The 2nd-ranked Blue Devils got a victory in Boston and have nearly a week to rest and prepare for an early bird special game on Saturday in Winston-Salem against the Wake Forest Demon Deacons, airing on ESPN (
streaming link,
listen,
live stats)...
The Deacs have won 5 straight, and are 9-0 on their home floor this season. Unlike Duke, they have a game to play before Saturday, hosting UNC on Tuesday night. We'll see if their winning streaks can continue. Team stats will not be updated until Wednesday morning, so I should have a proper game preview available sometime after that.
Make it 6 straight for Wake Forest and 10-0 in Winston-Salem. They defeated UNC on Tuesday night (67-66:
recap,
box score,
highlights,
full replay). Head coach Steve Forbes, now in his 5th season on the job, has his team at 15-4 overall and 7-1 in the ACC. They really don't have any bad losses, so why are their computer rankings so low? As far as I can tell, it's because they haven't been dominant against Quad 4 opponents, winning by 10 when they should have won by 30.
The Demon Deacons will be entering Saturday's contest with only 9 available scholarship players on their
roster. Marqus Marion and Mason Hagedorn are 2 of the 4 players
redshirting, while Iowa State transfer Omaha Biliew (#11 in the 2023 prep class, according to
RSCI) has been injured most of the season. He recovered from a foot injury back in November and returned last weekend for the Virginia Tech game, where he suffered an unrelated ankle injury. Conor O'Neill, publisher of Wake's (and Duke's) Rivals affiliate,
reported Monday that Biliew would miss 7-10 more days:
PROBABLE STARTERS
6-5 senior guard
Hunter Sallis #23 (19.2 pts, 4.5 reb, 2.8 ast, 1.3 stl)
6-4 senior guard
Cameron Hildreth #6 (14.2 pts, 4.2 reb, 3.2 ast, 1.5 stl)
6-7 senior forward
Tre'Von Spillers #25 (10.4 pts, 8.8 reb, 0.5 ast, 1.6 blk)
7-0 senior post
Efton Reid #4 (7.9 pts, 5.7 reb, 1.0 ast, 1.1 blk)
6-0 sophomore guard
Ty-Laur Johnson #8 (5.0 pts, 2.0 reb, 2.3 ast, 1.4 stl)
TOP RESERVES
6-7 freshman guard
Juke Harris #2 (5.6 pts, 2.6 reb, 0.3 ast)
6-5 sophomore guard
Davin Cosby #1 (5.6 pts, 1.3 reb, 0.9 ast)
6-4 sophomore guard
Parker Friedrichsen #7 (3.4 pts, 1.2 reb, 0.8 ast)
6-10 sophomore post
Churchill Abass #55 (1.5 pts, 1.8 reb, 0.2 ast)
BENCH PLAYERS
6-3 senior guard
Kevin Dunn #51 (0.0 pts, 0.0 reb, 0.0 ast)
6-5 senior guard
RJ Kennah #40 (0.0 pts, 0.0 reb, 0.0 ast)
6-7 junior forward
Owen Kmety #44 (0.0 pts, 0.0 reb, 0.0 ast)
INJURED/OTHER
6-8 sophomore forward
Omaha Biliew #0 (4.0 pts, 1.8 reb, 0.8 ast, 1.0 stl)
-- ankle injury, out 7-10 days
6-9 freshman forward
Mason Hagedorn #20 -- redshirt
6-9 sophomore forward
Marqus Marion #11 -- redshirt
6-6 sophomore forward
Vincent Ricchiuti #45 -- redshirt
6-3 sophomore guard
Will Underwood #52 -- redshirt
Coach Forbes is heavily reliant on his top 3 scorers: Hunter Sallis, Cameron Hildreth, and Tre'Von Spillers. Each is averaging over 33 minutes per game, and their usage has actually gone up in conference play. Sallis is out there for 36.1 minutes per game, tops in the ACC.
After a somewhat nondescript November and December, Sallis finally looks like the heavily hyped awards magnet predicted in the preseason. On Monday, he was
named ACC Player of the Week:
"In the Demon Deacons’ 80-67 win over Stanford on Wednesday, January 15, Sallis scored 30 points, going 12-of-17 from the field and 3-of-5 from behind the arc. He followed that up by recording 24 points, seven rebounds and two steals in the 72-63 win at Virginia Tech on Saturday, January 18. He was 10-of-17 from the field and 3-of-7 from 3-point range. He has posted seven consecutive showings of 20-plus points – the best stretch in his collegiate career."
Spillers, an Appalachian State transfer, has been a bright spot for a team that does not otherwise rebound well on either side of the court. His 8.8 average is 3rd in the conference, behind Stanford's Maxime Raynaud and Clemson's Ian Schieffelin, who are double-double machines and will probably both make the All-ACC first team by season's end. Spillers is also averaging 1.6 blocks, about tied with Clemson's Viktor Lakhin and NC State's Ben Middlebrooks as the league's best.
Some team shooting numbers stand out. Wake ranks in the nation's bottom 10 when it comes to 3-pointers (28.1 percent). Aside from the injured Biliew (42.9 percent in modest volume), they don't have a reliable outside shooter. Reserve Davin Cosby Jr comes closest, making 31.6 percent off of about 5 attempts per game. Sallis shoots them a bit more often but is still under 30 percent. That's still much better than Parker Friedrichsen, who shot 36.5 percent as a freshman last season, but is in a sophomore slump, with an abysmal 19.7 percent. The Deacs hit 75.1 percent of their free throws, which is both decent and misleading. Sallis and Hildreth account for half of the team's trips to the line, and together they make about 84 percent.
For more team stats of Wake Forest and Duke, I provide a friendly pair of tables below, with massive assistance from
Sports Reference and additional credited sources. (FYI: Duke now leads the country in scoring margin.) One new feature: I've added links to each team's NET Summary; now you can see which previous games belong to which quadrants.
Bart Torvik is projecting a 71-58 Duke victory.
TABLE 1
Category | Wake Forest (15-4, 7-1 ACC) | Duke (16-2, 8-0 ACC) |
Points Scored | 70.7 (271st nationally) | 81.3 (45th) |
Points Allowed | 65.7 (41st) | 59.5 (6th) |
Scoring Margin (NCAA.com) | +5.0 (154th) | +21.8 (1st) |
Bench Points (NCAA.com) | 13.3 (343rd) | 21.6 (187th) |
Total Rebounds | 33.9 (289th) | 39.5 (35th) |
--- Offensive Rebounds | 9.4 (284th) | 11.1 (161st) |
--- Defensive Rebounds | 24.5 (228th) | 28.4 (19th) |
Assists | 11.4 (331st) | 17.3 (19th) |
Assist/Turnover Ratio (NCAA.com) | 0.98 (278th) | 1.72 (7th) |
Steals | 7.6 (113th) | 6.7 (218th) |
Blocks | 4.5 (59th) | 3.7 (132nd) |
Turnovers | 11.6 (148th fewest) | 10.1 (24th fewest) |
Personal Fouls | 16.4 (141st fewest) | 15.7 (84th fewest) |
Field Goal Percentage | 44.5% (203rd) | 48.5% (31st) |
2-Point FG Percentage | 54.5% (100th) | 58.4% (16th) |
3-Point FG Percentage | 28.1% (356th) | 37.5% (36th) |
Free Throw Percentage | 75.1% (73rd) | 76.1% (50th) |
TABLE 2
Category | Wake Forest (15-4, 7-1 ACC) | Duke (16-2, 8-0 ACC) |
NET Ranking (NCAA.com) | #74 (NET Summary) | #2 (NET Summary) |
--- Strength of Schedule | 74th | 35th |
--- Quad 1 | 1-4 | 4-2 |
--- Quad 2 | 1-0 | 2-0 |
--- Quad 3 | 7-0 | 5-0 |
--- Quad 4 | 6-0 | 5-0 |
KenPom (Ken Pomeroy) | #79 | #1 |
--- Offensive Efficiency | 167th | 5th |
--- Defensive Efficiency | 28th | 2nd |
--- Tempo | 226th | 272nd |
Fastbreak Points (NCAA.com) | 7.3 (307th) | 11.2 (133th) |
T-Rank (Bart Torvik) | #86 (T-Page) | #3 (T-Page) |
--- Experience | 2.215 (119th) | 0.994 (360th) |
--- Talent | 68.266 (16th) | 81.245 (3rd) |
NET quadrants
explained:
The quality of wins and losses will be organized based on game location and the opponent's NET ranking.
Quadrant 1: Home 1-30, Neutral 1-50, Away 1-75
Quadrant 2: Home 31-75, Neutral 51-100, Away 76-135
Quadrant 3: Home 76-160, Neutral 101-200, Away 135-240
Quadrant 4: Home 161-353, Neutral 201-353, Away 241-353
Ken Pomeroy
defines efficiency as an extrapolated measure of points scored (offensive) or allowed (defensive) per 100 possessions against an average opponent. The more points you score and the fewer points you allow, the better. Tempo refers to the number of possessions per 40 minutes against an average tempo: the higher the rank, the faster the tempo. Faster isn't necessarily better; Houston is among the 5 slowest teams, and is KenPom #3.
Bart Torvik offers some clarification on Experience and Talent in the comments
here. Experience
"is based on class year (3 for senior, 0 for freshman) with caveat that it actually counts how many years a guy has played 10 games in, so if a guy is listed as a soph even though he's played two full years already, he'll count as a junior." Talent
"is based on composite recruiting ranks weighted for minutes played."