A win is a win.

That's really the only way to look at last night's game against the Presbyterian Blue Hose. Although the Deacs came out strong for the first ten minutes of the game and jumped out to a 16 point lead, all the fire suddenly disappeared and for the next twenty minutes of basketball the Deacs looked as bad or worse than they have all season long. Some energy seemed to return for the final ten minutes, perhaps when the team realized they were actually in danger of losing a game to a team they had no business losing to.

But still, a win is a win.

Watching a basketball game on ACC Select is not the easiest thing to do. It's great because you are getting a live representation of the game, but its awful because you really don't get to watch a basketball game the way I like to watch a basketball game. It's impossible to see what's happening on the floor and really analyze the play, so you're really stuck with watching the score and the emotions of the players on the floor.

Other than LD Williams I don't think you could say there was any emotion from the Wake side of things. That's not entirely surprising considering the opponent and what seemed to be one of the worst crowds I've ever seen at the Joel (also not surprising). The Deacs just weren't up for this game, and it showed in their performance. I saw what looked like plenty of lazy defensive plays and sloppy offensive decisions. And then I saw the same lazy defensive mistakes and the same sloppy offensive decisions. The Deacs were asleep at the wheel.

Thankfully something changed with about ten minutes left and the Deacs went on a little bit of a run. The defensive intensity picked up a little bit and guys seemed to make sure to take good shots on the offensive end. In the end, a 12 point victory in this game isn't going to make any difference. It was a game we were supposed to win, and when anyone who cares towards the end of the season (which will hopefully be the NCAA selection committee)looks at this game they won't pause on a 12 point win over Presbyterian. I guess you could say "No harm, no foul."

No one had overly impressive stat lines last night, although James Johnson scored 18 points and Ishmael Smith had an interesting 7 rebounds, 11 assists, 0 points and 0 turnovers night. Other than that I think I've talked all I need to about this game. We won, it's over, and we'll start focusing on BYU.

Funny how a game like this one brings out all of my basketball clichés. Oh well.

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Starting Lineup: Teague, Johnson, Weaver, Ish, LD - Evan Lepler by himself on the ACC Select call tonight. Chas out for disciplinary reasons (ejected from Air Force game Sunday)

Tipoff: Another lost tipoff. Figured we couldn't win more than one in a row. According to Evan, thats 11 of 12 tips lost. Easy fast break layup for Teague off of a block/steal (hard to tell from the stupid below the hoop camera angle)

According to Evan, a Blue Hose is a "fierce Scotch-Irish warrior." I was wondering about that. Weaver takes a charge! I won't really be able to update time since ACC select doesn't give it. Kind of stinks.

15:43 - first media timeout. Deacs up 8-6. 4 points for LD, 2 for Weaver, 2 for Teague. Presby can apparently shoot the three reasonably well (and very often).

10:25 - Wake leads 20-6 and looks pretty good starting 2008. Everyone is contributing, with points from James Johnson, David Weaver, LD Williams, Jeff Teague, and Jamie Skeen. The defense is playing reasonably well against a completely outmatched Presbyterian squad and we're practicing a bit of a full court press. I like that we aren't forcing shots (particularly 3's) so far and are making good passes to get the easiest possible shots. Hopefully we keep up the intensity and make quite a statement with an impressive score.

Media timeout as we go under 8 minutes. Very small crowd tonight.

5:53 - Presby has cut the lead considerably mostly because we quite making good shots. We look like we've been forcing some shots and forcing several passes. Presby only trails 24-16 now. This was that lack of intensity that I thought cut hurt us with a big lead.

2:00 - Another three after a Wake 2 cuts the lead to 4, 28-24.

1:02 - Final media timeout and the Deacs only lead by 6 having led by as much as 16 earlier in the half. Not making very many shots, paritally because we're not taking great shots. Not sure exactly what the issue is, but Presby definitely shoots the ball well from deep.

Well that was an awful 10 minutes of basketball, and Wake only leads by 2, 31-29. After starting off by playing smart basketball with good shots and passes the Deacs inexplicably quit doing those things. Presbyeterian got hot from three and let the Deacs miss shots to get themselves back in the game.

I'm not quite sure what the problem is. The Deacs clearly have a tendency to play down to opponents and that's exactly what they've done. There have been too many turnovers and too many defensive lapses. I'm sure Dino's chewing them out right now in the locker room, and they need it. I'm guessing we may see Chas in the second half so maybe he can provide a spark. Otherwise I wouldn't be suprised to see us only win this game by single digits. At this point I'm not even 100% confident we'll win. Improvement is needed immediately.

2nd Half - Presbyterian takes the lead 34-33. Not seing enough change so far. We still look out of control and don't seem to be making smart decisions with the ball. Chas is getting ready to check in, we definitely need him right now.

15:06 - Wake leads 39-38 after having trailed by 1 just a bit earlier. I was hoping to see the Deacs come out and exert the dominance they should have in this game but so far it hasn't really happened. We've had a couple of pretty good possessions, but I'm seeing way too many defensive lapses where Prebyterian gets easy open looks. There's just no reason for that to happen. This may not be as frustrating as Georgia, but it's suprisingly close.

12:57 - Awful defense by the Deacs. We gave up 2 offensive rebounds in the same posession and then let them have an easy layup to tie the game 42. Our guys have to know they shouldn't be playing this close with Presbyterian but they still look asleep on the defensive end. Yuck.

10:32 - Wake leads by three after we finally got a three pointer from Harvey Hale. With 1o minutes left I'm honestly nervous about the possibility of losing this game. Hopefully LD Williams' encouragement to play some defense will fire up the team to do so. C'mon, Deacs.

And finally the Deacs find a spark and gain a 7 point advantage over Presbyterian. LD Williams just hit a huge dunk off of a steal. It only took 20 minutes of terrible play, but finally the Deacs are doing something right. If we keep this up (which is premature) we might even have a respectable margin of victory.

4:00 (aprox) - Wake has finally started playing some smart basketball, including good defense and smart shots and we actually have an 11 point lead. This might not turn out as bad as anticipated!

Final - Well a 12 point win is much more than it looked like we would deserve after the middle 20 minutes of the game. I'll write a full recap sometime after the Fiesta Bowl tonight, but man was that ugly. Thankfully, later in the season when people look at our record a 12 point win in this game won't stand out as anything unusual. I'm just happy to get out with the win.

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From time to time I find blog posts or articles that are off the beaten path for most Wake Forest News. "Around the Interweb" will be my way for sharing these with you and maybe even commenting on them myself. Enjoy!

I had never paid enough attention to know this, but Julian Valentin (of the men's soccer team) is from Lancaster, PA. His hometown paper recently did a feature on him, mentioning the 25 stitches he received for his facial injury from the national championship game and that Roger Espinoza - the player who put his boot in Valentin's face - called to apologize the next day.

Valentin is now preparing for the MLS draft on January 18th, and although I wish him all the best in his professional endeavors, we can all be glad they won't include a career in web design (Apparently made for a First Year Seminar at Wake. good stuff).

On an entirely different note, Paul Rugani from Blue Devil Hoops wrote a post on New Year's Eve that included "New Year's Resolutions" for each ACC basketball team. Regarding Wake Rugani wrote:

"Stop shooting 3s. Wake is under 30% from beyond the arc, but devote nearly 38% of their shots to the 3. Their most accurate outside shooter is Ish Smith, and that is not a good sign. Particularly problematic have been James Johnson (who has had an otherwise fantastic freshman season thus far) and LD Williams, who are a combined 19 for 83.
Will it be kept? Probably not. The Deacons have some guys who love to shoot the long ball - Harvey Hale, Jamie Skeen, Williams, Johnson - and so the attempts are likely going to stay near the current average of 22.75/game. Wake can only hope that Skeen, Williams, and Hale all see their percentages rise to where they were last season."

As much as it pains me to agree with a Blue Devil, I do agree with Rugani. Our three point shooting has definitely been atrocious and we'd currently be better off without it. Unfortunately I also agree that it's not going to change. The team loves the three-ball and although our inside presence is getting stronger, it's still not strong enough to nullify the need to shoot threes. We should be better at it than we are, but the fact remains that regardless of what we should be doing the shots aren't falling. Hopefully with more time our shooting will improve but it needs to happen in a hurry. Coach always says he wants to be averaging over one point per posession, but when we're shooting under 30% we're definitely not getting over 1 ppp from those posessions. Until we can make 1/3 of them they aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing. Something's gotta give.

That's all I got for this installment of "Around the Interweb." Hopefully I'll find good material regularly to keep it going!

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Tonight the Deacs take on the Presbyterian Blue Hose who've been barnstorming all over the country this season to gain exposure (and money) for the school. Given their 1-16 record and their average margin of defeat (a lot) tonight is clearly the easier of the two remaining out of conference games (BYU being the other), so all expectations are for a big win. Nonetheless, Presbyterian appears to have been getting closer as of late and played better against Georgia than Wake did, so the Deacs shouldn't take anything for granted.

College Basketball Stats by StatSheet.com

Jamie Skeen, who had been listed as questionable for tonight's game, is expected to play. Although his ankle is apparently at nearly full strength, Dino has said the time off has hurt Skeen's conditioning. Tonight should be a good game for him to work on getting his legs back under him.

James Johnson certainly impressed against Air Force on Sunday with his 22 points and fellow freshman Jeff Teague had a very impressive 6 steals to lead the Deacs' defensive efforts. L.D. Williams, who by my estimations has been quiet offensively as of late, broke out with 16 points of his own. I recognize that he's been doing plenty of other important things for the team, particularly on the defensive end, but I like to see him scoring points as well.

The other player making waves recently is Cam Stanley who played 15 minutes against Air Force and acquitted him self nicely with seven points and seven rebounds. I'm not sure if Dino plans to play him that much going forward, but having another player ready to produce is always a good thing.

Tonight's game is available on ACC Select, so I'll be following it there although I'll probably get somewhat distracted by the Fiesta Bowl in the second half. I'll have a game thread up and will probably post some of my thoughts periodically since many of you probably won't be able to see the game. I'll also have an open thread available to those of you who are watching or who want to ask me questions about the game.

There's really only one easy game left on the schedule and it's tonight. The Deacs must take advantage.

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Welcome to 2008, Deacon fans!

2007 was a pretty incredible year for Wake Forest athletics - The football team finished the 2006 season with an appearance in the Orange Bowl, the Baseball Team, Field Hockey Team, and Women's Soccer Teams all went to the NCAA tournament, the Men's Soccer Team won the National Championship, and the Football team capped the 2007 campaign with a victory over UConn in the Meineke Car Care Bowl.

Even with all that excitement in 2007 I'm even more excited about Deacon athletics in 2008. Both the Men's and Women's basketball teams are in the middle of another good season (particularly the ladies, although the men are showing flashes of brilliance), spring sports are looking to start strong, and next fall already looks promising for several teams. I can't wait to see how it all turns out, and I look forward to blogging it all here at OldGoldandBlog.com

As you may have noticed by now, the Old Gold & Blog has a new home! Several weeks ago I had you all vote on a domain name for the blog and almost two thirds of voters selected OldGoldandBlog.com. Starting today on January 1st the official home of the Old Gold & Blog is OldGoldandBlog.com, and I look forward to the year it's going to have. As you can see I have done a bit of a redesign to the blog which will hopefully make it both more aesthetically pleasing and easier to use. If you encounter any problems or issues please let me know so that I can fix them as soon as possible. I've made the RSS feeds more accessible (as you can see to the left) which will hopefully make it easier for you to find the Wake news and thoughts you're looking for.

I look forward to seeing you frequent the Old Gold & Blog throughout 2008 and I promise to be here sharing news and thoughts all year long.

Happy new year and Go Deacs!

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