Wake Forest vs. Presbyterian: Live Game Thoughts and Open Thread
Starting Lineup: Teague, Johnson, Weaver, Ish, LD - Evan Lepler by himself on the ACC Select call tonight. Chas out for disciplinary reasons (ejected from Air Force game Sunday)
Tipoff: Another lost tipoff. Figured we couldn't win more than one in a row. According to Evan, thats 11 of 12 tips lost. Easy fast break layup for Teague off of a block/steal (hard to tell from the stupid below the hoop camera angle)
According to Evan, a Blue Hose is a "fierce Scotch-Irish warrior." I was wondering about that. Weaver takes a charge! I won't really be able to update time since ACC select doesn't give it. Kind of stinks.
15:43 - first media timeout. Deacs up 8-6. 4 points for LD, 2 for Weaver, 2 for Teague. Presby can apparently shoot the three reasonably well (and very often).
10:25 - Wake leads 20-6 and looks pretty good starting 2008. Everyone is contributing, with points from James Johnson, David Weaver, LD Williams, Jeff Teague, and Jamie Skeen. The defense is playing reasonably well against a completely outmatched Presbyterian squad and we're practicing a bit of a full court press. I like that we aren't forcing shots (particularly 3's) so far and are making good passes to get the easiest possible shots. Hopefully we keep up the intensity and make quite a statement with an impressive score.
Media timeout as we go under 8 minutes. Very small crowd tonight.
5:53 - Presby has cut the lead considerably mostly because we quite making good shots. We look like we've been forcing some shots and forcing several passes. Presby only trails 24-16 now. This was that lack of intensity that I thought cut hurt us with a big lead.
2:00 - Another three after a Wake 2 cuts the lead to 4, 28-24.
1:02 - Final media timeout and the Deacs only lead by 6 having led by as much as 16 earlier in the half. Not making very many shots, paritally because we're not taking great shots. Not sure exactly what the issue is, but Presby definitely shoots the ball well from deep.
Well that was an awful 10 minutes of basketball, and Wake only leads by 2, 31-29. After starting off by playing smart basketball with good shots and passes the Deacs inexplicably quit doing those things. Presbyeterian got hot from three and let the Deacs miss shots to get themselves back in the game.
I'm not quite sure what the problem is. The Deacs clearly have a tendency to play down to opponents and that's exactly what they've done. There have been too many turnovers and too many defensive lapses. I'm sure Dino's chewing them out right now in the locker room, and they need it. I'm guessing we may see Chas in the second half so maybe he can provide a spark. Otherwise I wouldn't be suprised to see us only win this game by single digits. At this point I'm not even 100% confident we'll win. Improvement is needed immediately.
2nd Half - Presbyterian takes the lead 34-33. Not seing enough change so far. We still look out of control and don't seem to be making smart decisions with the ball. Chas is getting ready to check in, we definitely need him right now.
15:06 - Wake leads 39-38 after having trailed by 1 just a bit earlier. I was hoping to see the Deacs come out and exert the dominance they should have in this game but so far it hasn't really happened. We've had a couple of pretty good possessions, but I'm seeing way too many defensive lapses where Prebyterian gets easy open looks. There's just no reason for that to happen. This may not be as frustrating as Georgia, but it's suprisingly close.
12:57 - Awful defense by the Deacs. We gave up 2 offensive rebounds in the same posession and then let them have an easy layup to tie the game 42. Our guys have to know they shouldn't be playing this close with Presbyterian but they still look asleep on the defensive end. Yuck.
10:32 - Wake leads by three after we finally got a three pointer from Harvey Hale. With 1o minutes left I'm honestly nervous about the possibility of losing this game. Hopefully LD Williams' encouragement to play some defense will fire up the team to do so. C'mon, Deacs.
And finally the Deacs find a spark and gain a 7 point advantage over Presbyterian. LD Williams just hit a huge dunk off of a steal. It only took 20 minutes of terrible play, but finally the Deacs are doing something right. If we keep this up (which is premature) we might even have a respectable margin of victory.
4:00 (aprox) - Wake has finally started playing some smart basketball, including good defense and smart shots and we actually have an 11 point lead. This might not turn out as bad as anticipated!
Final - Well a 12 point win is much more than it looked like we would deserve after the middle 20 minutes of the game. I'll write a full recap sometime after the Fiesta Bowl tonight, but man was that ugly. Thankfully, later in the season when people look at our record a 12 point win in this game won't stand out as anything unusual. I'm just happy to get out with the win.
