
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, March 14, 1995                   TAG: 9503140142
SECTION: SPORTS                    PAGE: B1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WINSTON-SALEM, N.C.                                 LENGTH: Medium

FOR 2ND STRAIGHT YEAR, ODOM TOP ACC COACH

Dave Odom, who guided the Wake Forest basketball program to its first ACC title in 33 years, was named the league's coach of the year Monday by The Associated Press.

Odom, a former Virginia assistant, won the honor for the second straight year and third time in the last five seasons. The other time was in 1991. He captured 48 of the 107 votes cast by members of the Atlantic Coast Sports Writers Association.

Virginia coach Jeff Jones, who lost to the Demon Deacons in the semifinals and was among the four teams tied for first in the league at the end of the regular season, received 27 votes. Gary Williams, the Maryland coach who has missed the last two weeks because of pneumonia, received 20 votes.

Clemson first-year coach Rick Barnes got nine votes, and North Carolina veteran coach Dean Smith received three votes.

With Randolph Childress operating from the perimeter and Tim Duncan manning the middle, the Demon Deacons battled their way to a share of first place in the regular season. Then, Childress, who averaged 19 points per game in the regular season, nearly doubled it in the ACC tournament. For the three games, he scored 107 points and broke the tournament's three-game record set by North Carolina's Len Rosenbluth in 1957.

In the final of the ACC tournament, Childress' late basket in overtime gave Odom and the Demon Deacons an 82-80 victory over North Carolina and the league championship.

``There's never been a pilot of a ship that ever went anywhere that didn't have a great crew and staff that helped them get places,'' Odom said.

``When you think back a year ago, we had some pretty heavy clouds hanging over us,'' he said.

Those clouds were in the form of an NCAA investigation into the recruitment of Mahktar Ndiaye. Although there were allegations that the Demon Deacons used an illegal intermediary to help Ndiaye, the program was cleared of wrongdoing.

Questions also arose over the eligibility of Ricky Peral, but those problems also were resolved without sanction.

by CNB