Jeff Bzdelik may yet coach another game at Wake Forest, if the program gets an unexpected NIT berth, or decides to play in one of those not-even-NIT tournaments that do no one any good.
But after that, it’s pretty clear that Bzdelik, whose Demon Deacons teams have gone 51-78 in his four seasons, with just one winning season, this season, which has the Deacs nominally over .500 at 17-16, is done in Winston-Salem.
Bzdelik has never been a favorite with the Wake faithful, even with his NBA pedigree (he coached Denver for two seasons) and his success at Air Force (where he was 50-16 in two seasons). At Colorado, Bzdelik’s teams were 36-58 in back-to-back-to-back losing seasons before he was hired at Wake to replace Dino Gaudio, who was canned after going to back-to-back NCAA Tournaments and going 61-31 in his brief three-year tenure.
A program willing to cut ties with a moderately successful coach like Gaudio is not going to have a problem getting rid of one who has done absolutely nothing in his four year on Tobacco Road.
If today’s ACC Tournament beatdown at the hands of Pitt is indeed his Wake finale, it will serve as a fitting epitaph for the Bzdelik era. The listless Demon Deacons fell behind 11-2 early and never got back into the game in what turned out to be an 84-55 loss.
Wake never seemed to look like it knew what it wanted to do on either end of the floor, firing up wild jumpers and not getting back on defense to prevent the Panthers from fast-breaking the Deacons to death.
The stoic Bzdelik declined the opportunity to address his job status in his postgame press conference, as if that might stave off the inevitable.
“I’m just going to answer questions about the game,” he said in response to the second question in his presser.
After that, whatever drama as to what he had to say afterward left the room.
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