DURHAM -- This is Wake Forest: The Demon Deacons held Duke guard Jon Scheyer without a point for almost 20 minutes Sunday, but despite being roughly even in size allowed Duke 18 points off offensive rebounds in the first half.
This is also Wake Forest: Ish Smith and Al-Farouq Aminu scored eight of 13 points for Wake during a stretch that saw the Deacons take a four-point lead late in the first half. C.J. Harris, L.D. Williams and Ari Stewart took seven of the next 10 Wake shots as Duke went on a 10-0 run. The Blue Devils would not trail again.
Sunday’s 90-70 Wake Forest loss to Duke was yet another example of how the Deacons continue to be the ACC’s most confusing, most erratic, most inconsistent team -- capable of dazzling one moment, baffling the next.
Only Wake Forest could fall behind by 12 early in the second half, then come charging back to tie the score at 55 with 14 minutes to go -- and then lose by 20.
“When we get back into the game, we have a tendency sometimes to relax and say, ‘Ahhh, we’re back.’ Take a deep breath,” Wake Forest guard L.D. Williams said. “Whenever we take that breath, they’re right back in it.”
At this point, the various parts of the Wake machine are no secret, but the whole remains a mystery.
There’s Smith, the talented point guard who always plays at full speed, sometimes like the Tasmanian Devil and sometimes like the Energizer Bunny -- either tearing apart everything in his path or working extremely hard to get nowhere.
There’s Aminu, an immensely creative and versatile force who has yet to put his personal stamp on this team the way he is most certainly capable of doing. Right now, he’s a piece, not the fulcrum he could be.
And there’s the coach, Dino Gaudio, whose work in the wake of Skip Prosser’s tragic death two seasons ago was both courageous and commendable. He had the Deacons rolling all the way to the No. 1 ranking last season but was unable to intervene as they crumbled down the stretch and imploded in the postseason.
Wake’s resume to this point has offered no indication of where the Deacons will fall this season. It’s almost impossible to reconcile the losses to William & Mary and Miami with the win at Gonzaga or how well the Deacons played at times Sunday in a mercilessly physical game.
“It doesn’t really feel like a 20-point loss,” Smith said. “Looking from the outside, maybe a five-point loss, a 10-point loss at most.
But a loss is a loss. We’ve got to learn from this and move on.”
Smith was held to seven points and four assists, falling victim to a Duke defense determined to deny him driving lanes. He was unhappy with his play, but the real issue for the Deacons was their failure to press the advantage when they had the chance, on a night the Devils were merciless in that regard.
When Wake tied the score at 55, it was on a transition play from Smith to Aminu for an emphatic dunk. On Wake’s next possession, after a Duke 3-pointer, Smith dribbled into the lane and threw up a miss.
Helped along by a questionable intentional-foul call on Smith, Duke scored the next 10 points and never looked back.
The Deacons will look back and say they played well enough to win this game, but didn’t, and they’re not alone in that belief.
“I thought they played winning basketball,” Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said.
That’s the epitaph Wake Forest needs to avoid this season: Good enough to win, but didn’t.
