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Gaudio, again, stressing Deacs' defense
Specifically, Wake Forest is working on stopping perimeter shots, where it ranked 9th last season
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Since becoming Wake Forest’s coach, Dino Gaudio has emphasized improvement on defense.
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Published: November 14, 2008
Dino Gaudio proved in his first season as Wake Forest's head coach that he could be his own man.
He proved it partly by installing his own defense.
The defense that the Deacons will play in tonight's season opener against N.C. Central at Joel Coliseum actually doesn't belong to Gaudio. Known as the Pack Defense, it was designed by Dick Bennett, the former coach at Wisconsin and Washington State.
But it represented a radical departure from the more pressure-oriented defense Skip Prosser preferred during the years Gaudio worked as his assistant at Xavier and Wake Forest.
Two weeks after Prosser died in August of 2007, Gaudio was named the Deacons' head coach. The day the decision was announced, Gaudio signaled at least one major change in the program.
"I hope this is not one iota of a disparaging word to my buddy, but we're going to place a little more emphasis on the defensive end of the floor,' Gaudio said then. "We weren't as good as we needed to be defensively the last couple of years, and I'm partly to blame for that. I'm on staff and we talk a lot.
"But we're going to try to do our very, very best to be a little more focused and put more emphasis on that side of the ball. Because I really believe if we're going to win championships like we want to win here, we're going to have to do it on that side of the court."
Gaudio and assistant Pat Kelsey spent that August and September going to school on the Pack Defense. They talked several times with Tony Bennett, who succeeded his father, Dick, as head coach at Washington State. They spent time at Xavier, where Coach Sean Miller had gone to the defense.
When practice began in mid-October, Gaudio and his assistants Kelsey, Jeff Battle and Mike Muse set about breaking old habits and reinforcing new ones. The results were mixed, but the Deacons finished sixth in the ACC with a field-goal percentage defense of .429.
"Our defense for years had been so bad," Gaudio said. ‘We needed to make a change. It was a big risk. It was an unknown.
We had gotten away from something we had done even since we were at Xavier. So we're talking maybe 12 years."
The weakness last year was the perimeter. Opponents made 35 percent from 3-point range, which left the Deacons ranked ninth in the conference. But Gaudio expects to see improvement this season, partly because the freshman class of Al-Farouq Aminu, Tony Woods and Ty Walker has made the Deacons taller, deeper and more talented, but also because the veterans have played the defense for a full season.
Gaudio said that every program that has turned to the defense has seen vast improvements from the first year to the second.
"I couldn't be happier with it," Gaudio said. "And as we try to develop leadership on this team you'll start to see the upperclassmen teaching the younger guys where they're supposed to be. And that's really a good thing."
The Deacons, in the new system, still try to apply pressure on the opponent with the ball. The difference is they're no longer as preoccupied with darting into the passing lanes for steals. Instead they pack the four off-the-ball defenders back into the lane to form a wall around the basket.
In that principle, the defense more closely resembles the one Coach Dave Odom used during his 12 years as the Deacons' head coach.
"I think they've really bought into it and they really believe in it," Gaudio said. "And we talk about it all the time, after games, what our field-goal percentage was defensively.
"We're really letting the kids know how important it is to us."
The Deacons will likely open the season with a starting lineup of sophomore Jeff Teague and junior L.D. Williams in the backcourt, sophomore James Johnson and Aminu at forwards and junior Chas McFarland at center. Ish Smith, who started 30 games last season at point guard, remains sidelined by a broken foot sustained on Sept. 19.
Smith said yesterday he will be diagnosed on Nov. 18 by Dr. Robert Teasdall, who performed the surgery. Smith said he hopes to be cleared to play then.
N.C. Central finished 4-26 last season, its first in the NCAA Division I. The Deacons beat the Eagles 75-58 last Nov. 19.
Three starters return from last season, senior guards Bryan Ayala and J'Mell Walters and junior forward Joshua Worthy. Worthy finished second on the team last season with 13 points a game.
"I just hope we play hard for 40 minutes and share the ball like we did against Mount Olive," Gaudio said, referring to last week's exhibition game. "And hopefully we can set the tone for the season with our defense.
"We'll come out of it as a positive if we do those three things."
■ Dan Collins can be reached at 727-7323 or at dcollins@wsjournal.com.
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