MBB: Duke vs. Wake Forest (Saturday 1/25, 4:30pm ET, ESPN) Pregame and In-Game Thread

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It seems to me that our regular defense is doing a pretty good job with the whole confusing the opposing offense thing.
True. I only thought of this because I recall the team throwing out a zone look during the game against Pitt. With the team down its primary reserve big and wanting to limit dribble penetration, the zone might be a good change-of-pace defense if Wake is on a roll or something like that.
 
Spillers was a load at the 4, early in the season. (I haven’t watched them much lately) Will Cooper be matched up against him? Certainly a different skill set from Coop, to be sure.

I’ll be at the game, with my Wake grad daughter. I was last in Winston for Duke games in 2019 and 2022, so hoping for similar results.

Wake is really hyping this game. I’m sure there will be plenty of blue in the stands, but the Wake fans, especially the students, will be very loud and rowdy. Probably our rowdiest road crowd so far, hope Duke is prepared for it.
 
Wake has a tendency to settle for midrange jumpers. Hopefully that will play into our hands. Almost nobody forces tough 2s like this Duke defense. Their top 2 shot creators are Sallis and Hildreth. Hildreth likes to post up against smaller guards- hopefully that won't work against our big lineup. Sallis is an excellent player and will probably get his points regardless. But we should be ready to help off of Reid, Spillers, and Johnson, as none of them can shoot 3s. And above all else, don't commit stupid fouls!

Offensively, this could be a pretty good challenge. They are the best defense we've seen since George Mason. I don't imagine we'll get a ton of easy stuff near the basket, but we may get some good looks from 3. UNC ended up taking more 3s than usual last night, and they didn't make them.

Hit our 3s and stay out of foul trouble, and this could be a comfortable win. If our pre-January offense shows up and we put them on the line a bunch, all bets are off.
 
Looks like UNC and Wake Forest are the "current partners" and Miami is the "repeat opponent". I imagine that in 2025-2026, another school will replace Miami and be scheduled to play Duke twice. Maybe one of these years that repeat opponent will be NC State.
The Triangle schools should play each other twice every year. But I know that won't happen since things need to be spread around. But swapping out Wake for NCSU makes sense. The heart of the ACC is in the Triangle, so keeping things lively there should be important.

I never really disliked the Deacs (even with Chris Paul) until last season and the court storming. Now I'd just assume the Devils kick their butts on their homecourt, then have Proctor and Foster stand at homecourt and yell, "Where's your court storming now?" Count me as someone who thinks Duke should have more swagger, because, well, they've earned the right to do so. Just keep it clean and never single out any fan individually.

9F
 
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Wake has a tendency to settle for midrange jumpers. Hopefully that will play into our hands. Almost nobody forces tough 2s like this Duke defense. Their top 2 shot creators are Sallis and Hildreth. Hildreth likes to post up against smaller guards- hopefully that won't work against our big lineup. Sallis is an excellent player and will probably get his points regardless. But we should be ready to help off of Reid, Spillers, and Johnson, as none of them can shoot 3s. And above all else, don't commit stupid fouls!
If past history has predictive value, then it won't matter whether the Blue Devils commit any stupid fouls. When Duke plays at Wake Forest, the Blue Devils are going to be whistled for stupid fouls regardless of whether they actually commit them.
 
A couple of links.

1. Wake Forest's Old Gold & Black Boards has their pregame thread, which was started this morning and has escalated quickly. It's about as friendly as you might imagine. Apparently reserve Churchill Abass was used briefly in Tuesday's UNC game in some kind of disruptive/enforcement capacity, and there were a few mentions of doing that again against Duke and calling it the "Patrick Davidson treatment".

2. As I mentioned in the Maliq Brown injury vigil thread, The Fayetteville Observer posted here the video for most/all of Jon Scheyer's ACC teleconference from Monday. (Can't embed; you'll have to click over to watch.) He starts previewing the Wake Forest game at about the 2:55 mark. Some select quotes:

"They're elite defensively. They've always been elite in terms of offense, but now I think their defense has gone up another level... I think their numbers, analytically, when you look at NET or KenPom, I don't think is a good reflection of how good they really are."

"I haven't been quite as happy with our defense. I think our defense has not been the same, quite the same level. Part of that is not having Maliq [Brown], part of that is when you're playing a lot of games, sometimes there's slippage with your habits... So for us this week, the defense is going to be a big point of emphasis, and then continuing to play in the half court."
 
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For the sake of mentioning it, the broadcast was going to be Dave O'Brien and Dick Vitale, but Dick's return has been postponed due to a fall.
Ah, thanks for the info. I had assumed ESPN decided to have him return the following Saturday for the UNC game in Cameron.
 
After watching how Hildreth and Sallis attacked the Heels, they should have a tough night with our defense.

They will have to try to shoot over longer perimeter defenders. Hildreth likes to attack the rim off the dribble but will have Flagg and Maluach waiting on him. Sallis likes to attack off the PNR to get mid range jumpers. He may get some of these off Pat's drop coverage but not when we are switching 1-5 with everyone else.

Our defense is a bad matchup for any team that lives off one on one offense with few assists. More turnovers than assists on the season for Wake? That's a pretty wild stat.

You never want to be over confident but I think Clemson and the Heels will be tougher offenses for us to cover.
 
Ah, thanks for the info. I had assumed ESPN decided to have him return the following Saturday for the UNC game in Cameron.
Dan Shulman, Jay Bilas and Jess Sims will do both Duke-Carolina games. Shulman and Bilas will be doing every non early round ACC Tournament Duke-Carolina game for as long as the ACC has an ESPN deal and they are the "A" team.
 
Wake seemed uninterested in providing adequate security for last year's game. Maybe Duke should bring along a herd of musk oxen to protect the team on Saturday?

Musk Ox.png

If Duke wins, the musk oxen can storm the student section before the final buzzer sounds! What could possibly go wrong! :)
 
After watching how Hildreth and Sallis attacked the Heels, they should have a tough night with our defense.

They will have to try to shoot over longer perimeter defenders. Hildreth likes to attack the rim off the dribble but will have Flagg and Maluach waiting on him. Sallis likes to attack off the PNR to get mid range jumpers. He may get some of these off Pat's drop coverage but not when we are switching 1-5 with everyone else.

Our defense is a bad matchup for any team that lives off one on one offense with few assists. More turnovers than assists on the season for Wake? That's a pretty wild stat.

You never want to be over confident but I think Clemson and the Heels will be tougher offenses for us to cover.
Wake has a tendency to settle for midrange jumpers. Hopefully that will play into our hands. Almost nobody forces tough 2s like this Duke defense. Their top 2 shot creators are Sallis and Hildreth. Hildreth likes to post up against smaller guards- hopefully that won't work against our big lineup. Sallis is an excellent player and will probably get his points regardless. But we should be ready to help off of Reid, Spillers, and Johnson, as none of them can shoot 3s. And above all else, don't commit stupid fouls!

Offensively, this could be a pretty good challenge. They are the best defense we've seen since George Mason. I don't imagine we'll get a ton of easy stuff near the basket, but we may get some good looks from 3. UNC ended up taking more 3s than usual last night, and they didn't make them.

Hit our 3s and stay out of foul trouble, and this could be a comfortable win. If our pre-January offense shows up and we put them on the line a bunch, all bets are off.
i was watching Hildreth post up and back down some smaller uNC guard, and score over him, at least twice. While watching, i thought to myself "I'd like to see him try that vs. Sion." Or Gillis. Or Kon. Even Foster would be tough for him to do that to. Proctor is an excellent defender and taller than the uNC guards, but he is kinda slight, so maybe he could be backed down, but it would be tough for Hildreth to shoot over him.
 
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

CategoryWake Forest (15-4, 7-1 ACC)Duke (16-2, 8-0 ACC)
Points Scored70.7 (271st nationally)81.3 (45th)
Points Allowed65.7 (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 Rebounds33.9 (289th)39.5 (35th)
--- Offensive Rebounds9.4 (284th)11.1 (161st)
--- Defensive Rebounds24.5 (228th)28.4 (19th)
Assists11.4 (331st)17.3 (19th)
Assist/Turnover Ratio (NCAA.com)0.98 (278th)1.72 (7th)
Steals7.6 (113th)6.7 (218th)
Blocks4.5 (59th)3.7 (132nd)
Turnovers11.6 (148th fewest)10.1 (24th fewest)
Personal Fouls16.4 (141st fewest)15.7 (84th fewest)
Field Goal Percentage44.5% (203rd)48.5% (31st)
2-Point FG Percentage54.5% (100th)58.4% (16th)
3-Point FG Percentage28.1% (356th)37.5% (36th)
Free Throw Percentage75.1% (73rd)76.1% (50th)

TABLE 2

CategoryWake Forest (15-4, 7-1 ACC)Duke (16-2, 8-0 ACC)
NET Ranking (NCAA.com)#74 (NET Summary)#2 (NET Summary)
--- Strength of Schedule74th35th
--- Quad 11-44-2
--- Quad 21-02-0
--- Quad 37-05-0
--- Quad 46-05-0
KenPom (Ken Pomeroy)#79#1
--- Offensive Efficiency167th5th
--- Defensive Efficiency28th2nd
--- Tempo226th272nd
Fastbreak Points (NCAA.com)7.3 (307th)11.2 (133th)
T-Rank (Bart Torvik)#86 (T-Page)#3 (T-Page)
--- Experience2.215 (119th)0.994 (360th)
--- Talent68.266 (16th)81.245 (3rd)
Really appreciate the time you take to put together these super informative posts. Thank you!
 
A couple of links.

1. Wake Forest's Old Gold & Black Boards has their pregame thread, which was started this morning and has escalated quickly. It's about as friendly as you might imagine. Apparently reserve Churchill Abass was used briefly in Tuesday's UNC game in some kind of disruptive/enforcement capacity, and there were a few mentions of doing that again against Duke and calling it the "Patrick Davidson treatment".

2. As I mentioned in the Maliq Brown injury vigil thread, The Fayetteville Observer posted here the video for most/all of Jon Scheyer's ACC teleconference from Monday. (Can't embed; you'll have to click over to watch.) He starts previewing the Wake Forest game at about the 2:55 mark. Some select quotes:

"They're elite defensively. They've always been elite in terms of offense, but now I think their defense has gone up another level... I think their numbers, analytically, when you look at NET or KenPom, I don't think is a good reflection of how good they really are."

"I haven't been quite as happy with our defense. I think our defense has not been the same, quite the same level. Part of that is not having Maliq [Brown], part of that is when you're playing a lot of games, sometimes there's slippage with your habits... So for us this week, the defense is going to be a big point of emphasis, and then continuing to play in the half court."
Himm, now I wish I never clicked that link to their pregame thread. Now I really dislike WF fans and really appreciate the tone of this board.
 
Himm, now I wish I never clicked that link to their pregame thread. Now I really dislike WF fans and really appreciate the tone of this board.
They lost me when one user was pining for Teddy Valentine to referee the game. Talk about a poorly informed fanbase!

But yes - our board isn't perfect and our moderators get lots of criticism - but it's a pretty tidy ship compared to most other online sports communities.
 
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