Desrosiers Sticking with Wake
The Boston Herald reported on Monday that Carson Desrosiers met with new Wake Forest head coach Jeff Bzdelik on Sunday and reaffirmed his commitment to the ACC school following the meeting.
Desrosiers was one of five players recruited by former head coach Dino Gaudio who signed during the fall signing period. Four of those five players, Desrosiers included, were top 100 ranked players in the country.
Since assuming the head coaching duties last week, Bzdelik’s first order of business has been to re-recruit the five members of Gaudio’s highly regarded class. Desrosiers is the first to reaffirm his commitment.
Prior to Wake Forest Bzdelik served as the head coach at Colorado, Air Force, and the Denver Nuggets. At all of those stops he has utilized the Princeton style offense, which is ideally suited for Desrosiers perimeter oriented game.
While Desrosiers understandably wavered when Gaudio was unexpectedly fired, this coaching change may actually prove to be a blessing in disguise for the Central Catholic star.
The Princeton offense is one which depends on finding highly skilled players with high basketball I.Q.’s. Finding big men to match that description is even more critical because they are so rare, but that is exactly what Desrosiers is. At six-foot-eleven, he shoots consistently to the three-point line, has a perfected shot fake, handles efficiently within the offense, and is a good passer from a variety of different spots on the floor.
The biggest knock on Desrosiers is that he might not have the physical strength to bang on the block right away in a conference like the ACC, but Bzdelik’s system might help him to compensate on the defensive end as well as his teams have typically played a good deal of 1-3-1 zone, which is common for Princeton style teams, where Desrosiers wouldn’t be defending the post as much as he would be using his length and mobility on the wing.
In fact, prior to committing to Gaudio and Wake Forest originally in the fall, one of Desrosiers’ final choices was Arizona State were their head coach Herb Sendek utilizes a system which is very similar to Bzdelik’s.
Ultimately, the fact that Dino Gaudio was fired at Wake Forest after making the NCAA tournament in two of his three seasons on the job was a terrible injustice in our opinion, but as far as Carson Desrosiers is concerned it might work out just fine.
Carson Desrosiers