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Bzdelik done at Wake?

Interesting summary of Wake's season.
http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/03/05/3677335/decock-on-senior-night-deacons.html
WINSTON-SALEM — Jeff Bzdelik made his way through the handshake line, surrounded by a crowd, frenzied in court-storming celebration, that has been all too rare in his four years at Wake Forest. If this was his final home game at Lawrence Joel Coliseum, what a way to go out.In this one moment, Wake Forest reached back and touched what once made this program great. What Wednesday’s crowd lacked in numbers it made up in intensity, roaring throughout a late 17-0 run that turned a Duke lead into a home sweep of the Big Four for Wake Forest, 82-72.
It should have been a moment of triumph for Bzdelik. And yet it’s impossible to shake the sense that it’s too little, too late. Afterward, he was asked, innocuously, “What does this mean to you?”
“It ain’t about me,” Bzdelik said. “Next question.”
It was unquestionably Travis McKie’s final home game at Wake Forest -- the Demon Deacons don’t have an NIT-worthy resume or any reason to pony up the cash to play in the CBI -- and the pregame ceremony was a tepid send-off for a player who has endured four years of bad basketball due to circumstances entirely beyond his control.
As seniors Coron Williams and McKie were honored 10 minutes before tipoff, there were only a few fans in the upper deck of the Joel, with entire sections empty. Even the lower bowl was no more than one-third full. The Wake Forest fans were outnumbered by Duke fans, some of whom clapped politely as McKie’s accomplishments were enumerated. Athletic director Ron Wellman, who hired Bzdelik, followed McKie and his family off the court, a grim look on his face.
Two hours later, McKie received a standing ovation as he was subbed out in the final seconds and the team was mobbed by the same fans who earlier ignored it and have been vocal in their disapproval of Bzdelik’s tenure, to the point of a newspaper and billboard advertising campaign demanding his ouster.
In their defense, Bzdelik has struggled with the task of rebuilding a program essentially from scratch, developing young players without the help of veteran leadership or the luxury of protecting them from the grind of ACC play. Maybe with an older, more experienced team, Bzdelik might have found success. His quirky sense of humor might have gone over better.
Alas, that’s not how it worked out. Despite the home wins this season over Duke and North Carolina and N.C. State, they have won only two road ACC games in Bzdelik’s tenure and the team appeared to give up entirely in the second half of a blowout loss in Chapel Hill on Feb. 22.
It may be a stretch to say the future is bright for Wake Forest, but it isn’t as grim as it appeared last year or the year before. The core of battle-tested sophomores offers hope, if it can produce performances like Wednesday’s more often, especially away from home.
By any metric, this season was by far the best of Bzdelik’s four at Wake Forest, with a chance to improve, however slightly, on last season’s 6-12 ACC record. Even with a win at Miami on Friday, the Demon Deacons will still be playing on Wednesday in Greensboro, the Day of Irrelevance for the bottom six teams of a 15-team ACC.
Bzdelik may or may not be around for it. As the students danced in the middle of the floor, the Wake Forest players and assistant coaches waded into the fray. Bzdelik, finished with the handshake line, followed Duke’s players down the visiting tunnel and exited the floor immediately, never once looking back.

Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/03/05/3677335/decock-on-senior-night-deacons.html#storylink=cpy
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sackman said:
That's sad. While I'm certain Bz will land somewhere, I wish things had turned out better at Wake Forest. I don't know how much the Wake Forest fans pay attention to CU, but the fact that CU has dramatically improved since he left probably isn't working in his favor, either.
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Agreed. I think he had CU Pointed in the right direction and was a huge improvement over patton. Then again, I look at where CU has gone with tad and what he's done in the same time frame at wake and I wonder....
 
Bz has been successful in his previous coaching stints. I think he has greatest turnaround in NBA history? He was brought in to clean up and turn around WF. Too bad to see that he hasn't had more success at this coaching stop. I think WF was a long-term plan for Bz at the time he took the job.
 
BuffHerd said:
Bz has been successful in his previous coaching stints. I think he has greatest turnaround in NBA history? He was brought in to clean up and turn around WF. Too bad to see that he hasn't had more success at this coaching stop. I think WF was a long-term plan for Bz at the time he took the job.
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Football requires a much greater turnaround, it's largely a numbers game and the fact a few recruits aren't going to have as great of an impact. It be one thing if Wake sucked before he got there, it didn't.
 
cubuffs85 said:
Football requires a much greater turnaround, it's largely a numbers game and the fact a few recruits aren't going to have as great of an impact. It be one thing if Wake sucked before he got there, it didn't.
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Correct, but Bz was brought in to clean up WF. Decons were good, but dirty. AD brought in a close friend to do the work that he felt needed to be done. He ran off much of the team; that's what he was hired to do. Just thought he would have brought them back closer by now because he is a good coach.

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-bas...k-optimistic-wake-forest-demon-deacons-future
 
BuffHerd said:
Correct, but Bz was brought in to clean up WF. Decons were good, but dirty. AD brought in a close friend to do the work that he felt needed to be done. He ran off much of the team; that's what he was hired to do. Just thought he would have brought them back closer by now because he is a good coach.

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-bas...k-optimistic-wake-forest-demon-deacons-future
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You aren't going to be given as much time when you are taking over a team that experienced the success they did.
 
cubuffs85 said:
Wake beats Notre Dame, Bzdelik lives to tell another day.
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I'm not on my computer but I believe this was Wake's first ACC tournament win since 2007. But Wake was the 12 seed and Notre Dame the 13, so this win won't do much to gain traction. If Wellman hasn't made up his mind yet, Wake will need to do more than this to save Bzdelik...like, a deep ACC tournament run that gets them near 20 wins and gets them an NIT bid. I think he's toast and they're just waiting for the end of the season to go public.
 
sackman said:
Will anything short of running the ACC tournament save his job?
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I think they need to go to the NIT at minimum, but I don't think that's enough. Who knows with Ron Wellman running the ship there.

wyobuff said:
I dont think this win will save his job - ND isnt good, and this was basically a play in game.
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That's exactly what it is, the top ACC seeds don't even play until Friday.

CVilleBuff said:
I'm not on my computer but I believe this was Wake's first ACC tournament win since 2007. But Wake was the 12 seed and Notre Dame the 13, so this win won't do much to gain traction. If Wellman hasn't made up his mind yet, Wake will need to do more than this to save Bzdelik...like, a deep ACC tournament run that gets them near 20 wins and gets them an NIT bid. I think he's toast and they're just waiting for the end of the season to go public.
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Just looked it up indeed it is.
 
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sackman said:
Will anything short of running the ACC tournament save his job?
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Probably not. He lost Wake's fan base long, long ago. 17-15 now and likely lose tomorrow. 17-16 and a CBI just won't do it. Perhaps making the semifinals or finals would...making the NIT and closing strong. But considering the UVA's and Dukes don't even start playing until Friday, it seems Wake would be utterly exhausted by the time the weekend rolls around. 1 extra day is one thing, but 2 extra days is brutal.
 
aik said:
Are they returning any star power or will it be a rebuilding year for them? If the latter I suspect a rocky start and an in-season firing.
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He should've been fired last year and definitely this year. It's the Wellman connection what's keeping him there. If I were an ACC coach, I'd send a thank you note to Ron Wellman.

Ron Wellman has a built-in excuse, he was too busy to be paying attention to the basketball program with his committee work.
 
So the Wake students were so excited about this that they rolled the quad. Kinda harsh, imo.

[tweet]446762593051348992[/tweet]
 
TDbuff said:
So the Wake students were so excited about this that they rolled the quad. Kinda harsh, imo.

[tweet]446762593051348992[/tweet]
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Someone want to explain why this didn't happen at CU when HaLkins was fired? It's that type of apathy that keeps a failing coach around too long.

Kudos to the Wake students!
 
Buffnik said:
Someone want to explain why this didn't happen at CU when HaLkins was fired? It's that type of apathy that keeps a failing coach around too long.
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Probably a rhetorical question ... but I'll answer it anyway :lol:. Because the students had long before lost all interest in the football program by the time he was canned. And I can't say I blamed them.
 
Buffnik said:
Someone want to explain why this didn't happen at CU when HaLkins was fired? It's that type of apathy that keeps a failing coach around too long.

Kudos to the Wake students!
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Environmentally unsound.
 
BuffsNYC said:
Environmentally unsound.
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A liberal distribution of fishy smelling fertilizer on the grassy areas is the DiStephano approved form of making a statement within the boundaries of the environmentalist movement.
 
BuffsNYC said:
Environmentally unsound.
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Also why I can't bring home a ****ing souvenir cup from a game and have to deal with some punk making sure that I separate my compostable cup from my non-compostable straw when I approach the garbage cans.
 
L Buff said:
Probably a rhetorical question ... but I'll answer it anyway :lol:. Because the students had long before lost all interest in the football program by the time he was canned. And I can't say I blamed them.
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No the loss interest came in 2012 following the CSU game, 2010 and 2011 still had pretty full student sections with the exception of fall break.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
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