Nate Calmese’s season was over. But in Wake Forest’s ACC win, he proved it wasn’t
On the first possession of his first game back in 11 days — 11 days since he and his coaches and his teammates thought his season was over — Nate Calmese came off a screen.
The Wake Forest point guard was fast. Fluid. Unfazed.
So was the shot that he hoisted and saw scorch through the net.
And as the senior turned to run back on defense, he couldn’t help but look back at the row of family and friends and fans behind the Demon Deacons’ bench and smile. After all, by just being there, on the court in the first round of the ACC Tournament against Virginia Tech on Tuesday in Charlotte, he was defying odds.
Everyone seemed to know.
Calmese did himself.
“I’m just so blessed to be back out there today,” Calmese said in an interview with The N&O after his team’s 95-89 win in Spectrum Center. “It just felt good.”
Eleven days ago, after all, Calmese thought his season was over. He had good reason to.
On Feb. 25, Calmese twisted his left ankle. He’d had five points in five minutes. It was particularly brutal, too, because Wake Forest had gone nearly an exact month without him prior to that — after Calmese twisted his right ankle against Pittsburgh on Jan. 27, a game in which he had 10 points in 10 minutes.
The symmetry — both ankles, a point a minute, pretty much a month apart — was inescapable.
Calmese thought his season was finished “100%” after that Feb. 25 game. He wondered the entire bus ride home to Winston-Salem: “Is it over?” Wake Forest head coach Steve Forbes was convinced it was. He told reporters that Calmese was out for the year point-blank, in fact. That more than likely meant that Calmese’s college career, as a senior, was pretty much done, too.
And then came Tuesday, with Calmese cleared to play, with his own story of Lazarus primed to come true. And not only was he there, smiling, playing with joy, firing up his teammates.
He made an impact.
“I forgot what it was like to have him as a player,” Forbes said. “I think I went 11 games without him. So it was like, ‘Oh, man, he’s fast. God, he throws good passes.’ I’m happy for him.”
That impact could be seen beyond his final stat-line of 10 points, one rebound and one assist in 13 minutes — beyond his perfect 4-for-4 from the field and 2-for-2 from 3. It was seen in the margins.
Of him coming off screens and creating like other guards haven’t been able to this year, his jersey getting tugged and all.
Of him appearing a bit gassed and assistant coach BJ McKie — once a marvelous point guard himself — smile, sub him out and then tell him that he better be ready to re-enter the game soon.
Of him getting beat a few times on defense because his sore ankles couldn’t take all the switching Wake Forest elected to do against Virginia Tech, which prompted Forbes to reluctantly elect to send someone to the scorer’s table to sub him in, only for Calmese to hit a 3 and have Forbes bring Calmese’s potential sub back to the bench.
Of a request you never hear in today’s world of basketball:
“He got beat a couple times in the early second half, (VT’s Ben) Hammond got cooking,” Forbes recounted. “And he’s like, ‘Coach, I can’t keep him in front of me.’ And I’m like, ‘Don’t worry about it, we got you.’”
Calmese remembers that conversation, too.
“Scoring a layup and giving up a layup, you’re not doing nothing for your team,” the point guard said. “I hit a 3, and then they hit a 3 in my face. And they just kept going at me. And I just felt like I couldn’t guard No. 3 (Ben Hammond). He was moving a little too fast for my first game back.
“Like I was telling my teammates: I would much rather win than play. My team’s used to being without me. They’ve done that the last 10 games. It wasn’t nothing new for them. It was either, as my coaches said, ‘We could adjust for you, or we could just keep doing what we’re doing.’ And I was like, ‘We’ve been working on this for three days straight. They’re used to it now. There’s no point in switching it.’
“So I had to take this one for the team, and it worked out just fine.”
Calmese said his ankles “feel good” ahead of Wednesday’s matchup with Clemson. He said he’s become super close with his coaches this season because, through his injury, he’s “basically been a coach with them.” He also couldn’t be happier for Sebastian Akins, who in Calmese’s stead had perhaps his best game as a Demon Deacon: 14 points and three assists — which included a crucial and-one in overtime to seal a thrilling win in Charlotte.
Tuesday ended with a bear hug from many of his assistant coaches. All of them knew what Tuesday meant to their point guard.
“It’s my senior year,” Calmese said. “I didn’t want my season to be over. And I couldn’t be out there for my guys to help them. For them to pull it out, it felt great for us to just keep this thing going.”
Somehow, Calmese, in all his grit and resilience and maturity, is still playing.
And because of that, in many ways, so is Wake Forest.
This story was originally published March 11, 2026 at 6:00 AM.
