As midseason water cascaded over the ACC cliff, Coach Jeff Bzdelik engaged a Wake Forest freshman in conversation.
"Coach," the freshman said, "I didn't realize there were so many good players out there."
Bzdelik sighed. He sighs a lot these days. "Well," Bzdelik said, "What have you been watching on ESPN all though your high-school career?"
If the freshman hadn't been preoccupied at 4 p.m. yesterday, he could have turned on ESPN and watched Duke turn an eight-point second-half lead into an 83-59 victory at Joel Coliseum.
The margin, two points closer than Wake Forest's average in four previous conference defeats, camouflaged radical improvement over a 74-39 disaster at Georgia Tech on Wednesday. That was one of lowest competitive moments in the program's history, pickled in 26-percent shooting and a 13-point second half.
Some shrill fans questioned Bzdelik's competence, and he bristled publicly, which tends to whet a dissident shark's appetite. As 14,107 assembled yesterday, it didn't take much imagination to visualize the critics circling and the ominous fins swishing.
Instead of fainting and flopping against America's fourth-ranked team, Wake Forest harassed Duke's two All-America candidates and maintained the lead for about nine minutes. The surprising defensive effort disrupted the Blue Devils, who shot 43 percent overall, and prompted flowery praise from Coach Mike Krzyzewski, who still remembers the barren soil of his early Cameron Indoor hothouse.
"I thought Jeff had his team very well prepared," Krzyzewski said. "I mean, they've come off some substantial losses and you would never notice it in their demeanor. I thought they had great energy, togetherness. They hit shots right away in a well-conceived offense. I think they knocked us back with their execution."
The Deacons led Duke in concentration and spunk during the opening minutes, and at the first TV timeout Krzyzewski blew a gasket, punctuating the rant by slamming his strategy clipboard against the floor three times.
Freshman Travis McKie interpreted the Deacons' unexpected awakening somewhat differently.
"We couldn't have done much worse than we did at Georgia Tech," McKie said. "That was an awful game. Everything went wrong, no getting around it. We wanted to come out here and show people we could fight. Things were being said about us. We tried to take it on the chin and keep progressing, keep fighting."
Bzdelik encouraged the feistiness, and probably demanded some verification of competitive blood running through young veins. Although harvesting a meager crop at 7-13 overall, he feeds on hope and preaches optimism, "because if you're not optimistic, then you don't have hope, and without hope you can't have success."
He insists that the N.C. State and Maryland games offered slivers of hope. "But the last two games, I thought we started feeling sorry for ourselves," Bzdelik said. "To be straight up with you, yeah, we started feeling sorry for ourselves, so we've had some discussions."
The counseling evolves as Wake Forest strives to avoid the first winless ACC record since Maryland's 0-14 in 1987. The weight of history might not burden players born since then, but just one win in five weeks can leave any team depressed.
"Losing is tearing us up," Bzdelik acknowledged, "but at the same time I'm the leader and that's why I bring up optimism. I'm very optimistic. I'm very excited about the future.... We just need to get stronger, more mature, get tougher and conjure this kind of energy up every time we step on the court.
"They're learning the hard way. I'm learning the hard way. The one thing that I ask of everyone is, if you've got hatred because of our record, hate me. Don't hate these young men because they care. Hate me. Put all the hate on me, but not these young men. I love them, because they're really special."
The young men of Wake Forest will ponder these thoughts and practice all week before playing Virginia next Saturday — same time, same place, same network.
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement