Sorry for the late start this morning...

Florida State (and their new #24 ranking in the AP poll) are preparing for Wake Forest's visit this weekend.

Not surprisingly, FSU coaches and players are a bit worried about the Deacs.

Basketball coach Dino Gaudio returned home to Ohio over the weekend to participate in a coaches clinic.

Heather Dinich's power rankings for week four still have Wake on top.

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I'm guessing this will be the last post to talk about Skip Prosser for awhile, but this video from MyFox WGHP from the Quad at midnight is a must see for any Wake fan. It's great to see what went on, plus it's a well edited piece. The bells at the end had me tearing up. Over at ESPN.com Andy Katz talks about Skip, Dino Gaudio, and the program as a whole one year later.

Speaking of ESPN, ACC bowl projections from Heather Dinnich - Wake to the Gator Bowl, which sounds about right if there's no ACC Championship game for the Deacs. Hopefully there is...

ACC coaches rankings with Grobe at the top, although I'm not sure I'm in too much agreement with the list as a whole.

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About a week ago I was contacted about a very cool event being put on by a group of Wake Forest students who wanted to do something to honor Coach Skip Prosser. I thought it was a great idea and a great cause, so I decided to let all of you know about it.

The Classic is a basketball tournament being held a week from tomorrow (April 19) at noon on the Collins basketball courts, an all proceeds from the event will go the American Heart Association in memory of Skip Prosser.

The 12:00 tipoff of the event is one hour before the beginning of the spring football game, so I highly encourage all of you who are coming to the game to come one hour earlier and stop by the basketball courts. The basketball team and Coach Dino Gaudio will be there for the tip, and I believe Dino will say a few words. It should be a beautiful day and a great event.

One final thing: I need to check on the possibility of doing this (it may be student-only sign ups) but if there are people interested in playing in the tournament send me an email and let me know. I'd be happy to have the blog sponsor a team or two to play.

Details:
When: Saturday, April 19th at noon (Rain Date is Sunday, April 20th at 1pm)
Where: Collins Basketball Courts
Who: ANYONE AND EVERYONE
Cost: $15 per team
Sign-ups: Outside the pit starting Thursday, April 10th until Wednesday, April 16th, or in the Intramural Office in Reynolds Gym.

Come out and support this great event, and let me know if you want to play!

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Coach Gaudio just sent an email to the Screamin' Demons saying:

We've had two very good days of practice for our game tonight with Maryland. As we left the floor last night, I told our guys, " . . the next 40 minutes are the most important 40 minutes of the season." We need to play very, very hard and play very smart. If we do that, winning will take care of itself.

The Joel was "electric" for Duke. What an incredible environment. Let's duplicate that tonight. Our 6th man has to be great tonight - the Screamin' Demons!

Coach Gaudio

Great message, and I hope the team latches on.

On a more humorous note, it looks like Dino continues to follow in Skip's footsteps, using quotation marks where they are entirely unnecessary.

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If a team’s going to make it a habit to play close games at home, they can at least make sure they win them. Thankfully Ishmael Smith and the Wake Forest Demon Deacons have figured out how to make that happen. With 2.6 seconds left Ish Smith made a shot from just outside the right elbow, eerily similar to the one he hit to beat Virginia Tech , and the Deacs beat Miami 70-68. As Ish said, “Same spot, same move, same shot, same result.”

Had it not been for Ish’s late game heroics, Jeff Teague would have been the only name discussed after this win. Teague scored 27 points, including 5-6 shooting from 3-point range, and proved too much for Miami to handle all night long. Nonetheless, when asked after the game if he should have taken the game winning shot instead of Smith, Teague didn’t hesitate to say no. The whole team agreed that it was Ish’s shot to take all the way.

Wake started a little slow, showing some rust coming off of a week-long break and dealing with the injuries to Chas McFarland and LD Williams. Chas not only played, but started and acquitted himself quite well all night long, scoring 10 points and pulling down 6 rebounds. Although he seemed to have lost a step on the defensive end, there is little doubt that a win would have been much less likely without him on the floor.

Struggling shooter Harvey Hale showed some mild improvement on the offensive end shooting 2-6 from 3-point range, but Coach Dino Gaudio was quick to point out that “a tremendous amount of credit goes to Harvey Hale on the defensive end of the floor. He did a really nice job on Jack McClinton,” who only had two points in the second half.

James Johnson had a surprisingly quiet night, scoring only 9 points with 8 rebounds. For those who are curious, when asked about his second new haircut in as many games Johnson said “I had to clean it up to come play at home.”

I would guess that most Wake fans were disappointed with the strategy in the last five minutes of the game. For the second straight outing the team went into a sort of stall, utilizing a four corners offense and taking as much time off the clock as possible each possession. For the second straight outing this strategy led to several turnovers and allowed the evaporation of a significant lead.

When asked about this Dino did not believe it was the wrong strategy. In fact, he didn’t feel like the games were comparable at all. “I think it was two completely different scenarios, the Clemson game and then this one here. Clemson is pressuring and extending 94 feet and putting a lot of pressure on us, and these guys are predominantly half-court man,” said Gaudio.

While this may be the case, I don’t think it means the strategy was necessarily correct or effective in either scenario. Obviously, in both games, when Wake went four corners, a significant lead evaporated. I think that I and other Wake fans won’t be happy if this trend continues, unless it somehow starts working.

Nonetheless, this was a big win for the Deacs to get to 3-3. Assuming UNC beats Boston College on Thursday night Wake will once again be in what coach called “a 14 way tie for third” and right there in the thick of things. A road win at NC State would be a huge way to follow this great game.

A win is a win, and now it’s time to figure out how to do it on the road.

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We were awful today. Just awful. Consider the result, and then look at Georgia’s stats. They turned the ball over 26 times. They shot 53% from the field, which is good (I know we’d take it in a heartbeat) but certainly not amazing. They made 80% of their freethrows, which is what scholarship basketball players are supposed to do. They even allowed us 19 offensive rebounds, which isn’t good either. And what do we have to show for all of UGA’s shortcomings? A 22 point loss. The bottom line is that Georgia is not a great basketball team. Even our performance today couldn’t make them look like a great basketball team.They may have won by 22, but I guarantee no one left that arena today saying that Georgia looked like a great basketball team. Both teams were bad, Wake was just much much worse. That says a lot.

If possible I’d like to start with some positives…19 offensive rebounds…13 steals…I think I’m done. I don’t feel like we played terrible defense, at least when we got set. In fact, we started the game playing pretty dang good defense. When thing got even worse offensively everything else followed, and so I’m not going to worry too much about the way our D looked in the last 10 minutes of the game (although that indicates we don't ever really seem to give it everything we've got for 40 minutes, so that's not good). Even before that, though, there were some pretty major question marks in transition defense and double teams that left people incredibly wide open. But considering everything else, the defense doesn’t need to take up too much of the criticism.

What in the world are we doing on offense? I certainly can’t figure it out, and so far I haven’t heard anyone with a good explanation. I hope I can find Dino’s post game press conference audio somewhere, maybe he has an explanation. 65 total shots, 20 of them went in the basket. We were 4-22 from beyond the arc – 19% Seriously? What happened? This was not the team we saw play at Vanderbilt earlier in the week. I could have gone over to Reynolds Gym on a Friday afternoon and picked up 4 guys to play with me that could have stayed with the team today. We could just jack up threes and probably make enough to stay close as long as they shot those percentages. Many people are questioning if there is an offensive strategy/plays/anything for the Deacs, and to be honest I’m starting to question it myself. We don’t have great ball movement from anywhere on the floor, I see very few screens off the ball, and I hardly see anyone making cuts to get open. These are things my dad taught me when I was seven or eight years old! Isn’t this simple basketball knowledge? Beyond lacking a strategy, we have no one who can shoot consistently, and when we don't shoot well we have no confidence. From all reports coming out of practice, everyone shoots lights out both from the field and at the line. Then we get in a game and no one can shoot. After 10 minutes of making one in every 5 shots the team's confidence is entirely gone and we're trying to figure out how to climb out of a hole without the confidence that we can do it. Ain't gonna happen.

I don’t think its time to start blaming Dino, but I would like to know exactly what it is the team is working on offensively. It’s clear we’ve come a long way defensively, but that doesn’t matter if you only score 21 points in a half. You can only keep them from scoring so much. Dino clearly has a lot of basketball knowledge, a strong desire to win, and a great relationship with his players. I’m confident he can get this job done and that we need to give him some time, but as a fan its impossible not to be upset about our current offensive output. Clearly there are some personnel issues, but they may not be the ones we thought they were. The middle is still somewhat of an issue (no points for Chas, 6 for Skeen today), but we don't have anyone who can shoot consistently at the 2, and neither Ish nor Teague are currently playing well at the point. We need them to develop there quickly, because we won’t have anyone coming in that plays those positions until at least 2009. The job is theirs; it’s up to them to make something of it.

I’m not claiming the impending doom of this team. I’m not ready to give up on this season. We have the ability to play like we did against Vanderbilt the other night, but then we also play like this today. I hope we can play the way we did against Vandy more often, or at least find a happy medium, but we may not. Most likely this won’t be the last time this season we play like this, but I think we’ll also see several more games like we played against Vanderbilt and maybe surprise some people for victories. I still don’t think we’ll be 11th or 12th in the ACC; we will win some games and surprise some people, even if we lose a couple games we probably shouldn't. I don’t think it’s time to panic. By all means please be frustrated. I hope you’re frustrated. I hope the team is frustrated. I hope Coach is frustrated. But at this point panicking and giving up is not the answer for any of us. The season is young and we have 6 games until we really get into the conference schedule. We’re still young and inexperienced, and for all their mistakes there is clearly some great talent on the team. After today I don’t think it can go any way but up, and knowing our players and coaches they will make sure it does.

Disagree with me? Let me know by leaving a message in the comments below. We’ll talk about it.

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Many many articles have been published this fall about the death of Skip Prosser. Many more have been published about the effect he's had on this school and this team, and the affect he'll have going forward. Very few have taken a close look at Dino Gaudio and the affect Skip's death has had on his personal life. I'm glad Dan Wiederer of the Fayetteville Observer took the time to do so. It's probably the best article I've read about this tragedy since August.

Enjoy it here.

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Amazingly, baseball managed to get a post here at the OG&B before basketball did, but thankfully not by much. With the first basketball practice only two weeks away (October 12), I expect that we'll be seeing a significant jump in basketball news over the next couple of weeks.

Today's W-S Journal reports that Gaudio is really excited about our three freshman this year, Jeff Teague, Gary Clark, and James Johnson. Good, I was worried he might hate them. Seriously, though, with all the hype surrounding Tony Woods, Al-Farouq Aminu and Ty Walker for next year it is good to know that these guys aren't just going to be lost in the shuffle from the beginning. Hopefully we'll see some solid performances out of them this season.

More importantly, what in the world was Dan Collins thinking when he wrote that subtitle -"Teague, Clark, Johnson to pave way for the really heralded 2008 recruits." "Really heralded?" Seriously? That can't possibly be good grammar. Maybe you could say "highly touted," "very special," or even "really good" would sound almost halfway decent. I expect more from a professional, but considering the many typos that I find on here a day or two later, I'm probably not really one to talk.

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