We Need To Talk About Wake Forest Basketball

So I've been writing for Blogger So Dear for literally around a decade now. I've written recaps through the entirety of the Bzdelik Era, the latter-day Grobe Era, and now the Manning Era. But I'm going to be honest here y'all. I'm at a loss on this one. Now let's be clear: I'm assuming that the performance against Columbia is indicative of the larger scope of the season. Needing a miracle run in the last minute to beat an Ivy League school capped off by an admittedly pretty spectacular shot by Brandon Childress almost reminiscent of the Kawhi Leonard Craziest Three Ever in the last NBA playoffs is not exactly cause for being bullish on the season. Then you factor in the fact that BOTH Tariq Ingraham and Sunday Okeke have suffered torn Achilles tendons within a few days of each other (seriously, what? How?), essentially destroying anything resembling the merest hint of size and front court depth, and I'm sincerely at a loss.

Thing is, if this was football, I wouldn't be as fatalistic. Even putting aside coaching (which you shouldn't) or previous performances as a metric of ability to bounce back or not (which, again, you shouldn't), football is by definition more inclined to deal with a loss of players. Rosters are many times the size in football, presumably because of how much more of a physical sport football tends to be. But in basketball? Two players in the same role both suffering pretty much the worst injury a player can suffer would quite likely derail most seasons even for the best of programs.

I mean, I'm going to follow the games and everything. This is literally a job for me. But I and the rest of the staff are going to need to get very creative to write anything short of the same piece 20-30 times, barring Brandon Childress and Chaundee Brown becoming Russell Westbrook and James Harden and hoping nobody notices. I guess I'm writing this because I know I want to say SOMETHING, I'm just utterly at a loss. I'm only speaking for myself here; maybe the other staffers are a lot more prepared to work miracles than I am. But for my part, I'm going to try really hard to create an entertaining product even in super challenging circumstances, but I can't pretend it's going to be easy or always go smoothly. It's gonna need to get a little weird and junky and unconventional, and ultimately we're literally all going to be saying "maybe the stars will align in the off-season more often than not (read into that whatever you might).

Shoot, in that sense, things on BSD are probably going to somewhat mirror the actual basketball season. I guess there's some poetry in that.

Speaking of, I should probably start brushing up on various poetry forms. I was an English major, after all. You know, for reasons.

Bear with us, guys. This is going to be something, alright.

--SF