Revolt Update - Ron Wellman Lives In Bizarro World

In response to Ron Wellman's pitiful effort to rehabilitate the shattered credibility of pal Jeff Bzdelik, we should take measure of how truly bizarro Wellman's world has to be in order to take his word for granted. If you can read his defense without laughing to yourself and wondering to yourself, "Are we watching the same team?", there's a painful reality we should take measure of that challenges Wellman's fantasy.

In addition to leading our team to statistically regress for each consecutive 1/3 of the season so far as he's had time to competently adapt & adjust over the course of the season, over 3 years Bzdelik's body of work at Colorado in hindsight was nothing to brag about in an ACC world: He was never able to recruit nationally at Colorado, and he was able to recruit two players whom weren't even nationally-ranked, nine 2-star recruits, four 3-star recruits, & one lone 4-star recruit. And his recruiting classes got weaker over time, which probably had something to due with the fact that Bzdelik's record while at Colorado bordered on incompetent in an ACC world, while competing against comparatively weaker teams in the Big 12 North (see here).

In 2007-2008, Bzdelik, purportedly a good in-game X's-&-O's coach, went 12-20 overall, 6-23 in away games, with a meager 9-7 against extremely low mid-major opponents, 3-13 in-conference play & 0-8 in Big 12 away games.

In 2008-2009, Colorado under Bzdelik got worse, going 9-22 overall, 0-20 on the road, only 8-7 against the weakest of the weak low mid-major opponents, & 1-15 in conference play against Big 12 teams.

In 2009-2010, he managed them to a meager 15-16 overall, with another meager 9-6 against very bad low-mid major teams, 4-20 in road games, & only 6-10 in the much easier Big 12 conference.

So while at Colorado, Bzdelik started very poorly, took 2 steps backwards, & scarcely a half-step forward. Take a closer look, in three years at Colorado, Bzdelik's supposedly better in-game X's-&-O's qualifications resulted in a 10-38 record in the Big 12 - a conference substantially less difficult to win in than the ACC - plus a meager 24-21 against extremely low mid-major teams in non-conference play, and a 10-63 record in away games. Tack on that his recruiting was extremely shoddy and worsened the longer he was there, if you don't believe me, see here for yourself, and that he could never elevate the Colorado program to the level where it was even remotely able to recruit nationally, to the fact that his body of work in a substantially weaker conference was comparatively hideous, you have to at least go back almost two decades and three head coaches before you could find a coach at Wake Forest so woefully ill-prepared & bad at both coaching and recruiting. Collectively coupling these hard facts with our consecutive regression in every major category as the season has progressed to the 2/3 point, doesn't give any reason to defend Jeff Bzdelik from the clearly justifiable escalating revolt by alums and fans.

Like DingoDeac said:

Bzz didn’t have this "happen" to him. He is not an innocent victim. He doesn’t sit by and just watch this team and the whole thing is Dino’s fault. He is the coach — he is the one that is supposed to maximize his players ability. To get the best out of them — that is his job. And to this point he has not done that.

Let’s start with the talk about the talent on the team. How does it get better? With better players, right? Where are those players coming from? Bzz is not known as a great recruiter and so far has not reeled in any big talent to WF. To be truthful, from a ratings standpoint, next year’s class is one of the lowest ranked in recent WF history.

One person cited four particular games as "giving hope." These were a 24 point loss at home, a 3 point win at home against the worst team in the Big 10, an 8 point loss to an A10 team and a 21 point home loss to a Colonial team. Those games give hope? Any loss by more than 10 points shouldn’t give anyone ‘hope’. It is unacceptable to lose games by that margin to mid majors. And it is unacceptable to lose by that much at home to a rival.

I always support Wake Forest regardless of the circumstances, and any negativity or discussion about the merits of a coach should not be drowned out by the cry of ‘Rally Around the Flag’ — you can both support and be critical — they are not mutually exclusive actions. Should we all just sing kumbaya and turn our eyes from the slaughter before us? I would hope not.

If there are transfers at the end of the year (and I hope there are not) the blame can not be placed on the fans (fair weather or not), but on a coaching structure that did not provide them the means to succeed.

Well-put, sir.

What's more, it's on-record that Colorado is doing better because Bzdelik is gone & a new coach, Tad Boyle - who coaches with a completely opposite philosophy & system than what Bzdelik does - is in. Just look at how different, and better Colorado is not because of the weak recruits Bzdelik left behind in Colorado, but because Bzdelik left. If you don't believe me, see for yourself. With Tad Boyle's fast-tempo, running even off made baskets, make-the-opponent-suck-for-air style. In fact, the new post-Bzdelik basketball is being referred to as “Boyle Ball.” As this Big 12 Sports article points out:

Colorado is averaging 83 points a game, about 10 more than last season under coach Jeff Bzdelik. "In college basketball, recruiting is paramount,” Boyle said. “It's about attracting good players. You want a style that they're going to want to play.”

When you're being recruited in the ACC, and Jeff Bzdelik's unrelentingly drilling Wake Forest into the record books as a historic failure, and you couple that with the fact that he has no inspiring track record and plays a politely plodding philosophy that's great at losing, extremely bad at losing credibly, and prodigiously awful at winning games, recruits will look at us & think bowling semis on Saturday morning look like more fun.

Looking past the pro forma disclaimers that Wake Forest winning is his chief goal, it doesn't take much reading between the lines that even more fundamentally at the core of things, Ron Wellman's number one priority is that Ron Wellman doesn't have to bow to well-deserved humility, recant the mistake of whiffing and signing an easily controllable pal, Bzdelik, who's worse than Dino Gaudio at Wake Forest, astoundingly worse than his predecessor in terms of X's-&-O's, and astonishingly bad at recruiting.

It's increasingly becoming clear that Ron Wellman cares more about Ron Wellman being right than anything else, and the nepotism that is leading our crown jewel program into a consecutively regressing, historically atrocious state deserves more than Ron Wellman infatuated with his own vindication and a few stiff pro forma apologies. We deserve better and should continue to revolt for immediate change and demand more than the epic failure with no credibility whatsoever, that we're being disgracefully shoveled.