Sports > March 20, 2008

By Jeff Merski | Senior writer

Entering the last week of the college basketball season, I had resigned myself to the fact that the only way the men’s basketball team was going to make the NCAA Tournament was to run through the ACC Tournament by winning four straight games on consecutive days. While it was a possibility (see Georgia in the SEC Tournament) that the Deacs would make The Dance, I would not have placed any bets on it.

Nonetheless, I had hoped that the Deacs would make a postseason appearance of some sort. I thought that the NIT would be a strong possibility – we did finish with a 7-9 conference record in the No. 1-rated RPI conference in the country (respectable), finished four games over .500 (not too shabby) and had a marquee win over Duke. I felt that our resume was pretty strong.

So, when I got off a flight in Greensboro on Selection Night, I had a voicemail message saying that the Deacs were not in the NIT. I was surprised, but things happen. I can’t deny that we were on the bubble – one of the criteria that the NIT was looking for was how teams finished out their seasons, and dropping five out of their last six games had to have hurt the team’s chances.

While finishing the season poorly, the Deacs dropped in the RPI – another key ingredient to determining tournament placement. According to collegerpi.com, the Deacs ended the year with an RPI at 100 – not exactly a great ranking. This rating was much higher before the falloff at the end of the season.

It’s perplexing as to why the Deacons did not participate in the College Basketball Invitational Tournament. Details are scarce, and without any strong information available to me, I can’t fairly comment on why the Deacons are not involved (speculating whether or not it dealt with receiving a bid, turning down a bid, etc. are things that can be left off to the message boards).

I will say that playing in a tournament would have been beneficial to the Deacs. Every scholarship player on the roster can return next season, and only two players on the current roster have any postseason experience (2005 NIT Opening Round at Minnesota where junior Harvey Hale had two points in 16 minutes and redshirt junior Cameron Stanley had one point in five minutes).

Considering the fact that the five players in our starting lineup were not students at this school when Wake last played after the ACC Tournament, it couldn’t hurt for them to get some extra experience in a “win-or-go-home” environment.

This is especially true with a star-studded recruiting class arriving on campus next year. With Al-Farouq Aminu, Ty Walker and Tony Woods coming on campus, plus freshmen James Johnson and Jeff Teague having a year of experience under their belts (not to mention the current sophomore class), the Deacs will be in good shape to make a run for the NCAA Tournament.

A bit of postseason experience this year would be beneficial given the expectations for next year’s team to make a run at the Final Four. However, it’s not the end of the world.

There is plenty that each player could work on this off-season. I won’t go into particulars here, but free throw shooting and three-point shooting are two areas that could be improved. Head Coach Dino Gaudio did an excellent job of improving the defense, an area that I felt was a bit of a deficiency under Skip Prosser. I’m hoping that Gaudio can continue to build on this season and continue to improve the Deacs so that next year we’ll be contenders to bring some trophies back to Winston-Salem.