Wake Forest Athletics
Deacons Host No. 2-Ranked and Undefeated Orange
1/28/2014 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Jan. 28, 2014
By Brad O'Neil, WakeForestSports.com
The transformation of the Joel Coliseum from a municipal facility to one fully branded and modeled in the image of Wake Forest University is an ongoing process in its relative infancy. It is fair to say, however, that its Demon Deacon basketball team has already performed considerable heavy lifting in its visual, aesthetic and pleasing makeover.
As a result, the building becomes the geocenter of national college basketball on Wednesday. The ACC's newest rock star, the Syracuse Orange, will bring its No. 2 AP ranking and the best record (19-0) any team has ever taken to the Joel's court in the structure's 25 seasons of service. As for the home team, it's becoming worthy of the attention stemming from the identity and achievement of its next opponent.
Nothing around Winston-Salem will resemble the rhetorical bluster emanating from Manhattan and the swamps of Jersey this week. There will be no guarantees of victory such as one Joe Willie Namath lobbed, as legend has it, from a poolside lounge chair at a Miami Beach hotel with half a dozen reporters in casual attendance in January 1969. It is fair to say, however, that ignorance of the Demon Deacons is neither blissful, nor prudent, nor plausible.
At 14-6, they have exceeded their win total in each of the previous three seasons. They've taken care of business appropriately, having suffered no bad losses. Collectively, the six teams to have defeated the Deacons so far are 84-27.
This is the least sexy but often mandatory first step of a reconstruction process. If you buy a fixer-upper in real estate, you make sure the place is up to code and proceed from there. So far, the Deacons are 14-1 against teams rated 51st and below in the RPI. Nobody with a brain counts a defeat at Clemson, which is in the upper half of the ACC, as worthy of a walk of shame or petition for witness protection. You can then think about remodeling the stage or screen with accoutrements. In competitive terms, that's means taking a viable shot at a headliner such as the Orange.
Saturday's victory over Notre Dame represented late focus if not consistent brilliance against a team struggling to make up for the midseason loss of its best player. After controlling the first half, the Deacs were down with two minutes left to go and in danger of failing to close the deal. But they had held steady with the low-post excellence of sophomore Devin Thomas, whose below-the-rim game translates to no "Q" Rating and disinterest from the highlight hounds in cable sports news cubicles across our land. Thomas cares nothing of this. He stood 10-for-10 from the field late in Saturday's game and saw his streak end when he appeared to induce contact and toss one up from the block under presumption of imminent foul call. Perfection disappeared in silence. Thomas shrugged it off.
"Yeah, but they're not going to call that late in a tight game," he said, declining to blame the crew of Ray Natili et al.
Had he gone to 11 and stopped there, Thomas would have done more than equaling the output of the amplifiers of Spinal Tap, the fictitious rock band brought to half-life in the 1984 Rob Reiner mock-rockumentary. He would have been the first Deacon to have a perfect field-goal-shooting day on 11 or more attempts. Only five players in ACC history have done that.
Once back in front, the Deacons kept the Fighting Irish out of the lane, prevented second shots and sealed the deal on the foul line with 8-for-8 late accuracy. No, these Deacs aren't stifling competition. But think back two years ago. If you don't think this represents improvement, you are probably spending way too much time on the subject rather than too little.
There is little doubt that the Wake Forest players - particularly senior Travis McKie, who remembers the depths of despair - should take some pride in creating a meaningful opportunity in ACC play such as the one that matches the Deacons (4-3 ACC) against the Orange, who keep finding ways to repel the established members of their new league.
Syracuse will become only the third team in the ACC era to come to Winston-Salem undefeated after 19 or more games of a season.
The most recent such appearance was underappreciated in its time because its protagonist had no hope of ultimate national supremacy. NC State, barred from the 1973 NCAA tournament, was therefore an ornery as well as a talented bunch that stood 19-0 when it took to the Winston-Salem Memorial Coliseum court on Feb. 17, 1973. A Wolfpack team that would go to end UCLA's reign of seven straight NCAA titles the following year took an 81-59 win over Carl Tacy's first Wake Forest team. The 1972-73 Pack did all it could do, racking up a 27-0 record.
Before that, go back 16 more years. North Carolina's Tar Heels were 22-0 and on their way to a 32-0 season and NCAA title when they held off a determined and viable Wake Forest team 69-64 on Feb. 26, 1957. That one was also played in the old coliseum, which was a decent enough facility that Wake Forest did not feel compelled to build its own, ACC-worthy gym when it finished plans for the new Reynolda Campus. That 1956-57 season was the College's first in its new digs.
The game with the Heels turned out to be Murray Greason's final home appearance as basketball coach for the Demon Deacons. He gave up the sideline for administration that March and was replaced by his highly regarded, 38-year-old assistant, Horace Albert "Bones" McKinney, who would lead Wake Forest to its first ACC championships and its greatest achievement, a 1962 Final Four appearance.
In modern times, the Joel Coliseum and coach Jeff Bzdelik's Deacons are on parallel paths. It could be interesting to see what they've all done with the place when everything synchs up.
