predictable 92-79 bellyflop into ACC play.

And sitting next to him was John Collins.

The commentators for the Fox Sports South telecast, my good buddy Wes Durham and analyst Cory Alexander, made much to do about Collins, and how well he’s playing his sophomore season for the Atlanta Hawks and how he visited the Deacons’ locker room for a halftime pep talk.

But truth is, Collins, the first and only Wake player to make first-team All-ACC since Chris Paul’s sophomore season of 2004-05, has presently done what he could do for the Deacons’ basketball fortunes. And it will be all he can do until he decides he has made enough money to plow some back into Wake’s basketball coffers.

It was the man sitting next to Collins who had a much bigger impact on the dire straits the Deacons find themselves, and, more important, what they intend to do about it. If you know Mit Shah, it’s probably by name only, the name that will adorn the $9 million showplace of a basketball complex being built as we speak on campus.

Shah is a 1991 graduate of Wake who walked on the tennis team, before taking on the world and winning hugely as a hotel magnate rich enough to donate more than $7 million to his alma mater. He’s also a minority owner of the Atlanta Hawks.

Shah was one of the influential boosters behind the hiring of Danny Manning before the 2014-15 season. And I, for one, won’t hold that against him. There were plenty of people at the time who thought the hiring of one of the great names in the history of college basketball was a gamble worth taking.

Yet I just had to wonder what was going through Shah’s bright mind as he watched the Deacons stumble to a pretty cut-and-dried loss to a Tech team picked to finish one spot ahead of them at 13th in the ACC preseason predictions. Surely, by now, he has concluded what is obvious for anyone to see.

Danny Manning is not the answer to the bottomless doldrums Wake finds itself in. If he were, we all would have seen that long before now.

Instead, what we saw today was a team that handled the ball like it was radio-active and played the kind of defense that would shame an over-40 team at the local Y. We knew Wake had a bad team. We saw just how bad today, and we’ll continue to see it as the meat-grinder of an ACC season grinds on.

The Yellow Jackets came into the game shooting 45 percent from the floor against a less-than-robust nonconference schedule and scoring 71 points a game. Wake played some man, it played some zone, and it pressed, none of which kept Tech from shooting 56 percent from the floor and scoring 20 points more than its average.

But final tally and shooting percentage only begin to tell the sad tale of where Wake basketball is today. As I’ve mentioned many times, I watch from home these days with a pad on my lap charting number of stops the Deacons get on defense – because I’ve long-since concluded porous defense is their most pressing and longstanding problem.

I actually had to check my figures with the play-by-play from the Wake Athletics website to make sure the Deacons’ defense was as abysmal as I had charted. Turns out it was worse.

Georgia Tech crossed midcourt with the basketball 42 times in the second half, and either scored or got fouled (or both) 29 times. And once the Yellow Jackets got to really rolling, there were rarely stopped.

The headline from the official Wake website says the Deacons’ rally fell short (I know, I know, whoever is responsible has to write something), but it’s hard to rally when the opponent is scoring every time down. Tech scored or got fouled (or both) the last nine times it had the ball, 13 of the last 14 times and 15 of the last 17.

The pattern I’ve noticed as that the Deacons’ defense gets more and more porous as the game wears on, which explains why Wake is as good a bet as any to finish dead last in the ACC – in Danny Manning’s fifth season as head coach.

The rank-and-file fans have been wise to the dumpster fire consuming their once proud program, but the problem is, any and all protestations are falling on deaf ears. Best anyone can tell, the man most responsible for the plight of all Wake athletics, Ron Wellman, simply no longer cares.

Wake can finish 12th, 14th, 10th and 14th in the ACC under the same coach while players leave in droves and the program is relegated to irrelevance, and what does Wellman do?

He extends Manning’s contract.

There’s been a report floating around for some time from Jeff Goodman of ESPN that Manning’s contract will run through the 2024-25 season and that its fully guaranteed to the tune of $18 million.

When asked, Wellman fell back on the usual dodge provided him by Wake’s status as a private institution.

“We do not comment on contract details,’’ Wellman said.

I ask you as fans of Wake basketball. Why do you care? What are you supposed to think when the current coach is losing game after game, and the man who hired him is not even commenting on reports that said coach is under contract through 2025?

Ron Wellman doesn’t care what a grizzled old sportswriter writes on his personal block after his retirement, nor should he.

On the other hand, Ron Wellman, by not addressing the current contract status of Danny Manning, is showing that he doesn’t care what you as the rank-and-file fan thinks.

But I am wondering what Mit Shah, a Wake trustee and CEO of the Noble Investment Group, is thinking along about now.

Because I know Ron Wellman cares about what Mit Shah is thinking.

He has around $7 million reasons to care.

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A Wedding I’ll Never Forget

It’s in the eyes of others, we see who we are,

By staring in her shining eyes, he saw he was a star.

She saw something precious, she saw something right,

That gave her heart a’ flutter, and made her head a little light.

Happiness is a hard place to write from, or at least it always has been for me.

When I’m happy, I’m usually too busy enjoying the sensation to take the time to settle in and commit to the kind of work required to chronicle the moment. And writing, while fun, can be work.

All of which is a long-winded explanation of why you haven’t seen any posts from me in a while. For over the past week, this old boy has been as happy as I’ve ever been.

It’s the Glory of Love,

Sweet Love,

The one thing you never get too much of,

Is Love,

And that’s the Glory of Love.

Our daughter, Rebecca, married her beau Steve Kinsella on Saturday at the Arts Council in Durham. A grand and glorious and unforgettable time was had by all. Rebecca did pretty much all the planning for the occasion, and anyone lucky enough to be in attendance will attest that Rebecca out-did herself.

Which, for Rebecca, is harder to do than it is for most of us. I’m bad about bragging on my kids, but I’m confident in saying there are few people on this planet more together, more grounded, more competent, more organized, more understanding of what really means something in life – and what doesn’t – than one Rebecca Cooper Collins, 28, presently of Boston, Mass.

Like most folks they’d found heartache, like most folks they’d felt pain

Like most folks they were ever braced to have it all come around again,

But they saw in each other’s eyes, a light to shine when life gets rough,

And to tell them they would never have to live in a world without love.

The magical week began on Saturday, Dec. 22, when Rebecca and Steve rolled in from Boston, where Rebecca specializes in alternative energy ideas and applications for Eversource Energy (she’s out to save the planet – someone has to) and Steve is gearing up for the final semester of a two-year MBA program from Boston U.

They remained with us through Christmas, by which time we were joined by Tybee’s sister Kim from Chapel Hill. We know how to have a good time in our home, and, as always, we managed to hurt ourselves in the most rollicking and silly and good-time ways.

The love birds flew the coop for Fuqua Varina, where Steve’s parents John and Beth live, and we braced for the arrival of our son, Nate, and his family on their way east from Dallas. Sadly, it had been way too long since we had seen Nate and his bride Laura, but the visit was made all the more special by knowing it would be our grand daughter Isla’s first time ever in our home.

Isla is three, and turned out to be the fireball of light and joy and love we just knew she would be.

I had already resolved to not follow my usual instincts and put my old bearded face right in hers’ when she walked in the door. Tybee was only one of many to warn me not to scare the poor girl out of her wits before she even knew who we were.

But as it turned out, Isla stormed into our house like she owned the place – which of course she did. Nate and Laura had to drop off the rental car, and the whole time Isla was alone with Tybee and me, she just flitted around the house chattering, and singing and getting into everything a 3-year-old will get into.

She sings songs that she makes up, which tickles me in so many ways. Laura, by the way, is a songbird who performs regularly in musicals in and around the Dallas area. Nate is a percussionist with degrees from Eastman and a masters from SMU who at times is in the pit for Laura’s musicals, when he’s not teaching high school music or marching band (big in Texas) or playing with any number of orchestras or ensembles.

He sat in with the Dallas Wind Symphony for a recording that was nominated for a Grammy in 2018, so we kidded how he needed a business card reading Nate Collins, Grammy-nominated artist.

If there’s one thing I know, love’s the window to our soul,

It’s by looking deep inside our hearts, we find our heaven above.

And if you’re wondering about the meaning of anything,

Just remember the Glory of Love.

The wedding was an exceedingly tasteful, relatively contained affair involving somewhere around 80 of the dearest, most loving and beautiful people we’ve ever known. No one has a better family, and all of us from both sides, the Collins’ and the Kinsella’s rallied around the love birds to make it an occasion that could not have been more glorious and unforgettable.

There was, of course, an open bar and all kinds of dancing to the set list that Rebecca put together as only she could. Every song that came on I just shook my head and repeated “Oh, I love that song.’’

I had a couple of rough moments containing my pure joy, like when I escorted Rebecca to the altar, gave her and Steve big hugs and took my seat next to Tybee. And for the father-daughter dance, I had pretty much decided on Joe Cocker’s version of You Are So Beautiful, but as usual Rebecca was a step or two ahead of her old man.

“What about Have I Told You Lately That I Love You?, by Hank Williams,’’ Rebecca suggested. To know what that meant to me one has to know the special place Hank Williams has always had in our family – dating to his biggest fan ever, my mother Frances Cooper Collins. That’s why there was such loud oohing and aahing from my brothers Tom and Joe and their families when Hank’s whiskey-cured voice came over the speakers.

And not once did I step on Rebecca’s toes – at least not literally.

We gather together, to celebrate,

The love of Steve and Rebecca, and hear the sweet vows that they make,

Always look out for each other, always be the best of friends,

That’s the special kind of love, the kind that never ends.

The other rough moment came during my toast to the newly weds. Oh I didn’t have any trouble giving it. I was born for such occasions. But like I’ve said, I’m bad about bragging over my family and my difficulty was in containing all the reasons and explanations and stories of why Rebecca Cooper Collins is such a special person to a toast that would end sometime before the New Year began.

It was difficult, but somehow I managed. I almost began with “Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth,’’ but I didn’t think most of the guests would get the Lou Gehrig reference. And besides, that speech was about death. This occasion celebrated life.

So I just told the room what I felt, that my heart was busting with love and joy and happiness.

Happiness is a hard place to write from.

But it’s a joyful place in which to reside.

It’s the Glory of Love,

Sweet Love,

The one thing you never get to much of,

Is Love,

And that’s the Glory of Love.

Sports, Uncategorized

Two Programs Headed in Opposite Directions

Wake sports, or at least the two Wake sports that mean much of anything to the rank-and-file among us, were on full display Saturday, front-and-center for all America (and for that matter, all the world) to see.

And what all America (and for that matter, all the world) could see by tuning into ESPN and ESPN2 was two programs heading in decidedly different – some might say opposite – directions.

On the Mothership, we could see one of America’s scrappiest teams coached by one of America’s scappiest coaches, doing what needed to be done in a most heroic and improbable fashion to beat Memphis 37-34 in the Birmingham Bowl. To watch Dave Clawson will his team to an unprecedented third-straight bowl victory brought to mind the highest compliment one coach could ever bestow on another.

In the immortal words of Bum Phillips, Clawson “could take his’n and beat your’n, and then he can turn around and take your’n and beat his’n.’’

I’ve always loved that quote (spoken in respect of Bear Bryant) because it reminded me so much of the way my Papaw Collins of Waynesville, N.C. used to talk – before he died.

And if that was all there was to see from Wake yesterday, it would have been a golden moment for the black and gold on national (international) television.

Sadly, any satisfaction (not to mention pride) in what is taking place at Wake sports-wise these days has to be tempered by what could be found just next door on the Deuce, where the Deacons’ basketball team was getting steamrolled by Tennessee 83-64.

There’s no shame in losing on the road to the No. 3 team in the nation, or at least there wouldn’t have been if the loss had not come in such a predictable and unequivocal fashion. But what those of us who switched over to the Deuce saw was what we’ve seen so many times before, with the Deacons melting right before our eyes.

As mentioned a number of times, I watch Wake basketball these days with a pad in my hand to chart the Deacons’ defensive stops.

And Wake was right there, trailing only 22-21 after Torry Johnson’s layup with 7:25 left in the first half.

That was before the soggy bottom of Wake bag broke open and the Volunteers scored on nine of their final 11 possessions of the first half and nine of their first 11 possessions of the second half. It’s along about that time that analyst Jimmy Dykes made a comment as astute as it was obvious.

“From Wake Forest, there’s not a lot of resistance right now on defense.’’

It’s a quote to be clipped and saved, for it sums up up so succinctly the Danny Manning era of Wake basketball. For the second half, Tennessee scored on 23 of the 34 times it brought the ball across half-court.

The difference in the state of the two programs can be boiled down to two words – hard and soft.

Clawson is a hard coach to beat. He played Memphis yesterday without his best player (Greg Dortch) and with a third quarterback (Jamie Newman) who was filling in for a second quarterback (Sam Hartman) who was filing in for a first quarterback (Kendall Hinton).

And he won when the guy filling in for Dortch (Alex Bachman) caught two clutch passes from the guy filling in for Hartman and Hinton in the final 75 seconds.

He won when his team kept playing hard enough to overcome an 18-point deficit.

He won because that’s what good coaches do.

Good coaches win.

By now anyone paying attention can see that as far as football coaches go, Dave Clawson is a keeper. The question now becomes how long can Wake keep him?

Meanwhile, over on the Deuce, the word that kept coming to mind was soft. If there’s a softer team than Wake playing in the ACC these days, I don’t know who it would be. And the Deacons just happened to be going up against one of the most physically mature teams in college basketball, and the results were not a pretty sight.

Olivier Sarr, the great hope in the middle, played as soft as he has been playing since showing up before last year, with just one field goal, two free throws and three rebounds to show for his 25 minutes. But we all knew that about Sarr long before yesterday.

What was particularly sobering was how soft Jaylen Hoard, the supposedly next great star, played for all the world to see. Hoard contributed three rebounds and seven points in 25 minutes while somehow managing not to get himself hurt down there amid the rough and tumble of major-college basketball.

Danny Manning got blown out of another game on national television because that’s what bad coaches do.

Bad coaches lose badly.

Ron Wellman, who calls the shots at Wake, is apparently willing to stick with his bet that a bad coach at sometime after four seasons will turn out to be a good coach. But by now, who can believe him?

And whereas Mike Norvell of Memphis was the latest to realize that Dave Clawson is not a coach to be tangled with, I’d imagine there’s no end to the number of basketball coaches who would relish taking on Danny Manning.

Take Brad Brownell of Clemson, for instance, who is 5-0 in his chances at beating Danny Manning in ACC play.

Can you imagine Dave Clawson being 0-5 against any ACC coach not named Dabo Swinney?

If so, that makes one of us.