The schedule for the ACC tournament has just been released. Wake Forest's games are:

Wednesday - vs. Pitt - 3 p.m.
Friday - vs. UNC - 7 p.m.

Wake Forest has to win both to advance -- people think the format is more complicated than it is, since the top 4 seeds can go 1-1 and advance, non-top-4 seeds have to go 2-0.

I'd almost guarantee that Wake Forest will have David Falco Jr. start the Pitt game, with bullpen to follow. And then in primetime, it'll be Chase Burns against the top seed in the league -- and the only one that put a loss on his record this season. That'll be must-see TV. If WF wins both games, it has Josh Hartle lined up on normal rest for a semifinal game.

Both games will be shown on ACC Network and the time element is subject to change, obviously, as there's one game before the Wed. game and two games before the Thur. game. And, ya know, weather.

It's 12:24 p.m. Tuesday and I have no idea how today's game against Liberty hasn't been cancelled yet ... but as of now, it's still going to be played.

As a programming note, I won't be going out there tonight if there is a game.

But I do have a story today: On Antonio Morales and the defensive improvements he made to get into the lineup.

As an additional programming note, the only game this weekend I'll be able to get to is the series finale at N.C. State. It's my wife's birthday on Thursday, and then I'm going to hit the UNC-Duke game on Friday night as I divvy up responsibilities.

Going to pin this thread to (attempt to) keep track of all developments -- visits, offers, pending commits -- on the basketball recruiting front.

To start things off:

Wake Forest doesn't a commit in the 2023 class yet and that should be alarming to absolutely nobody. If you read the State of the Program breakdown of recruiting (linked here), you know the changing landscape of recruiting and Steve Forbes' thoughts on the situation.

Forbes isn't going to panic and take players just to take players. That is, bluntly, one of the reasons he's coaching at Wake Forest and Danny Manning isn't. Forbes looks for who fits in his system, at the school, and who can play in the ACC ... and he's not lowering the basket to squeeze players into that criteria. If he can't get recruits that fit, he's going to scour the portal -- which has proved quite fruitful (invest in Andrew Carr, Ty Appleby and Jao Ituka stock now).

You've also got to note that Wake Forest -- at least right now -- doesn't line up to be in need of a large recruiting class entering next season. Daivien Williamson and Appleby are the only players who are out of eligibility after this season, and there's an open scholarship. So that's 3 current vacancies to account for in the 2023-24 season. Will that number stay at 3? Unlikely. Can Forbes go out and oversign? Well, yes, but only if he plans on running off current members of the team.

Frankly, I don't see that last part happening, though.

Per his father, Fla. TE Tae'Shaun Gelsey will be in town in mid-June for his official visit, beginning June 14. Florida is the only trip on the books scheduled beforehand

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Going to thread together summer football content here. So, it'll be preview stuff throughout the summer -- some lists, predictions, My Takes, etc.

One programming note to get out of the way now: I'm not going to ACC media days in Charlotte this year. I have a family vacation scheduled and honestly, the event has become such a TV-focused one that I don't feel like I'm missing out on too much. Maybe I'll watch the press conference stuff when WF takes the podium -- but I'm not going to bend over backward to cover it.

One note off the spring game: I missed that Wake Forest announced captains that morning. They are: Taylor Morin, DeVonte Gordon, Luke Petitbon, Jasheen Davis, Kevin Pointer and Nick Andersen. All of them make sense to me. The only real takeaway I have is that it'll be the first year since 2019 that a QB isn't a captain. No surprise there and it's obvious why; just interesting to take stock of.

Going to try to handle this in the same way as the football thread ...

Starting with: Damari Monsanto's exit after a rollercoaster of 3 years.

Recap of last night's 24-7 win over N.C. A&T.

Programming note: I'll be at the Friday night and Sunday games against Clemson with full stories to follow. I'm not going to make the Saturday game because I'm going to the Josh Level Classic, a HS basketball all-star game, in Greensboro. I know I'll have a story off of it about Juke Harris; probably will find some other angles while I'm there.

As a reminder: Weekend rotation is now Chase Burns-David Falco Jr.-Josh Hartle. Michael Massey will be unavailable this weekend.

We'll start this thread with Wake's first commit of the class:

Locklan Hewlett, a QB from St. Augustine, Fla.

Running down some quick takeaways:

- Always good to get the first commit of a class going into their junior season.
- This *should* do it for QBs in the class but there's always the chance Wake adds another.
- It's an extensive offer list that includes Miami, Texas A&M, Rutgers and many others.

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So, here's the meat of the weekend: Recap of Sunday's doubleheader sweep of Western Carolina.

Something of a programming note/update moving forward: I'd like to get a My Take done tomorrow on where this team stands. Have some ideas percolating and frankly, I'm bored with waiting on basketball news that may or may not happen and an interview with Omaha Biliew that may or may not happen.

And then probably the most important thing I learned this weekend: Michael Massey is seeing a back specialist tomorrow (Monday). There is fear that he has a season-ending injury. Obviously he hasn't been "right" all season, as he was entering as a starter and has thrown over 70 pitches twice in 10 starts. I'm reminded of a quote from Tom Walter after his second or third start of the season that they were just going to be week-to-week with him, that sometimes he was going to be good, other times they'd be lucky to get 3-4 innings from him.

Pending how the appointment goes, the thought is that next weekend against Clemson, it'll be Burns-Falco-Hartle. Here was the full exchange with Walter about Massey today:

"Really happy with Falco, that looks like we’re going to stick with that against Clemson, as well. We’ll start Ben Shenosky on Wednesday."

How negative is the prognosis on Michael Massey?

"We won’t know more until tomorrow, he’s meeting with a specialist tomorrow to find out. There’s certainly a chance it’s a season-ender."

Is it his back?

"It’s his back, yeah. We thought it was his hamstring, but it turns out he’s got a little something going on with his back, so we’ll get him to a specialist."

Programming note of sorts on this week's baseball action:

I'll be headed to Elon for tonight's game; always good to check in with the alma mater, even if I don't recognize much of the campus less than 15 years after graduating.

And then I'll have weekend recap coverage of Wake's series at ND. Planning on getting a short story or two up in between tonight's game and the start of the series in South Bend.

Something of a programming note to get things started ...

Wake's first of 15 spring football practices is tomorrow morning. In the interest of full transparency, I'd lost track of the days and had no idea we had already reached this point until I saw Essex's tweet about covering it.

So, you won't see a practice report here tomorrow. Or for the rest of the week. I'm back on the road for the NCAA tournament (with Duke, if that's not clear). When they figure out cloning or teleportation, I'll be really good at handling this job.

While I'm on the subject ... the spring reports are going to be a bit different this season. I'm aiming toward more feature-type stories, less on the minutiae of which second-year receiver caught three passes during a 2-minute drill. I always say that something like 50% of the stories you write in the spring don't mean anything by the time fall camp starts -- so this is kind of my attempt to prioritize a little better and write more interesting stories.

Thread for this weekend's series against FSU (should've started this before the series opener but ... my bad).

Story off of tonight's game.

Programming note: Was planning on going back Sunday, alas and alack. I have doubleheader spring game duty tomorrow, so I'll have a remote recap of Wake's doubleheader.

I cancelled my season ticket renewal for football today. We have had tickets for over 20 years, but the NIL and Portal finally killed it for me. I will not renew basketball either. I will follow the Deacs, but more likely to go to see my Daughter;s DII alma mater on occasion, when feeling the need for live football or basketball.

Always feels like I'm dialed in to the preseason and early-season baseball coverage ... and it slacks off when basketball season hits tournament time.

So I wanted to thread together some links over the past couple of weeks as I've finished basketball season -- the games, at least, since the portal spins forward -- and dove into baseball (and spring football) season.

Feature on Jack Winnay.

Story on Wake's throttling of Coastal Carolina.

Weekend recap on Wake's sweep at VT.

I won't be in Boston this weekend, so it'll be a weekend recap of Wake's games up there. I'll have it updated every day as quickly as I can -- have a busy weekend, though.

And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention: The Orioles just got a sweep in Boston.

It looks like each side has moved on and the QB says there's no bad blood or anything

Preview for tomorrow afternoon's game.

Programming: I won't be there and don't have a stringer, so it'll be a remote story on this game.

Preview for tomorrow night's game.

Programming: I'll be tracking the game remotely and have a stringer lined up, Bob Sutton, for coverage from the Joel.

The 2026 class ranking has been expanded from 100 players to a full Rivals250: https://n.rivals.com/prospect_rankings/rivals250/2026

Ten highest debuts: https://n.rivals.com/news/rivals-rankings-week-ten-highest-ranked-debuts-in-the-rivals250

Adam Gorney goes position-by-position: https://n.rivals.com/news/tuesdays-with-gorney-new-2026-rivals250-released

Going to have a running thread for stories and updates this week.

Starting with a preview for tomorrow's game against Notre Dame.

Programming: I'll be there with full coverage.

Here's the recap of Sunday's game. There is also a brief recap of Saturday's game at the bottom.

Meant to post this thread going into the weekend with some thoughts in general and just ran out of time ... sometimes it really sucks feeling like I'm doing half as good a job as I could on two different sites. Oh well, that's a me problem and I'll try to figure it out.

My two cents: This WF has some things to figure out, too. As the story says -- I was thisclose to making it a My Take -- it's not that WF dropped a series. That was bound to happen. I can't remember if I actually wrote it anywhere to reference, but I know I told several people I thought they'd lose one of their first two ACC series.

It's the way this series was lost, the Sunday game, that sticks out like a sore thumb. The walks, careless errors in the field, wild pitches/passed balls ... it was all too familiar of what this team did a lot of in the years that weren't 2023. And Wake's offense isn't anywhere close to the 2022 level of being able to slug its way through games like that.

Now, it's one, one series. Against one of the best 3 or 4 teams in the ACC. It's barely mid-March and that's not when you press the panic button. But it's disheartening for a team to beat itself.

Preview for tomorrow night's game against Clemson.

Programming note: I won't be there, but coverage will come from Bob Sutton, my former editor when I worked in Burlington.

Preview for tomorrow night's game.

Programming: I'll be there with full coverage.

Going to thread together coverage from the first few weeks of the season.

Here's the story from tonight's season opener.

I know I won't be there for Saturday's game because of the basketball game at UVA; going to play it by ear for Sunday's game.

Preview for tomorrow's game.

Programming: I'll have a remote story on this one.