Selling It: Bzdelik, Wellman make pitch

All around the room, there was uneasiness.

It was like a coffee-and-tea party where the hosts could have passed for a tall Midwestern banker and a short Midwestern stock broker who had gathered everyone together to explain a rare investment opportunity. The sellers spoke haltingly, perhaps uncomfortable with product packaging, and some buyers are always wary.

This was the scene yesterday morning near the top of the football stadium tower, where Wake Forest introduced its new basketball coach to the media and, by natural extension, the broader public audience.

Nothing could break the ice -- not the unidentifiable gushing sounds in the ceiling, not the screeching sound system. No magic phrase could unravel the numeric code at the core of the investment riddle: Why did Athletics Director Ron Wellman fire a 61-31 coach with a bad postseason record and hire a 36-58 coach with a bad postseason record?

That simplistic three-year measurement overlooks the fine print in the career performances of the dismissed, Dino Gaudio, and the freshly appointed, Jeff Bzdelik of Colorado. Wellman invited the question by pinning the Gaudio firing on records of 0-3 in the ACC Tournament and 1-2 in the NCAA.

Bzdelik finished 1-3 in Big 12 Tournaments and 0-2 in league tournaments while at Air Force, where he lost his only NCAA game. During two seasons plus 28 games at Denver, he was 1-4 in the NBA playoffs.

Wellman put the best possible face on Bzdelik's postseason record, counting Air Force's 3-1 NIT run, although the NIT didn't count for much on Dave Odom's tote board. One year after winning the sucker, he felt the Wellman frost and snatched the South Carolina job to beat the one-man posse out of town.

These sales points are situational, of course, and Bzdelik looked better with an NIT supplement. "He is, I think, 4-7 in postseason play," Wellman said. "You have to look at the caliber of those teams. You have to look at the whole ball of wax, and he has had some success in postseason play. My question was: Does he have the potential to take us where we want to be throughout our program? I answered that with a resounding yes, definitely."

In other words, Wellman applied different yardsticks, at least in the judgments he's willing to discuss openly. "A lot of it," he said, "is gut feelings."

Wellman's unspoken gut feeling about Gaudio evidently required Pepto-Bismol, but many fans figured that the guy who replaced the late Skip Prosser deserved a longer chance.

The ferocious, sometimes crude and largely anonymous pushback -- hard to fathom in a pre-Web world -- landed loudly. Bzdelik insisted that he doesn't read newspapers or the Internet. Wellman insisted that he doesn't follow the message boards. Somehow, though, they got the message, which formed the framework for the overt sales job. "You don't hide your head in the sand, obviously," Wellman said.

Addressing the skeptics

He attacked the perception that he hired Bzdelik because of a bond forged during the 1980s at Northwestern, where Wellman coached baseball.

"We weren't friends at Northwestern," Wellman said. "We never went out socially. I knew he was the assistant basketball coach. I used to go over and watch basketball practice every once in a while. I think he came to some baseball games. Our wives didn't even know each other. It wasn't that we were close friends at all."

Wellman said they lost touch for about 20 years, until he bumped into pro scout Bzdelik at Joel Coliseum when the Deacons played Marquette in 2001.

Bzdelik's resume includes a 25-31 record at Maryland-Baltimore County from 1986 through '88, just as that school lurched into Division I. After 13 years as an NBA scout and assistant, he took over the Nuggets. They won 17 games his first year and 43 his second. He was fired, at 13-15, in 2004-05.

He inherited a solid situation at Air Force, going 24-7 and 26-9. His Colorado records look thin (12-20, 9-22, 15-16), but he raised money for facilities and built a foundation. "Right now," he said, "they're ready to bust loose."

Bzdelik isn't especially sensitive to buy-a-vowel cracks about his Slovak surname, but his 111-105 college record is another thing. Alluding to Colorado's any-day-now breakthrough, Bzdelik said he told Wellman: "Ron, couldn't you have called me a year from now? Then I wouldn't be fielding these questions, because you would have said, ‘Look at how he built the program there.'"

All these issues matter to the investment brokers from Ohio (Wellman) and Illinois (Bzdelik) because the new regime seeks legitimacy in the face of a divided constituency. Gaudio suffered that shortcoming as the only practical successor to Prosser in late summer of 2007.

In the end, how Bzdelik's teams play will make the real difference. Bzdelik has an impressive technical background, especially his seven years as Pat Riley's game-plan man. He knows X-and-O stuff.

"We play for the name on the front of the chest and not for the name on the back," Bzdelik said.

He sounds much like Herb Sendek, the cerebral coach who took the names off the backs of N.C. State's uniforms and guided the Wolfpack to the Sweet 16 before chilly Raleigh breezes prompted him to seek Arizona State warmth.

If Bzdelik coaches that well, he could placate many dissidents. "He'll be here a long time," Wellman predicted.

The boss spoke with conviction, but this deal isn't about old numbers or new words. It's about what happens on a parquet floor near you.

lrawlings@wsjournal.com