This is The Drive with Josh Graham Podcast. Three internet sensations, guys! Tune into The Drive weekday afternoons, 3 to 7 on WSJS.
You are on a Thursday Drive. It is WSJS News Talk Sports for the Triad, where if the Dallas Mavericks win the night, we will have a full week lead up to the finals that begin in Boston next Thursday night. That makes a ton of sense, how the NBA does it. But we'll get to those Western Conference Finals in just a bit, because we must first talk about the enormous college basketball headline that we learned last night. He's back! Hunter Salas made it official he will be returning to Wake Forest for another season. And with him in the fold, next season will be the most anticipated Demon Deacon basketball season in more than 15 years. Next year very well could be Wake Forest year, and the NCAA tournament is just a baseline for the expectations. Remember, they were fifth in the ACC last year. Now they're bringing back the best player from that team, a first-team-all-ACC guy in Salas, but also two other starters. Don't forget about Cam Hildreth, his fourth year in the program, Efton Reed, who undoubtedly was sought after. They return, they're going to bring in a former McDonald's All-American in the portal, Omaha Billou from Iowa State. They've added some pieces, Trevion Spillers from Appalachian State.
At Wake, here's what's kind of nuts. They're very good, but making the tournament alone would be a success. Let's not forget, they have not been to the NCAA tournament since 2017, John Collins year. But they haven't really been to the tournament for real since 2010. Remember, that was a Wake Forest team in 2010 that finished 10th in the ACC, didn't even win 20 games.
Steve Forbes's teams have won 20 games in three of the last four years, haven't made the tournament yet, haven't even made the first four. That's more about how the ACC's perceived more than how good Wake Forest is. We learned that in 22 and maybe this past year as well. But the last time Wake Forest made the field of 64 was 2010. Next year's 25, 15 years since Wake Forest has played in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Next year is the year that drought should end. That's the baseline expectation.
But it goes further than that. This Wake team could win the ACC. When you look at the talent in the ACC right now, Duke and Carolina are the only teams right now you could say comfortably have more talent than the Demon Deacons do. You want to talk about getting a first team All-American back? How about getting the first team All-ACC guy back?
How about getting a first team All-American? How about getting the ACC player of the year like North Carolina got back in R.J. Davis? And having top 10 recruits coming in and having starters come back the way they have guys coming back as well. Duke bringing in the best recruiting class we've seen in years, maybe in the last decade.
That's a different level of talent. But beyond that, who else could you say for sure is better than Wake? Wake's going to be in the same class as NC State. Fresh off the Final Four appearance, and they've had a good offseason. They're bringing some guys back too. Clemson, they got Chase Hunter back, Ian Shiflin back.
They're going to be pretty good. But you could certainly see Wake Forest being better than both those teams. NC State's not getting DJ Horn or DJ Burns back. Clemson isn't getting P.J.
Hall back. Wake is getting back Hunter Salas. The last time Wake Forest won the ACC in any sense was 2003. Josh Howard was the player of the year.
Chris Paul was a senior at West Forsythe High School. The last time Wake Forest won the ACC tournament, it was Tim Duncan in 1997, more than a quarter century ago. This Wake team, capable of doing it, Duke, they're young.
Younger teams usually take more time to develop. Carolina won the regular season, but lost to NC State in the ACC tournament championship. This could be the year for Wake. And as we've seen with the last three NCAA tournaments, you can dream beyond ACC titles for this Wake Forest team. Just look at those last three NCAA's. 2022, Carolina's an eight seed and make that miracle run in Hubert Davis' first year, beating Duke in the Final Four. That team wasn't even ranked until after beating K in the Cameron game.
The year after that, Miami off the radar going to their first Final Four in Houston in 2023. And then do I need to spell out the NC State scenario as well? They're saying, why not us? If NC State can get to the Final Four, why not Wake? Why not Wake with Hunter Salas and the talent that's on this team?
And all because Hunter Salas returns, you can dream about such things. With Hunter Salas back, next year could be Wake's year. Do you realize that Wake Forest hasn't finished better than fifth in the ACC standings? Since 2009, more than 15 years ago, that's insane to me. This type of team, they finished fifth last year. This could be a top three team in the ACC.
You could start to make the argument it should be that. And that is a very exciting change of pace for Demon Deacon fans. We are on X at WSJS Radio, streaming video on YouTube, Twitch, and as mentioned, X, WSJS Radio. Will Dalton, he's back as the producer of the show.
Like Hunter Salas, Will Dalton back. Yes, I am. W.D., remind the people what movie you watched for the first time. I watched Men in Black. W.D.
needs more of a thinking man. So you'll review that later this hour. That should be a good bit of fun.
I'm excited for that. I'm excited for watching basketball tonight because I fear we're not going to have basketball for the next week. Even though the Timberwolves won Game 4 in Dallas, they're favored tonight, they're the home team playing in Minneapolis, the Mavericks are closing out tonight.
Up 3-1, Dallas is still in full control of the series, they'll complete the gentlemen sweep and here's why. Karl-Anthony Towns is not to be trusted. Towns, he heard all the criticism. He had the 4-3s, 25 points, but even when he's great, W.D., he's frustrated.
He's frustrating. He fouled out of the game with six dumb fouls. It might be the record for most dumb fouls in a game because you only get six.
Good job on that one. I don't want to reveal who said this, but sometimes in sports, and this example is ACC basketball, sometimes a guy, it might not be good for a team when a player gets hot and sees his shot fall. The way that this player slash coach put it to me, they let the wrong mother bleeper get hot because what he knew was this is going to give that person a rational confidence and the shot selection is not going to look so good the next game. So remember we were saying, what are you doing Karl-Anthony Towns two games ago? What made Kat great in game four is, do you know how many 3s he attempted in the first half? I don't. Zero.
Ah. The second half, yeah, everyone could pay attention to the four made 3s. He only attempted five in the game. The previous two games he attempted nine, eight 3s. So here's a prediction tonight, Karl-Anthony Towns is going to take some bad shots and it's not going to help him.
It's not going to help the T-Wolves. Is this like a Caleb Love effect type deal? I wasn't going to say that the player that was being talked about was Caleb Love, but hey Caleb Love's back by the way. Yeah he is. Same song in the video as RJ Davis, they're kindred spirits. They really are.
It's really sweet seeing those two. But Karl-Anthony Towns, not to be trusted. Minnesota has no answers for Luca and Kyrie. So even as Luca had a triple-double the other night, that was the worst shooting night, seven of 21, that Luca's had in the last 10 playoff games. Kyrie shot six of 18. That was his second worst shooting night these entire playoffs, like 16, 17 games that they played so far. Yet, despite both those guys having off shooting nights, they still almost won the game. So with all that in mind, the Mavs, you think they're going to be bothered playing on the road? They won the first two in Minnesota. You know what their playoff record is through the first two and a half rounds so far?
They're six and two on the road these playoffs. And Derek Lively is still iffy. They're not ruling him out.
There's a chance he could play. But there was all the more reason to like Dallas tonight. So give me the Mavs.
The Mavs are closing out the T-Wolfs on the road later on tonight. Our guy Darren Vaught is all over the place this week. Why? Because he's the preeminent college baseball expert in the state of North Carolina, ACC Baseball, etc., Voice of USA Baseball.
He's on this show every week. So rather than bringing people up to speed on a sport called college baseball that we've been talking about since February, let's just dig into each of these regionals really quickly, starting with the one most noteworthy. Wake Forest preseason number one, not hosting. They're in Greenville, America against my Pirates, the Greenville, America regional. Do you expect the Deacs to advance or the Pirates?
I think it's the Deacs. The Pirates have had some health concerns with their pitching staff. Traya Savage partially punctured lung during their conference tournament.
It was announced after some post-start treatment. I'm not saying it was definitively a Tyrod Taylor situation, but we might have had a Tyrod Taylor situation on our hands. And they've got one of the best relievers in the country, Wyatt Lunsford Shenkman, who has been out with injury as well, made a start as an opener in the conference tournament and got kind of lit up by them. So it's a question of health for ECU. For Wake Forest, it's where can you place their star starting pitcher, Chase Burns, to give you the best advantage? And it sounds like they're going to hold him for a 1-0 game in the winner's bracket, presumably against ECU if they win their first game. And that would send the Pirates down to the loser's bracket, and you set yourself up really nicely if you're the Demon Deacons and you do that. North Carolina has LSU, the defending champs, going to the Bosch.
Wofford, 40-plus wins, incredible on the base pass. Kind of a crazy team if you haven't seen them play at any point this year. How difficult is it going to be for North Carolina to get out of their region?
Pretty difficult. This is one of the more loaded regionals, by my estimation. Wofford, you mentioned their capability offensively. It's a bit more of a small ball mantra. It's like death by a thousand cuts type of offense. I don't know that that's going to cut it against the talent-loaded lineups of LSU and North Carolina, but LSU has the most legit draft prospects on their roster of any team in the field of 64.
I think I'm pretty comfortable saying that. We all are aware of what Tommy White is capable of. He's broken the hearts of NC State fans last year in the College World Series final in Omaha. He broke the hearts of Wake Forest fans. Maybe he's just lining up every team in North Carolina in the ACC, and he's just going to one by one break their hearts. Maybe they see Duke in Omaha, and he figures out how to go four for four.
I don't know. That is daunting, but North Carolina is really good, too. They've been the last two games all year at Bosch. You bring up Duke.
All the talk about them is bad luck. Oh, you don't host a regional. Oh, you don't even stay in the state.
Oh, you don't even go to any of these SEC sites. You have to go out to, by all intents and purposes, Siberia to play in the state of Oklahoma and Norman. But from a baseball perspective, how do you expect the Blue Devils to fare in Oklahoma? How do they look compared to the other teams there?
I like this draw for Duke. I don't think it bothers them so much that they're not hosting for the first time in their program's history. I thought they deserved a top 16 placement. But no, they've got Oral Roberts, which is a team that was in Omaha last year. It's a program that has really good baseball, but this year it's a losing record in a lesser conference. Oral Roberts should not be that tough of a challenge. UConn is the three seed, another good program that's not scary this year. And Oklahoma, in a down year for the Big 12, by most standards, won that conference. So it's one of the few ACC schools, they and Wake actually, as the two seeds kind of lucked out in not getting an SEC opponent in their regional as well. I've said it all year, I think Duke's the most Omaha capable team in the ACC.
This kind of helps that, I think. It's a favorable region. NC State or South Carolina in the Raleigh Regional? This is tough. I think this is going to be really, really competitive. South Carolina is playing really, really well as of late. And as much as I would like to see every ACC team defeat their SEC counterpart within their respective regions, it's just not going to happen. I think I'm leaning South Carolina, but it wouldn't surprise me if NC State came out of that.
High Point, tough luck for you. You go to, hey, you get sent to the top ACC team, Clemson. Who else is there? Oh, Coastal and Vanderbilt, who have both won national championships in the last ten years.
Have fun with that. UNCW, not a three, not a four, but a two seed in the Athens Regional, which a lot of Wake fans were expecting the Deacs to be sent to. What chance do you give the Panthers and Seahawks?
The Panthers? Slim. I won't say none.
Not many. And it's not because I like Vandy or Coastal that much. I'm not really scared of them. I think Clemson's probably got the easiest regional of any ACC team. So I expect the Tigers to roll. UNC Wilmington's a sneak. I've not been as bold as to say I think they're going to win the regional in every media hit that I've done. But I think they might win that regional. I took them. Plus 390, plus 390.
Give it to me. Charlie Condon of Georgia has had maybe the best hitting season in college baseball history. It's at least up there. You can say arguably he's got the most home runs for the BB Corps era in a single season. He's a great player. He might be the number one overall pick this summer.
He scares me more than the team scares me. And I like UNC Wilmington a lot. Randy Hood's guys, the Seahawks, maybe they can avenge the CAA, which I thought was a league that was deserving of at least two, maybe even three bids into the tournament. They're the only CAA team in it. So I like the Seahawks. I've been saying it all year. I think it's a great team.
I think this sets up for them pretty well. Did you want to tell the people what to do with UNCW plus 390? Send me that cash out, family. Okay, now let's get to unusual questions. Last week, guys, everybody made it out that I got mad at Josh and I left the press conference.
That's not right. I thought it was an unusual question and it's okay. It's time for unusual questions with Josh Graham.
And Darren Vaught. Make sure you're subscribed to ACC baseball, et cetera, if you're not already. This is especially the time that you should be locked in on that. W.D., you've been kind of quiet over there. Would you like to start us off? Yeah. I'll, um, I'll start us off. So I wasn't here yesterday and I'm not going to go into detail, but I had some things stolen. Yeah. Let's just say that. We mentioned, we mentioned earlier, you don't need to get too much further into that.
I don't know how much you went into that. So what is the most valuable or personal or just something that means something to you or a weird thing, an unusual thing that you've had stolen? The night that the hurricanes in 2009 came back down a goal, game seven against the Devils. You see Oken and Ty in the game, Eric Stahl winning the game in Newark. I went crazy at a Carolina ale house and threw my hat that I had on in the air. That was a 2006 Stanley cup hat signed by the entire team. And I was unable to locate that hat after running around the bar celebrating the fact that the canes had won that game. So that's a signed Stanley cup hat that somebody picked up and realized pretty quickly what they had. Joke's on them.
Good luck getting that authenticated saying I found it at a bar. Yeah. The signatures were pretty good on it too. But anyway, I have another shirt that the team had signed as well.
So it's not a complete loss. Other than like a CD case, you guys know what I'm talking about. The old like CD binder with the little vinyl spots that you slip them in.
Oh yeah. I once had a Barack Obama, I'm not going to say which job it was. I once had a Barack Obama bobblehead placed on my desk at work. I thought you were going to say he signed something and it was going to be a Randy Jackson like sword situation. You know signature that is pretty noteworthy signature.
It's Randy Jackson. Oh, can you sign? I was just walking around my samurai sword and you're not going to not get Randy Jackson's signature on your samurai sword. What if I had like a run in with like a baseball like like Raleigh fingers. Today I ran into Raleigh fingers randomly and all I had on me was a Barack Obama bobblehead. Raleigh fingers to sign a Barack Obama bobblehead. That'd be great. We should ask that question more often to famous people like what is the most the craziest thing that you've signed?
Like I was doing Jill Berlin show this morning and she was talking about some of our past interviews like Matthew McConaughey and others like those people have been asked to sign some weird things 100%. No doubt. No doubt. So anyways, a Barack Obama bobblehead mysteriously disappeared from my desk. It could be assumed it was a coworker, but whatever it's thanks. Thanks Obama.
Darren. What's your unusual question? All right.
I'm, I'm looking to gain some, some practical advice out of this. I was gifted an iPad. Never owned an iPad.
Yeah. What do you use your iPad for? I do, I do, I do everything for this show off my iPad because I learned that I don't, I used to do a laptop and have a laptop, but it's so great just being able to carry this and not even have a bag. So I'll go to games with just this.
I'll do my show. I'll prep all on my iPad and my notepad that is essentially my third arm that I take with me everywhere I go. Yeah. Yeah.
I'm looking for, cause there's an in between, right? Like it's not a phone. It's not a laptop.
There's some in between functionality. You go to games a lot. So I, it's a great thing to bring to games that isn't you lugging a laptop and, and such. It's just a lot easier to carry. It's as easy to carry as this notepad now, but see the difference is I think this is fair to say I normally get more space than you at a game rather than just sort of like a, a, a writer general media spot if I'm calling a game, you know, I've got a table at my disposal, so the laptop's not a huge deal.
No, it's not. But also it uses the same charger. If you have an iPhone, your iPhone would, and you could just put that in your pocket. Like it's the, it's the, uh, convenience of bringing it wherever that is great, whether you're going to the beach or going to a game. Like it just, it's hard to explain like, Oh, it's the difference between that and a laptop. And I just think it's a lot more compact and easy.
And then when you travel, like going on planes and such, even more so pull that out to just like watch a movie or whatever, download it right on the iPad and boom. Yeah. Well not to mention you can draw on it. What?
Yeah. What do you can get? Like one of those little, little pins, the Apple pin. What would you draw? I don't know, like stick man or I doodle, no, I get it.
How old are you 12? We discussed this just doodling on your, I've had this iPad for years and never thought never thought never crossed my mind. And now it will. You're welcome. I mean, I have artists friends who use it and they have the stylists and the, you know, so that there's a practical function to that that I probably will not use, but thanks will be. You're welcome.
Just picture me in a game coloring. I brought this up yesterday, but I have a new wallet for the first time since I was 14. 14?
Yeah. My first wallet I ever had. It's in that trash can right in front of me here because I replaced it with this leather wallet I got from Cozumel Mexico while on the cruise. I just thought it was time, and I'm proud of myself that I didn't lose the wallet in 16, 17 years of having it. And now I have, so I guess the question is, how long have you had the wallet that's currently on you? That's a great question.
I've got a follow up, please. Which pocket do you put the wallet in? Because I see you've got the standard pick pocketers back, right? So you've got the standard bill fold. I'm a two fold guy. I've never not been. So literally I've had two wallets. I similarly had the same wallet my entire adult life until, oh my God, this is 11 years ago now. 10 years ago.
10 years ago, roughly. I went to Italy after I finished grad school. In Rome, I went to a leather shop and bought a new wallet. Now, I was a billfold guy from that point up to that point.
I got the single, it's like the cards go in on the sleeves on either side. You've got the middle pouch there for cash or whatever. So yeah, no tent, and I carry that wallet now. And now that I don't have the billfold, it's a front pocket situation.
Big fan of that. Front pocket wallet situation. That way, nothing in the back pockets, it's too far away. I don't like having stuff back there.
How do you do? See, I've got like the money clip wallet type deal, and I got this like four years ago for my birthday, and if you'll notice, it's a Rawlings baseball glove leather type situation there. All right. Now, the one thing I do not like about this wallet is if you've got like a stack, you've got a wad. You've got a fat stack? Okay.
Hashtag capitalism. If you've got a wad on you, you know, the magnet that goes through like the slither of cash there, it only holds so much. Man, you're just begging to have more stuff taken away from you. Yeah, exactly.
Fun story about the negotiating of getting this, by the way. They don't have prices on these stores in Mexico. Just people yelling at you to come into the store. Go into the store, go into the store. So I did, and I'm looking at their cowboy hats. I'm looking at their wallets. I'm like, you know, maybe I just get a wallet here. This will be my souvenir.
I don't really want cruise gear whatsoever. So the guy said, this really nice, $50. And I said, no, and he's like, well, how much are you trying to spend?
I said, and I just made it because I had $50 and I had more than that. I was like, I don't know, $25. And he's like, he looked at the watch or the wallet and goes, okay, $25. And it just, all I could think in my head was how low of the number could I have said and still... You'd be surprised. What was he going to be okay with getting out of that? Exactly. So I thought cutting the number in half was a good negotiating tactic because he went high with 50.
But then again, how high did he go? This is pretty nice leather. At least I thought. This could be fake. I don't know.
There's an amount too, where it's like, if you found out somehow that that's a $15 wallet, you're not super upset. Yeah. Shout out to this guy. This guy won.
He can win sometimes. Yeah. Right? That's how you negotiate. He partook in capitalism.
Darren Vaught, capitalist on the ACC baseball, et cetera, podcast. This better have been the best hit that you've done the entire week. Yeah.
For sure. Ding ding boys. School's in session. Let's go, man. You're on the drive with Josh Graham. At the movies with the WD 15 minutes from now, Men in Black, WD's movie for this week, Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, 1997, the last time Wake Forest won the ACC tournament was that year.
Who knows? Maybe 2025 going to be that year for Wake basketball next, but getting to football. Sometimes it's wise not to recreate the wheel. Sometimes there are recipes that just work and shouldn't really be messed with. And for the Carolina Panthers, every successful era in their franchise's history has had a similar recipe. Play hard-nosed defense and prioritize running the ball offensively. That's the recipe. And it seems the Panthers know that and it appears they're planning to return to that after the deviations we've seen of the last five years.
After all, who knows better about this recipe than general manager, Dan Morgan. Think about who he was as a player. He was a dog. Even though he says he is all about having fun and that's kind of, we have fun.
Don't be fooled by that. Hard-nosed, not blinking linebacker who's wanting to kill you out on a football field when he played for the Panthers. So one of the first things they were able to do, Dan Morgan and Dave Canales, keep a Giro Evaro in place who had a top five defense last year in total defense. That's a pretty important start to figuring things out, restructuring what this is going to look like. This is exactly what Dan Morgan wanted. A recipe where you're running the football offensively. His first press conference.
What did he say? We want dogs. Yeah, you want to have fun, but we want to have dogs.
That's what Dan Morgan wants. And one of the first names he brought up as an example of a dog in Panthers history, Jonathan Stewart. He was on the Super Bowl team. What was the primary emphasis of that Super Bowl team offensively? Give the ball to Steven Davis and Deshaun Foster with his sick, you know, tinted face mask that he had, face shield.
Pretty cool. Still the coolest sports photo I've ever seen is him diving into the end zone in Houston in that Super Bowl against the Patriots. The run that he had for a touchdown against the Eagles, the longest two-yard run in history. Running the ball and playing hard-nosed defense. That's what the Carolina Panthers have always been about.
Think about the last Super Bowl run. What was the biggest threat the Panthers had? Cam Newton, his feet. It wasn't Ted Ginn that defenses were most scared of. It wasn't rookie Devin Funches. With respect to Greg Olsen, it wasn't him either. It was Cam Newton's legs. It was running the ball defensively. Those dudes like Luke Geekley on the other side. That's what the Panthers need to go back to after these forays into, we're going to be a team that is pass-happy and that's why we're trading up to take this quarterback and all that.
No, no, no. Run the ball first, hard-nosed defense, pound the rock, keep pounding defensively. That's what the Panthers are.
And in turn, this is what's best. Not just for the Panthers' last top 10 pick in the number one overall pick, Bryce Young, a year ago, but their last two top 10 picks, Iki Iquanu is occluded in that. Obviously having a run game, having a sustainable run game is going to help your quarterback, help your young quarterback. That is obvious.
We don't need to break down why that is. But prioritizing running the ball best suits your left tackle too that you've invested so much in, who struggled a great deal last year because of the offensive fit or the lack thereof with Thomas Brown's offense and what Carolina wanted to do with Frank Reich. Iki Iquanu is going to thrive in what the Panthers want to do and this is something that Dave Canales has thought a lot about at every turn stressing, we're going to run the ball, we're going to run the ball. I'm going to be stubborn in how we're going to run the ball.
And here he was yesterday speaking about how that's going to help Iki. It's a great system for tackles. We run the ball. We throw play action passes, which engages as a run first, gives them a little chance to get their hands on a guy and be physical. We run boots, our keeper game where the line is really just selling a run the opposite way. And then in our pass game, the basis of it is to get the ball out quickly. I think Iki has been doing a great job.
What does he do best? He is a mauler and we're going to run the ball. Now, if you're cynical, you might think, OK, Josh, easier said than done. Just going to.
Cool. You're going to run the ball. You don't think other teams want to do that? Oh, hard nose defense.
This is really original stuff on your part, Josh. You don't think Matt Ruhl or Frank Reich thought of that, want to run the ball, want to play good defense. That's fair.
It's fair if you want to be a cynic like that. But it's not just empty words by a coach. This is not just coach speak. There are actions to back these things up. Look at the Panthers off season.
Every single move they've made has been with the offensive line and running the football in mind. The first day of free agency, bye bye Frankie Louvou, Brian Burns is traded. Those weren't great headlines for Carolina.
But what happened that day? They picked up not one, but two expensive offensive guards. We're going to run the ball and we need to have proven offensive guards to help us do that up front.
And Damian Lewis and Robert Hunt are those guys. They drafted in round two, not a pick, it's not a round that you're generally taking flyers on guys. They drafted a running back, Jonathan Brooks from Texas. Soon after that, they signed Rashad Penny. They still do have Miles Sanders on the roster. Many are convinced that he's going to be cut. I still probably think that's the case where you try to move them. Maybe that's a post June 1 distinction.
Looking at my watch, June 1 coming up this weekend. But who knows? Brooks coming off an ACL and Rashad Penny not having a great year last year. Maybe they want to keep Miles Sanders around and further emphasize, look at all these guys we have in the backfield. Got Rahim Blackshear, got Chuba Hubbard there as well in a contract year. We are committed to running the football and that's going to help Bryce and that's going to help Icky so that you get the most value out of those really high picks that you made. But also, and Dan Morgan understands this, the proven recipe for the Panthers throughout their history, the through line for it, stingy, hard-nosed defense and running the rock, foot running the ball being the priority offensively. And it seems Carolina is getting back to that and that's a good thing. W.D., you know what else is a good thing? Watching movies.
Yes. And you'll tell us about Men in Black in just a bit. Wake Forest is playing in the Greenville America Regional coming up this weekend. I venture to say, if you're one of those people, I want to hear from you, 336-777-1600. Are you going to Greenville America this weekend?
If you're one of those people, I'd love to hear from you. Wake isn't playing until tomorrow night so I venture to say a lot of people are probably driving up in the morning tomorrow if they plan to catch the afternoon game but probably maybe getting off half day at work you can get down to Greenville. It's only about a two hour drive, maybe a little bit less than three hours if memory serves correct. I went to East Carolina. I lived in Greenville America a couple of years as well post-graduation.
So I feel an obligation to the Triad, to people that might be Wake Forest fans venturing out to Greenville for the Regional this weekend to give some travel tips for heading to ECU. Let's start with the food. W.D., I do not discriminate when it comes to barbecue. I love Lexington style barbecue. I love it.
This isn't me pandering to Lexington because I'm here in the Triad. Love it. It's fantastic.
I travel quite a bit. My favorite food is barbecue. I love it and I say I'm not talking like burgers and hot dogs.
Maybe one of the most disappointing parts of my cruise this past week is we get to our first stop Coco Cay in Mexico and they said they have barbecue and I get there and it's just burgers and hot dogs. Oh, that's terrible. Not great. That's not what I'm talking about. You're from here. That's terrible.
Yes. We understand what barbecue is all about around here. So I've been traveling quite a bit with sports and I can tell you my favorite place to eat barbecue is Eastern North Carolina. My favorite type, again I don't discriminate, I love all types of barbecue all over the place. Don't get mad at me. I love mustard stuff in South Carolina.
They can bleep off. My personal favorite is Eastern style. I prefer chopped barbecue to pulled pork, but again I love both. And the best barbecue joint I've ever been to in my life, I feel like I can say what it is because, you know, we're not doing advertising in Greenville, North Carolina here, Greenville America. Sam Jones barbecue. So if you're traveling to Greenville, America this weekend or any weekend, you're gonna have to visit Sam Jones barbecue, but this there's, I'm going to add an addendum on that though.
That's about 10 minutes away from the stadiums and campus and such in a sub area of Greenville called Winterville, North Carolina. If you venture out another 15 minutes into the sticks beyond there, the original place that then became Sam Jones barbecue called Skylight Inn exists in a place called Aiden, North Carolina. This is where the New York Times has flown to and it's the same barbecue recipe that they have. It's chopped barbecue. It's more hole in the wall-ish to the point where you order food, W.D. They only take cash and they have right next to the cashier, they have like a cleaver in case you're trying to take any of the money or take any of the change that's sitting there. They have a cleaver for you.
Good for them. But Sam Jones barbecue, that is the spot to go to. The trendier place that you hear people refer to on SportsCenter and others. Let's go to B's. All that Parkers.
It's fine. Oh, I love Parkers. I love all of it. I do. I eat all of it.
I have several times. Sam Jones barbecue. That is the best spot and they also have a store in Raleigh, which is something I learned in recent years. They've since expanded. Get into the drinks. You've got to go to SupDogs.
You just do. It's required. It is.
It is. It might be the best college bar in America. According to Barstool, two or three years in a row, it won the best college bar in America. And real quickly, if you are a sports fan, you'll love this place because in addition to getting their crushes, if you're from the DMV, you know what crushes are.
Orange Crush, Grapefruit Crush, they're fantastic. The guy who started that place is a guy named Derek Oliverio. I didn't get to know Derek because a few years after he opened SupDogs, he died in a housefire trying to save one of his dogs.
So we didn't know what was going to happen to SupDogs. In comes his brother, Brett Oliverio, who is a friend of mine. He had no restaurant experience in his life. He lived in Washington, D.C. He was the producer of perhaps the most popular sports talk show in D.C. and decided, you know what, my brother had a dream to start this restaurant, I'm going to try and step in and run the restaurant. And his dream was to expand it.
So what did he do? After having a ton of success in Greenville and it being the college bar, they expanded the Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, which is really cool. And it's an awesome place.
It's an awesome family. So those are the two places I have for you. If you want to get some drinks, get yourself a crush from SupDogs. And if you want to get some food, BBQ specifically, everybody's going to tell you, oh, parkers, bees, whatever.
Take it from a guy who went to school there and lived there a few years after that. Sam Jones BBQ is the spot. And oh yeah, plan for rain. Oh, but Josh, the weather forecast looks perfect.
No, no, no, no, no. You don't know Greenville like I know Greenville, friends, especially during regionals. You're going to want to pack that poncho.
Well, and as somebody who has played multiple baseball tournaments out that way, I can attest to that we had many, many delays. Pack the poncho. Will Dalton's movie this week was Men in Black and W.D.
We're not hosting an intergalactic kegger down here. At the Movies with the W.D. next. At the Movies with the W.D. Men in Black 1997, W.D.
's movie for this week. But before we get to that movie, there are live baseball scores to get to right now. We'll get the college baseball back to that 15 minutes from now.
But live action, Tracey! No Orioles today. They just took two out of three against the Red Sox. No big deal. They didn't get all of them against one of the worst teams in the league.
Couldn't do that. Gunnar Henderson had a grand slam. He's tied for the big league lead in home runs.
He's 22 years old, man, 18 home runs. Your Yankees play at 938 again the night. They almost blew it for a second consecutive night. Blew it in the eighth, and I enjoyed that two nights ago.
Last night, I did not enjoy watching Who's Your Closer again? Oh. 35? Holmes. Holmes, yeah. One of the best... Do I know more about your team than you do? No.
You don't. Just checking. He's one of the best closers in baseball. What's his first name? I don't know. Chris? Clay. Oh. I had the first letter, right? Great job on your part.
Thank you. It's the ninth inning. They're up a run. Luis Hill's been killing it this year.
Great on the mound. And they get the first two guys on, first and second. Base it and then a walk. No outs.
What do you do in that situation? You're down a run. No outs. Runners at first and second.
What do you do? You bunt. You bunt, right? Everybody knows that. Not Ron Washington and the Angels.
You're Dad's boy. They hit a next pitch, ground ball to second base, ready-made double play. And then they grounded out the third base to end the game.
I was pretty upset. Clay Holmes. At around 1130 at night.
The man. So right now, so they play tonight at 938. The Atlanta Braves. How about that, Schellenbach's major league debut last night, number three pitcher in their system.
Looked really good last night. 720 first pitch tonight against the Washington Nationals. You got the Brewers up 6-4 on the Cubs right now. Craig Council, now the manager of the Cubs, going up against his former team for the first time in Milwaukee. This series, he was booed by Milwaukee fans.
Not a huge shock there. You have the Twins up 7-4 on the Kansas City Royals, who are a lot of fun. The Oakland A's a lot of fun. They're in the top of the tenth right now. I might need to turn this game on.
In Tampa, so just a few series to watch, and then a rematch of a post-season series last year between Houston and Seattle. That'll start in the next half hour. Let's go to the movies with the W.D. Unless you're talking about Star Wars, movies aren't exactly Will's thing, but that's about to change because Josh can't stand it anymore. This is At the Movies with Will Dalton. I wasn't kidding about turning on this game.
Oh yeah, he's doing that right now. That looks like a really good game between good teams. At the Movies with the W.D., what you liked, what you didn't like. Rotten Tomatoes score best quote.
I'll put it in your court. You told me that you watched Men in Black 2 before watching Men in Black? Yeah, I think it was on TNT one day and I caught it on. Oh, so this wasn't an accident where you meant to watch Men in Black 1 and Men in Black 2 was on.
No, it was just on TBS or TNT and I said, hey, I'm gonna watch this. What did you like about Men in Black? I think the gadgets. The gadgets are really cool.
Guns, all that stuff. Oh yeah, and I remember as a kid, obviously not watching the movies but knowing they were coming out. I guess this was around the time that the second one was coming out because this was 1997. I remember all the Happy Meals had the little Men in Black toys. What's the thing? They forget the memory?
Yeah, it's not a tranquilizer. We all know it's the flashy thing. Yeah, like they had a little one of those in the Wendy's Happy Meals, so that was fun, but no, it's the gadgets for me. Also when they go to the command center for the first time and they suit up for the first time and kind of like wiping his identity, I thought that was very interesting all the way down to his fingerprints. For me, rewatching this, because I hadn't seen this since I was a kid, I really liked Tommy Lee Jones. Oh yeah, he's great. I started thinking about Tommy Lee Jones in the context of, well, for as charismatic as 90s Will Smith is, Tommy Lee Jones went toe to toe with him in Charisma. He's so likable.
Yeah. Who dislikes Tommy Lee Jones? And I started thinking, he's getting older, what movie is he going to be most remembered for? Because I think in terms of box office, it's probably the Men in Black series.
He has a series. But in terms of the quality of movie, the fugitive comes to mind, I don't care. No Country for Old Men and that iconic ending to that Coen brothers movie. I double Jeopardy with Ashley Judd's a personal favorite of mine, but this is probably up there when people were talking about Tommy Lee Jones roles.
What didn't you like? So when Beatrice didn't die, like she didn't die whenever the monster overtook that... You wanted the attractive, romantic lead to die in the movie? No, I'm talking about, no, I didn't want her to die, but I'm talking about when that jerk of a farmer got overtaken by the monster.
Yeah. No, you're talking about the redhead, the wife. Is that not Beatrice? It might be, I just don't know her name. She doesn't have a huge role in this movie. It is Beatrice, because the farmer's like, shut up, Beatrice. Yeah, you scared me for a second. But like, no, because the monster overtook his body, and then she faints and passes out.
He didn't kill her, like just left her there, just so she could feed information to the Men in Black? Yeah, I guess that is... What's up with that? This is a tough one for me, because I'm not a sci-fi guy. I'm just not. I am. I get it.
So let's start there. We're talking about what I don't like. This is just not my bag.
Not my bag, baby. And it bums me out. It bummed me out watching Will Smith in this movie, and this is why. He clearly had a sci-fi tick with I Am Legend, I, Robot, a movie that he's done in the last ten years, I forget what it was called, Sunlight, or something like that that he thought was gonna take off. He did the series of these things. I just wish... Hancock.
Yeah, Hancock. I just wish... You're listening to the CBS... That in the mid-90s, you had these comments, Leo DiCaprio, Will Smith. I wish that Will Smith would have taken a similar path as Leo DiCaprio did, and care more about the roles and the work, because I do think he's a tremendous actor.
We saw it in King Richard, where he won the Oscar, but even then, it's kind of disappointing because he punched Chris Rock, or slapped Chris Rock the night that he won, and that turned out to take away from that award, ban from the Oscars in the next handful of years. We saw how good of an actor he could be in Ali, for example. His choices just bum me out. It bums me out that the career he's chosen is, I'm gonna try to make movies that just blow up the box office to try to make as much money as possible without prioritizing working with great directors and choosing great roles. Perfect example, speaking of Leo, Will Smith was first offered Jamie Foxx's role in Django Unchained, and Will Smith didn't want to take chances. That's kind of what I'm getting at here.
He turned it down, and Jamie Foxx had that role, but I can't help but wonder how cool that movie would have been if it was a Will Smith movie. You don't know because you haven't seen Django, I'm sure. Nope. We've had it on the poll a couple of times, though. Best quote. You see this?
NYPD means I will knock your punk ass down. There's a long one about, you know, it wasn't until 500 years ago that people learned that the earth wasn't flat. What do you think they'll learn tomorrow if they learn that aliens exist and all that? I'm not gonna read the long quote, but Elvis isn't dead, he just went home.
The lady has the cat dropped off. I hate the living. It's pretty good.
You know the difference between me and you? I make this look good. That was my other one that I chose.
Those are some of the ones that stand out. Okay, Rotten Tomatoes score for Men in Black, 97. I'm gonna go high on this, I'm gonna say a 92. 81. Oh!
That's been At the Movies with the W.D. Perhaps we can get to story time with W.D., why he was out yesterday in just a few minutes, because right now, very excited about this, we're being joined by Wake Forest associate head coach Bill Salento, who is in Greenville, America right now. You've got the regional at East Carolina set to begin. Wake Forest's game is in the evening tomorrow, game one against VCU.
Coach, the time's appreciated. Before we get to baseball, let's start with the important stuff. What's on the menu for the meal the day before the start of regionals? Because as good as Eastern North Carolina barbecue is, I doubt that's the best food for performance tomorrow. Well there's no doubt, so the good news when you're in my shoes is, you know, coaches don't have to really eat what the player's got a fuel body with, so I might sneak down to Parker's Barbecue, I've heard a little bit about it, so I might sneak down there, but we'll have a catered meal with a little bit cleaner, some chickens, some green beans, etc.
to get our guys ready. Okay. Parker's Barbecue is really good.
See, here's what you don't know about me. I went to East Carolina, I lived in Greenville for a few years after that, after graduating, and the spot that everybody knows is Parker's and B's Barbecue. I was telling listeners earlier, Sam Jones Barbecue, I travel a lot of places and I love barbecue, it's my favorite meal.
That's the best plate of barbecue I've ever had in my life. Sam Jones Barbecue is the name. I assume you're staying like in the Hilton or somewhere on Greenville Boulevard, something like that. It's probably about 10 minutes from where your hotel's at. Sam Jones Barbecue is the spot. I'm in today. I decided yesterday that I was, I had a little salmon at the Outback last night, I decided today is, I'm having barbecue, so Sam Jones, I'm in, we're right at the Hilton, you got that right.
Boom. See, I know the spot's pretty well over there. There you go, Sam Jones Barbecue, you're welcome. Getting to baseball, even though your specialty is infielders and hitters, I do want to ask about the behind-the-scenes on pitching decisions. Saving Chase Burns for Saturday, that makes a ton of sense. We saw that was kind of the strategy with Rhett Louder a year ago.
It did surprise me to see Josh Hartle being saved for the third game and starting, going a little bit bullpen path tomorrow. What went into that? How do you guys arrive at a decision as a staff? Yeah, so obviously, Walt and Moose and kind of the whole staff got together, I think it was more of a matchup-based decision. When you look at East Carolina, they're super left-handed offensively.
When you look at VCU, it's not quite as left-handed heavy. I think we weighed it pretty good and I think that was the conclusion they came to. The one thing you know when you kind of pitch off in a way, when you save your ace for Saturday is you're going to use your bullpen bullets. So we're going to have a bullpen locked and ready to rock and that was kind of our thinking behind it.
I wish I could tell you I was the genius behind it, but our staff, Coach Moose, we kind of leave that to Moose and Coach Walter. Experience in all types of sports is something talked about as being an advantage for teams when you get to the postseason. Is that overrated, underrated, properly rated when you talk about where your team was a year ago and how many of those guys, say like Nick Kurtz, who have been in those spots, how it can help this team tomorrow?
I think it's super important. Now the one thing you got to know about us, we got a lot of new guys, right? We can't, I think we spent part of our season this year and living in last year and trying to be what we were last year and I think every group has their own identity, but I think experience in these scenarios is hugely important. I think being in a conference like the ACC, you get prepared for this. I think the game against North Carolina the other night when you play in a packed house, those are all environments that lend to what we're going to see on Saturday night should we be able to get there. We got to play VCU first though. Bill Cilinto is with us here, Wake Forest associate head coach. It is weird that you guys are playing at night and the host is playing during the day.
I can go ahead and confirm this for you. I haven't looked at the weather forecast, but I can guarantee you there's going to be rain. It's going to happen because I've been to about four or five regionals in Greenville America and I could tell you every single one of them has been upended by rain at some point during it. I hope I'm wrong, but if it happens, coach, do you have Rhett Louder or Steve Forbes in the Roadex to potentially help you in that spot as you did a year ago?
There is no doubt. That's my role in this thing. My role in this thing is when something like that happens, we're going to win the rain delay.
Our goal in this thing is we're going to practice hard and then we're going to play loose. We got to have those guys rolling. The great news is the weather here is supposed to be phenomenal this weekend, so we'll hope that nothing pops up. Have you texted Steve Forbes to say, are you available for FaceTime if necessary? Not yet, but it's coming. Okay.
Good to know. Sam Jones Barbecue texted Steve Forbes. We're creating an agenda for Bill Cilento here, who's joining us, the Wake Forest associate head coach. It is interesting what you said, kind of living like trying to be like last year's team and every team has an identity. What do you view as being a turning point from it being falling short of trying to be something you're not with all the different players that are in place to this team finding its identity and being a pretty damn good team going into the tournament? Yeah, for sure.
I mean, I think you need to struggle a little bit. We hit that. I mean, April was a tough month for us with five home games in the entire month of April.
That's a challenge for any team, whether you're old, new, or anything in between. So I think April hit that for us. The great thing when you play on the road a lot is you're together a lot.
We're in hotels, we're together, spend a lot of time at night. So I think one of the things that the month of April did was bring us closer together. So for me, it was that entire month and kind of how it went. I think it brought us together.
It made us understand who everybody is and what the roles in this thing. I think it allows us to truly turn the page on last year, and it's bode well. I think we've played better, much better down the stretch here. I think we're in position. We had two great practices here in the last couple days. I think we're in position to play our best baseball when it matters the most. Let me close with perhaps the most important thing.
Bill Cilento is joining us, Wake associate head coach. Where is your hometown? So I'm from a place called Brookville, Maryland.
Right outside of DC. I grew up actually in Crofton, which is kind of over towards Annapolis, Maryland, and then finished my high school years in Montgomery County, Maryland. Even though we're streaming video right now, YouTube, Twitch, X, in addition to being across radio stations across the Piedmont, you can't see me right now, but I'm wearing an Orioles cap right now. Are you a Baltimore Orioles fan? I am actually what they would call a diehard fan.
And look, while we're on this- Let's go! What can you do to help this spectrum lockout of the Orioles game? It wears me out. I drop a lot of money, Bill Cilento, on a VPN so that way people think that the internet providers think I'm in Los Angeles, so that way I can then buy the MLB package in order to stream their games. But it doesn't make a lot of sense that I'm on a boat, I'm on a cruise last week, and it's a lot easier for me to get the Orioles on a cruise soaring somewhere near Mexico than it is to get the Orioles in North Carolina. But yesterday I was watching Gunnar Henderson hit the Grand Slam.
I've maybe missed two or three, maybe four games the entire season so far. So if you want to talk diehard Orioles fan, I'm right here for you. So I grew up at Camden Yards, and first of all, the youth movement in Baltimore, there's nothing that you get more excited about how good the youth, between Gunnar Henderson and Adlai Russellman, and some of the pitching prospects they have, it's exciting times for Baltimore. It's been a little bit... I was a diehard Buck Showalter guy, and obviously since Buck left, it's taken a little bit, but the future is really bright. Between barbecue recommendations and now Orioles stuff, did we just become best friends? We might have.
Bill Cilento. I'm in. I might be stealing your VPN though. I might have to figure that out. Boom. You know what?
You have... I'll give you my phone number now. You'll have my phone number. Text me how the Sam Jones barbecue is, and if I can help you get Orioles baseball, we can figure this out. Bill Cilento, get a win this weekend.
Or more specifically, get three or four wins this weekend, so then next week we could be talking about Super Regionals. Best of luck. I'm in on that. I appreciate it very much. We appreciate you, Bill Cilento, Wake associate head coach joining us.
OKWD, the floor is yours. Why weren't you here yesterday? You weren't playing hooky. I said yesterday you were playing hooky to watch Men in Black. Oh, did you do that? I did. Oh, I wasn't doing that.
You apparently watched multiple Men in Black movies. That's great. Why weren't you here? So before work yesterday, I stopped by my storage unit because I sold a couple of things on eBay.
Hashtag Capitalist. That's exactly right. And I get there and I notice my lock on my unit is open already. I'm like, I didn't leave it like that. And then I look closer at the lock and I notice like there's like claw marks in it. Like somebody like, you know, beat it off or something like that.
Like Jimmy Khan and Thief, which I'm sure means nothing to you. Sure, sure. Just like that. And so once I saw those claw marks on my lock, I kind of, I was like, I expected to open it and just everything be gone. Luckily that wasn't the case, but I did open it and a good amount of things were missing. And then you had just stuff thrown over to one side.
Like I had a mini fridge in there that was like on top of itself. Like so long story short, what happened is some people came in at about for about three hours Monday night and they hit mine and like six other units. And do you think we were going to find who these people are? Well they, so they think they know who it is because they got surveillance footage of it. Probably watching the show right now.
Hey, how's it going? But it's basically somebody who bought a unit, the smallest one you could get. So it's one of those indoor ones. Yeah, which was, which made this even more surprising, but that's easier to get busted you would think. Potentially. So if somebody just bought a tiny unit, smallest one you could get and they waited and they planned it out and it was very strategic and they got a U-Haul and everything and you know, they did their thing. What was the most expensive thing taken? So I had a, an arcade game in there.
Like you know, there's a huge one. Yeah. So my buddy got me an NFL blitz arcade game for Christmas several years ago because we both love that game. And we, we were in Costco ironically enough.
That's what I'm saying. I've seen those in Costco. Do you have one of those? You had one of those? He decided to get me one for Christmas one year just cause he was... Those things cost about like four or five hundred bucks?
They do, but he, he got me one for Christmas and I had it in there and yeah, it's not in there anymore. It's not. You got blitzed. I got blitzed. Tough.
Well, sorry to hear that, but hey, insurance. Gotta have it. Gotta have it. Gotta have it.
