A Nice Victory
The final third of the ACC schedule may not have been kind to the Demon Deacons, but this afternoon’s 78-67 win over NC State definitely eased some of the pain.
In my previous post I said that I hoped the Deacs came out seeking revenge for the one that got away in
By no means was it a perfect performance. After a very strong start that opened up a 12 point lead Wake went on a 6 minutes scoring drought and let NC State right back in—not the only time Wake couldn’t buy a bucket this afternoon.
Despite the scoring issues, the Deacs played hard for the full 40 minutes. There were a few hustle mistakes where Wake gave up rebounds they should have had, but other than those I have very few complaints.
Overall the team shot 47% and a very impressive 58% for 3. Had it not been for Harvey Hale’s missed free throw in the closing minutes of the game Wake would have been perfect from the foul line, but 17-18 is much better than anything we’ve seen this season.
Jeff Teague had another great afternoon, scoring 25 points and grabbing 7 boards. He has proven himself the most consistent performer on the team and finished strong.
Dino Gaudio decided not to start James Johnson today, something he probably deserved after his recent lackluster performances. He still played plenty of minutes and did play much better than he has recently, scoring 19 points, but only grabbing 4 boards.
Normally today would have been senior day, but apparently Wake’s planning on bring Cam Stanley back next season and did not honor him today. I imagine Wake still might sign another player here in the next month or two in which case Stanley would probably end up graduating and not returning, but we’ll just have to wait and see how that plays out.
I’m going to a do an analysis of the different ACC Tournament seeding possibilities and post that in the next hour. Should be interesting.
