Wake Forest point guard Jeff Teague dressed slowly inside the visitors’ locker room Saturday afternoon, the impact of the Demon Deacons’ second loss of the college basketball season quickly sinking in.
“I guess these Tech teams have got our number,” he said after Georgia Tech stunned the Deacons 76-74 for its first Atlantic Coast Conference victory in seven league contests. “Maybe we should quit playing anyone named Tech.”
The splendid sophomore may be onto something. While seventh-ranked Wake Forest is 17-0 this season against schools without Tech in their name, they are 0-2 against ACC brothers Virginia Tech and Georgia Tech.
“Everybody can get up for North Carolina and Duke,” added Teague, knowing the Deacons have beaten both of those top-five foes. “What we’ve got to realize is that when we’re in the top five (Wake was No. 1 two weeks ago), everybody’s gunning for us.”
Gunning is something the Deacons have done well for years, especially since the late Skip Prosser took over the program in 2001. Before he died of a heart attack in the summer of 2007, Prosser had built an offensive machine on the Winston-Salem, N.C., campus.
During the 2003-04 season, Wake scored 90 or more points 10 times. A year later, when the Deacons knocked out the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in the opening round of the NCAA tournament, they hit 100 points or more three times and totaled 90 or more on 13 occasions.
But even though current coach Dino Gaudio was Prosser’s top assistant, he quickly changed Wake’s defensive philosophy, possibly because he remembers that on the final game of that 2005 season, the Deacons bowed out of the NCAA tourney one game after banishing UTC because they gave up 111 points in a two-overtime loss to West Virginia.
“Our staple all year has been our defense,” said Gaudio, mindful that Wake is holding opponents to less than 37 percent field-goal shooting for the season with an average victory margin of 15.8 points. “We just held Duke to their lowest field-goal percentage of the year. But we didn’t play great defense today (against Tech).”
North Carolina scored 89 points in a three-point loss to Wake but shot only 35 percent from the field.
“Two years ago they had trouble stopping people and had trouble on the defensive end,” UNC coach Roy Williams said. “Dino and his staff have done a great job. They guard you. There’s a reason we shot 35 percent, and it was their defensive play. I never felt like we were going to make a shot.”
The Deacons’ starting front line of 6-foot-9 freshman Al-Farouq Aminu, 6-9 sophomore James Johnson and 7-foot junior Chas McFarland is a huge reason for their defensive skill. The three block nearly five shots a game and average nearly 24 rebounds among them. With Teague, who scores 20 points a game and hits an outrageous 54 percent of his 3-pointers, and a deep bench, this is a serious Final Four contender.
“They’re very good and they’re very deep,” said Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski. “They can handle the ball. The have good athleticism. They’re a big-time team.”
Former UTC coach Mack McCarthy’s East Carolina squad suffered a 41-point home loss to Wake Forest in December.
“They are really long on defense,” McCarthy said. “Their starting lineup was 17 inches bigger than ours. They can really get after you and switch one through five on defense. “
North Carolina Central coach Henry Dickerson, who took over for McCarthy when he left UTC in the summer of 1997, fell 94-48 to Wake in the Deacons’ opening game of the season.
After attempting to prepare his team for the Deacons’ overwhelming advantages in size and talent, Dickerson lamented, “You can tell them all you want to tell them. But once you step on that floor it’s totally different. Wake’s size and ability were too much for us.”
Prosser’s death would have been too much for most schools to handle. And even as Wake has continued to win big in his absence, his impact remains.
On Monday, Wake and Xavier — where Prosser coached for seven seasons before taking over the Demon Deacons in 2001 — announced they would begin a 10-year, home-and-home basketball series known as the Skip Prosser Classic. The first game will be played at Wake next season.
“This series is a tribute to a great coach and a very special man, and it is a terrific way to keep Skip in our thoughts and prayers,” Gaudio said. “Both Xavier and Wake Forest are indebted to Skip for the contributions he made to the students, community, basketball program and student-athletes of each school.”
It is a further tribute to Prosser that both Xavier and Wake have continued to succeed without him. Yet as the Deacons continue to build on one of the best starts in school history, it is also clear the torch has passed to Gaudio.
“I loved Skip Prosser,” UNC’s Williams said. “He was one of the nicest guys I’ve ever been around. (But) this is Dino’s club right now and he needs to be congratulated for the way he handled one of the most tragic situations I’ve ever seen in my life. We had nine assists and 18 turnovers (against Wake). That’s not the way we’re supposed to play basketball.”
Yet it seems to be the way almost everybody is playing ball against the Demon Deacons these days. At least everyone not named Tech.
Mark Wiedmer started work at the Chattanooga News-Free Press on Valentine’s Day of 1983. At the time, he had to get an advance from his boss to buy a Valentine gift for his wife. Mark was hired as a graphic artist but quickly moved to sports, where he oversaw prep football for a time, won the “Pick’ em” box in 1985 and took over the UTC basketball beat the following year. By 1990, he was ...
Or login with:
New Account