WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (AP) – There isn’t much familiar about Wake Forest’s program these days.
The top scorer jumped early to the NBA. The best returning big man wound up planning to transfer out of the program following an arrest and suspension.
The former coach – the longtime right-hand man to the late Skip Prosser – was fired after his second straight NCAA tournament appearance.
“It’s different, but it’s part of a program,” sixth man Gary Clark said Wednesday. “They come and they go. You just make the best of it every year.”
New coach Jeff Bzdelik hopes what’s left in Winston-Salem is enough to keep the Demon Deacons competitive in the always tough Atlantic Coast Conference.
More than 70 percent of the scoring is gone from a team that finished 20-11. Clark is the only scholarship senior. Sophomore guard C.J. Harris is the only player to ever start a game at the school which has a roster dominated by five freshmen.
“We’ve lost a lot of firepower, no question,” Bzdelik said. “The point is, is that we have some talent. Now yes, it’s very young. Yes, there’s very little experience. But it’s exciting for me, it’s exciting for them, because they’re coming in and sometimes with youth … you’re almost clueless in a way, and you’re going to go out there and just play. And you become fearless.”
He said he knows he needs to be patient.
“We have enough talent to win a lot of games. How soon that happens will depend on how they mature collectively and play together as a team,” he said.
Clark and Stewart are two of the key holdovers for a program that in the past two years has sent three underclassmen to the pros. Star forward Al-Farouq Aminu is the most recent to make that jump after a sophomore year in which he averaged a team-best 15.8 points and led the Demon Deacons to a second straight 20-win season and spot in the NCAA tournament.
That wasn’t enough for Dino Gaudio to keep his job. Gaudio was fired in April after nearly a decade at the school, first as Prosser’s top assistant and later taking over the program when Prosser died in the summer of 2007.
Aminu departed for the NBA, and junior center Tony Woods sought a release. That came a month after Woods was suspended indefinitely and roughly two weeks after he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge on a female.
Those moves leave 7-foot-1 center Ty Walker as the only remaining member of Prosser’s final recruiting class. He’s also one of the few big men on a team that had been defined by its bulky front line.
So, the Demon Deacons certainly will be smaller and younger, with Harris saying the new guys look at him like he’s a grisled veteran.
“I’m a sophomore. I’d love to lead you guys, but I’m trying to learn, too,” Harris said with a smile. “I’m trying to take both roles, sitting back and learning and also trying to lead the guys.”
With a smaller frontcourt and little experience, Bzdelik isn’t necessarily looking to pound any square pegs into round holes.
“As a coach, you need to be flexible and take the talent that you have and put it in a system that will best allow them to flourish and do well,” Bzdelik said. “What I would like to do is really what they do well, and that is, we’re going to run the basketball and we’re going to push it hard and be in attack mode at all times. … I think we have the potential to be a real good shooting basketball team.”
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