Caldwell Now Has Something To Show
The Deacons' bowl appearance could act as a springboard for the future.
Dec. 14, 1999
By Sam Walker
Wake Forest's trip to the Aloha Bowl has been seven years in the
making for Coach Jim Caldwell. Caldwell has been at the helm of
the Wake Forest football program since December of 1992, and in
his seventh season the Demon Deacons earned him his first winning
season as their head coach and a coveted trip to Hawaii for a
matchup against Arizona State of the Pac-10.
Caldwell came to Wake Forest with a plan to build the football
program player by player and day by day. He had participated as
part of six bowl teams at Penn State as an assistant coach, and
he possesses a national championship ring from the 1986 season.
Caldwell knew it would take time and patience in order to produce
a winning team. He didn't necessarily want it to take seven years
before enjoying the spoils that go with a bowl game. Many of his
players felt the same.
"This has been an extremely long time coming," senior safety
DaLawn Parrish said. "We've worked hard to get to where we are
and now we've finally gotten Coach Caldwell over the hump, and
I'm just proud of our accomplishment. We just want to represent
our university to the best of our abilities."
During those six seasons it wasn't as if Wake Forest wasn't
making progress under the direction of "Gentleman" Jim. The
Deacons won back-to-back nationally televised games on ESPN in
1997 (N.C. State) and 1998 (Navy) and have twice won in Clemson's
infamous Death Valley. Wake Forest defeated defending Big-10
champions Northwestern in 1996 and then beat the Wildcats again
in 1997. But Wake Forest never put together a complete season for
one reason or another, and Caldwell's 17-49 record weighed rather
heavily on the negative side of the scales of college football
judgement.
"In this profession you can never win too soon," Caldwell said.
"We were anticipating having it sooner, but we could feel
ourselves heading in the right direction, and there was positive
improvement."
There had been indications two seasons ago that Wake Forest was
headed in the right direction when the Deacons went 5-6 overall
and 3-5 in the ACC led by a defense that was ranked 10th
nationally against the run. But in 1998, Air Force blanked Wake
Forest 42-0 in the season opener, and a myriad of injuries to a
host of key players led to a 3-8 mark in 1998.
In 1999 Wake Forest had something it hadn't had in the past -
experience. The Deacons began the season with 26 seniors who came
to Wake Forest with one goal - to return a winning football team
to Winston-Salem.
"This particular group of guys we've come to depend upon have
always said that one day they would get to this point, and
they've done that," Caldwell said. "They're such a large group,
and that's one reason why we've experienced the success we have -
because they have stayed focused. They weren't a bunch of guys
who would doubt. We've benefited greatly from this group of
seniors."
Wake opened the season with an impressive 34-15 victory over Army
and won three of its first four games. The quick start set up a
key home contest on Oct. 9 against Maryland. Wake Forest
dominated the game until the fourth quarter when Calvin McCall
hit running back Lamont Jordan with an improvised 70-yard
touchdown pass on a broken play to tie the game at 14. Brian
Kopka hit a 19-yard field goal with 3:25 left to lift Maryland
over Wake Forest 17-14.
The Deacons suffered a similar fate against Clemson. Wake Forest
had held Clemson in check for three quarters, but the offense
only produced three points. Clemson's Brandon Streeter replaced
starting quarterback Woodrow Dantzler in the fourth quarter and
directed the game's only touchdown drive in a 12-3 Clemson
victory.
By Nov. 13 the Deacons had captured two more victories over the
University of Alabama-Birmingham (47-3) and North Carolina
(19-3). However, Wake Forest missed an opportunity to guarantee
itself a winning season against an injury-plagued Duke team.
Duke
scored a school-record 34 points in the first quarter, and Wake
Forest couldn't overcome its poor start in a 48-35 loss.
Wake Forest entered its final game at 5-5 and had to defeat
14th-ranked Georgia Tech to become bowl eligible. Morgan Kane
rushed for 224 yards, and Wake Forest did what many thought it
could not by building a 20-0 halftime lead and holding off the
Yellow Jackets for a 26-23 victory. The win was the Deacons'
second of the season over a top-25 team, and losses by Maryland
and N.C. State on the same day (Nov. 20) set up Wake's berth to
the Aloha Bowl as the ACC's fifth-place team.
"In this conference pretty much everybody can play with
everybody," sophomore center Vince Azzolina said. "It was great
to beat a team like that on our home field and see our fans jump
around. It was a huge win for the program. To get to where we are
now - there's nothing like it in the world. We wanted to do this
and now it's just a matter of going to Hawaii.
"This is a place we always felt we should be at my first two
years here," Azzolina said. "We've struggled a little bit, but we
always felt we should've been playing in the post-season. This
year it's finally sweet to be practicing in December."
"Personally this is very gratifying," Parrish said. "Just to be
with 20 some odd seniors that came here with me. I'm disappointed
that Desmond Clark (who became the ACC's all-time leading
receiver as part of Wake's 1998 team) isn't with us here now.
He's at the next level, but he came in with us and I'm sure he's
with us in spirit. This is unbelievable. I couldn't feel it
during the Georgia Tech game, but the next morning I felt the
impact of it. I was very emotional about it and cried the next
morning. I think that's the biggest game we've won, but I don't
think it's the best we've played. It's definitely one of the
biggest here in my career."
For the 26 seniors who had persevered through injuries and have
enjoyed just 11 victories in the past three seasons, Wake's berth
into the Aloha Bowl serves as a just reward for perseverence.
"I think this is a stepping stone," Parrish said. "Unfortunately
we could've done better, but it's a beginning. This is a building
block for the younger players just to know what it feels like to
get here."
For Caldwell, this trip to the Aloha Bowl has been seven years in
the making. For senior linebacker Kelvin Moses, this trip is six
years in the making. Moses is still at Wake Forest because the
NCAA awarded him a second medical redshirt because of a serious
knee injury. Senior linebacker Dustin Lyman, who was named to the
first team All-ACC this year, survived two injuries to the ACL in
his left knee to help Wake Forest turn the corner.
"When you look at the season as a whole going into the Georgia
Tech game it was probably a little disappointing," Lyman said.
"But after coming out of the final game after beating Georgia
Tech I really wouldn't have wanted it any other way because the
way it happened was a storybook ending. This makes us a
Cinderella team, even though I don't think we deserve that label
because we're a lot better than 6-5. But with all the emotion and
the way I feel right now I wouldn't trade it for anything.
"I wouldn't feel any better if we were 8-3 and had lost to
Georgia Tech. I feel better beating them, going 6-5, and going to
the Aloha Bowl. Closing out my career beating the number 14 team
in the nation in a game we weren't supposed to win is just
storybook material."
Neither Parrish nor Caldwell seemed satisfied with a 6-5 mark or
where the Wake Forest football program is at this time. But at
the same time they both indicated that this season's results are
a major step in the right direction. A victory over Arizona State
in the Aloha Bowl would be another large step.
"It gives me a sense of accomplishment, but this is certainly not
where we're going to be in the future," Caldwell said. "I think
this is a springboard for us. We've put together a good solid
platform and we can see the improvement in our program. And the
thing you have to do is demonstrate it outside our program with
more wins than losses and get involved in a bowl game, so that's
what that has done for us. It gives us something to show the kind
of work that has been going on in this program and gives us
something to get excited about in the future."
