Posted by Zach Smith
on August 16, 2008 at 7:30 AM
Sorry for not having an update last night, but here are a few quick notes on yesterday's practices.
The morning session was helmets only and pretty short. The team only did individual drills and special teams, no 7 on 7 or 11 on 11.
The afternoon session was almost all 7 on 7 and 11 on 11.
Chip Brinkman, Anthony Williams, and Cameron Ford all practiced in the morning. Freshman Garrick Williams, who was recruited as a tackle, was taking reps at center, presumably due to the loss of Ryan Britt in Thursday's scrimmage.
Around the web, theACC.com is previewing all twelve football teams, and here's Wake Forest.
Former Wake Forest standout and first round draft pick of the San Diego Padres signed yesterday right before the deadline. Best of luck.
We've been all football, all the time for awhile here at Old Gold & Blog, and although there's still plenty of that to cover this morning we're also going to take the opportunity to branch out ever so slightly.
Last night (Monday) was another good practice. My coverage is here, and there's this from the official site.
I promised some non-football news, so here it is. Women's soccer was picked fifth in the preseason ACC poll. Former Demon Deacon Kelly Dolton has arrived in China as a member of America's field hockey team. Finally, the baseball team has picked up a commitment from Philadelphia area shortstop Mark Rhine.
With the 23rd pick of the first round of today's Major League Baseball draft the San Diego Padres drafted Wake Forest 1st (and sometimes 3rd) baseman Allan Dykstra. Dykstra has been the star of Demon Deacon baseball for the last several seasons and should have a great career ahead of him as a pro. I'm sure he's excited about having been drafted by the Padres because he grew up rooting for them.
You can read more about his selection on the official Wake Forest athletics website here.
Further information about Dykstra selection is here on the Padres official website.
Best of luck to Dystra in his professional career!
In it's ACC tournament opener Wake fell to Florida State 8-3. An early Wake lead provided by a Dykstra homer was not enough. Apparently this Buster Posey guy for FSU is pretty dang good.
I didn't catch any of the game (no TV options that I could find) so the best thing I can do is provide links to any news reports I can find.
I know my baseball coverage has been spotty (at best) but with the ACC Tournament now upon us, and Wake having manged to make it in, we'd better start talking about it a little bit more.
The tournament starts tomorrow, with Wake's first game against Florida State. Wake is in a pool of 4 teams which will play a round robin followed by a small tournament. Despite a difficult and trying season, Wake has the opportunity to finish on a real high note, and a good performance could allow them to sneak into the ACC tournament (however I believe this is extremely unlikely.
Wake's official Tournament preview is here, and the conference preview is here.
I'll post updates throughout the tournament (of which I will probably see very little due to lack of TV access here in Houston) as we hope for the best.
On another note, it has been brought to my attention that we are exactly 100 days away from kickoff in Waco. I certainly can't wait.
It’s been 10 days since I’ve posted anything, and I suppose I apologize for that, but I kind of needed the break. I guess I’m not really that sorry. I didn’t miss that much.
The summer will definitely be somewhat inconsistent around here. There will be a couple of stretches of about a week or 10 days where I’ll have pretty much no internet access so obviously there won’t be anything posted then. I’ll let you know when those are coming.
But still, even when I am around, I don’t anticipate there being a whole lot to report on (in fact I kind of hope there isn’t, because if there is I feel like it’s likely to be something bad).
I’ll definitely start doing some previewing of football season, but I don’t know how I want to do that yet or when exactly it will happen.
Also, I was thinking it might be fun to do some “reader editorials.” Basically, if you have an idea for something Wake-related you might want to write and have published on the blog, shoot me an email (oldgoldblog@gmail.com) and we’ll work on getting it done. Then you can tell all your friends to go read the article you had published on the internet (Just don’t tell them it’s on a site some guy started in his dorm room without any prior experience or knowledge and that you would have been just as qualified to start the exact same site—it might not seem as cool to them if you tell them that part).
Having said all that, I’m guessing there’s only about a 10% chance someone actually contacts me about it. I hope you prove me wrong.
I’ve got a couple of other things tentatively up my sleeve, so we’ll see what happens. No matter what happens this summer, though, come mid-August we’ll get back into the swing of things and you can count on reading new content on a daily basis.
On to a couple of specific notes: I highly recommend going to the official soccer page and reading about the soccer team's trip to Brazil. Sounds like a pretty cool deal.
Also, I believe that Wake's 3 game sweep of Duke over the weekend to close out Hooks Stadium means that they will make the ACC tournament, leaving them in position to potentially still make the NCAA tournament (I think it's a bit of a long shot, but it's certainly not impossible).
Someone posted this on the DeaconSports message boards and I thought it might be worth sharing just to get excited about the other sport that’s pretty fun to keep track of in the fall:
Although I'm not able to stay out here all afternoon (stupid late afternoon class) I decided to come out and enjoy a few innings of baseball today. Seeing as how it's sunny and 60 degrees I think I've made a pretty good decision.
Yesterday the Deacs dropped a game to #20 UNC-Wilmington 5-1, but today they're down to Coastal Carolina 5-3 through 3 1/2 innings. Ben Hunter had a bit of a rough start giving up three in the first but was cruising along nicely before giving up 2 in the fourth. Wake has three hits, including an RBI single from Allan Dykstra and a 2 out 2 RBI hit from Weldon Woodall.
I haven't been able to give the Diamond Deacs the kind of attention I'd like to because I play on Wake's club baseball team and we play most weekends as well. To give some credit where credit is due, the 17th ranked club Deacs took two out of three from defending club national champions UNC this past weekend.
I'll post a final score from today's game against Coastal as well as an update from today's football practice sometime tonight.
Update: Apparently things didn't go so well in the second half of the game, and the Deacs fell to Coastal Carolina 9-4.
First of all, I'd like to wish all of you a happy Easter. I hope it was an enjoyable and relaxing weekend spent with friends and/or family.
I've been in NYC with my family and have had limited Internet access, and unfortunately also limited time in front of the TV to see basketball. From what little I have seen it's been exciting, although I'm sure most of your brackets are as big of a mess as mine is. Next year we'll have to do an Old Gold & Blog bracket contest to see who's the best.
Wake sports news this weekend isn't too good. Baseball got their butts kicked at Miami, including a 23-2 l0ss today before having the 2nd game cancled due to weather (but they were already down 9-1 so maybe that was for the better). It's looking like it could be a long season on the baseball diamond, although they started pretty poorly last year and rebounded to make the tournament.
As we get into the Sweet 16 and Elite 8 (and as I get to see more of the games) I hope to do some analysis of those games when they're going on. That's about it at this point. I know I said there would be a bit more of a regular schedule around here after the break, but obviously that didn't quite happen. Hopefully I'll do a better job staying on top of things this time around.
And there's absolutely nothing going on in Wake athletics.
Okay, I lied. The tennis team is playing in Chapel Hill. I really should try to get out and watch them at some point.
The baseball team was supposed to play Elon, but that's been postponed, I guess due to weather. We probably don't want to talk baseball anyway seeing as how they lost to App State 22-6 yesterday. Yeesh.
For you soccer fans, the spring schedule gets underway tomorrow out at Spry Stadium against Duke at 7:00. I was actually really hoping to be at that one, but I've got a club baseball game at NC State and won't be able to make it. If, however, any of you are going to be there and would like to write a quick recap I'd be happy to put it up. Just leave a comment or email me.
So that's about it for now. I need to do some sort of Basketball season recap, and I may actually turn that into a series of posts that grade players and such. Spring football starts next week so I think things will pick up a little bit then. If I'm feeling motivated I may write some about the tournament, but I'm going to be out of town for Easter Weekend so I may not post too much.
Posted by Zach Smith
on March 11, 2008 at 12:50 PM
It’s been relatively slow since Saturday, which is okay with me since it gives me a little break. Baseball won 2 of 3 over the weekend against Clemson. It’s good to see them getting back on the right track after the rough start.
I doubt golf will get serious coverage here, but they won their tournament in South Carolina this weekend, coming back from 5th place on Monday to win. Congrats to them.
Not being around school I can’t really provide any significant basketball coverage until the game starts on Thursday, but I did see today that James Johnson was named 3rd team All-ACC. Not a bad honor, although I’m more interested to see how the Rookie team voting works out. Honestly, I find Jeff Teague’s body of work this season more impressive than Johnson’s.
I can’t promise anything, but I’m going to try to break down the tournament tonight or tomorrow as we prepare for Thursday’s matchup against FloridaState. I know many of you will have work (plus the game isn’t on easily accessible TV outside ACC territory) so I will definitely be providing in-game coverage, perhaps even more regularly than I usually do so that everyone can follow along as easily as possible.
Time to start drinking the kool-aid: five game winning streak here we come!
As you may or may not know, today is the last day of classes here at Wake before Spring Break. That is exciting, but the mid-terms that have just been finished were not. Because of that my posting this week has been a bit sporadic and I apologize.
So, to get all caught up, the basketball team has officially decided to start sucking and is trying to hold on to the NIT (which I'm not overly worried about losing), while the baseball team has continued to take things in the right direction (beating UNC-G 13-6 on Wednesday).
In football, the coaching staff is set for the spring, and all-everything offensive lineman James Wilson, who is currently on Florida's roster, has made a transfer request and wants to come to Wake. Definitely Awesome.
I'm headed out of Winston today and am currently unsure of my ability to see the game against NC State tomorrow, but I'm going to do my best. I'm not sure yet who's going to be writing about it - could be me, Steve Edwards, or Evan Lepler, but you'll definitely be covered by someone.
It would be nice to finish the regular season on a little bit of a high note but I can't say I'm too optimistic. Before the VT game I said that we'd have to see what kind of team showed up, and it looked like the wrong one showed. I'm not confident the Deacs will do anything differently tomorrow.
Nonetheless, I'd love to see the home schedule end on a win and maybe even take a small amount of momentum into the ACC Tournament. The Tournament is next weekend and I was pretty optimistic about it a couple of weeks ago (after Duke getting ACC Tournament tickets sounded like a wonderful idea) but things have changed a bit now. The tournament is obviously always fun, but it won't be quite the same now that we stink. You never know though, maybe once they have something to play for in the Tournament they'll pick things back up and make a run. It isn't out of the realm of possibility.
Needless to say, I'll be providing full coverage on Wake's participation in the Tournament as well as my general thoughts on how the Tournament goes.
Posted by Zach Smith
on February 27, 2008 at 2:28 PM
Final - Wake loses 18-8. Not pretty. In the last two games the team has given up 40 runs. That would indicate that this team has some pretty significant pitching issues to address. At this rate, the Diamond Deacs are going nowhere, fast. Through top half of the 5th - The Mountaineers have poured it on in the 4th and 5th innings, scoring 4 and 3 runs respectively. Wake finds a way to get a couple guys on each inning but can't string together the hits to bring them in.
I've had to leave Hooks for class (the late start and long first inning means I didn't get to see as much as I'd hoped), but I don't think I'll be missing much. The Deacs just don't seem to have it today, plus it's miserably cold. If they pull out a big comeback, I'll eat my words.
Now in the bottom of the 5th Wake trails 13-3. Through 3 Innings - Wake responded in the 1st with 2 hits and 3 runs of their own to make it a 6-3 game. The next two innings have gone on without too much action - no runs scored, but another 4 hits for App and and 1 for Wake. Still 6-3 for now.
Top 1st - Ugly Ugly start to this one at Hooks Stadium. I was hoping to see the Deacs come out and play well to start, but starting pitcher Matt Hammond went all the way through the Mountaineer's order retiring only 1 batter, giving up 5 runs, and leaving the bases loaded.
Joel Ernst came in to relieve Hammond and the Deacs gave up one more run to end the top half of the inning 6-0. Only 3 hits were given up in the first, but the two errors (which included a throwing error from Dustin Hood at Shortstop where he just under-threw the ball to first, and then a shallow fly to right field got lost in the sun) were costly. 4 earned runs and 2 unearned. Ugly start.
Also interesting to note today is that Allan Dykstra is playing third base today instead of 1st. Evan Ocheltree is playing first. So far I haven't heard an explanation.
I'm out at Hooks Stadium today for the Diamond Deacs home opening baseball game against App State. It's cold (38 degrees) and pretty windy, so it could be a rough one. App State comes in 2-2 and Wake is currently 1-2 after the weekend Series at Pepperdine.
Let me know in the comments section what kind of updates you'd like for these games. I feel like gametracker probably does a pretty good job with play-by-play, so I think my goal will be to provide color every now and then. Let me know and I'll see what I can do.
I'm going to have to leave at 4:30 so I probably won't see the whole game but I'll cover as much of it as possible. Here's to hoping the Deacs open the season in style.
Posted by Zach Smith
on February 26, 2008 at 11:12 AM
Thanks to the UNC game Sunday night I haven't gotten around to mentioning the weekend baseball series against Pepperdine.
The team was scheduled to play four games - 1 on Friday, 2 Saturday, and 1 Sunday. When Friday's game was rained out they rescheduled to play double headers both Saturday and Sunday, but were only able to get one in on Sunday. It turned out only being a 3-game weekend, and it didn't go as well as had been hoped. The Diamond Deacs opened the season 1-2.
I only saw a few innings all weekend long on Pepperdine's webcast, so I can't say much from my own perspective, but I know Wake was hoping to win the series this weekend and was definitely hoping to do better than the 22-3 loss they suffered in the Sunday game. Saturday's games included a 3-2 loss and a 13-9 win.
In the season-opening 3-2 loss Ben Hunter threw 5 solid innings giving up 3 runs in the fourth, but the bats could only produce 2 runs in support. 1st baseman Allan Dysktra was 3-3 in the game with a run scored, and SS Dustin hood had the Deacs only RBI and other hit.
Garrett Bullock started game 2 but struggled in 3.1 innings of work giving up 8 runs (4 earned - 2 errors didn't help). Phil Negus pitched well in relief and picked up the Win. Ben Terry, Steven Brooks, Allan Dysktra, Willy Fox, Weldon Woodall, and Ian Tomkins all had multi-hit games. Brooks and Tomkins each hit home runs.
One quick note on Pepperdine's uniforms - I'm not sure what they (or perhaps UnderArmour) were thinking, but those random blue streaks across their thighs are one of the ugliest things I've ever seen on a baseball uniform.
Tomorrow afternoon is the season home opener. 2:30 on Hooks Field against App State. I'll be out there for most of the game, but I have a 4:30 class and am likely to miss the end of it. Hopefully today's rain doesn't cause problems for tomorrow (although the bigger concern may be the cold temperatures). It would be nice to open the home season with a win.
Posted by Zach Smith
on February 22, 2008 at 10:42 AM
I think it's safe to say that the majority of Wake Forest fans are jealous of the baseball team right now. While most of us are dealing with cold and wet weather conditions the team is in Malibu, California getting ready for a four game series with Pepperdine. The weather there isn't quite as nice as I expected, but it's still in the upper 50's with minimal precipitation. I definitely wouldn't mind trading places.
All signs point to the Deacs having a great 2008 campaign. All nine starting position players return from last year's squad as well as the top six starting pitchers. With that kind of experience it's hard to imagine they won't build on last year's success, however Wake does need to fill a void in the closer role.
I could take this opportunity to go through and discuss the players individually, but Wake already did that quite effectively on their website and I don't have a whole lot to add to what they've said. That rundown (and in fact that entire season preview) is available here.
Perhaps the best remaining news is that all four of this weekend's games can be seen live on Pepperdine's website. It does require you to create a login, but it's completely free and if you want to see the action this weekend it's a great option.
Posted by Zach Smith
on November 29, 2007 at 7:24 PM
The idea of Time-Warner picking up this game and showing it throughout North Carolina isn’t bad, but the execution is clearly awful. When Winston-Salem and the entire surround county can’t even see the game when it starts (yet to be determined if we’ll see it at all) you’ve got a pretty terrible system going on. To be honest I can’t imagine there are more than 100 people in this county who care about this fishing show. How can we not get this game on TV?!?!?!?!?!?!?
I’m not sure this is actually better than having it on ACC select, because I’d be more than happy to pay to see this game then not see it all. Add to that the fact that no one can get through to TWC to find out the problemand you’ve got a very very bad situation. All I can say is this fishing show better not last very long (hopefully only a half hour) and then we’ll get the game. I’m not counting on it at this point.
Posted by Zach Smith
on September 28, 2007 at 8:09 PM
Maybe its a little early to start talking baseball around here, but Rivals.com's Wake Forest Baseball preview can't go unmentioned. Overall high praise for the team that finished strong last year but certainly disappointed to some extent in the regionals at Round Rock, TX.
I'm slightly surprised that Rembielak is most concerned about the offense, considering the number of solid returning starters we have. The Deacs have a lot going for them on the hill, with big things expected from Ben Hunter and Charlie Mellies, who is returning from injury.
There probably won't be a whole lot of baseball talk around here until the spring, but this solid preview from Rivals deserves a read.
