Demon Deacons Battle No. 2 Duke in Saturday Thriller

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Back inside LJVM Coliseum for its second straight Big Four matchup, Wake Forest men's basketball hosted No. 2 Duke on Saturday afternoon. The Demon Deacons (15-5, 7-2 ACC) fought for 40 minutes against the Blue Devils (17-2, 9-0 ACC) before falling short in a 63-56 defeat.

The Deacs were led by Juke Harris' team-high 14 points, as the freshman wing also grabbed five rebounds while playing just under 27 minutes as a reserve.

Hunter Sallis added 12 points and seven rebounds. Tre'Von Spillers and Efton Reid III contributed nine points apiece, as the latter additionally pulled down five boards. Ty-Laur Johnson had another all-around showing with eight points, five rebounds, three steals and a season-high eight assists.

The second half saw Wake Forest shoot 45.8 percent from the field, making 11 of 24 attempts during the final 20 minutes of action. The Deacs also outscored the Blue Devils 34-28 in the final 20 minutes.

The Deacon defense was aggressive in forcing 16 turnovers while holding Duke to a 36.8 field goal percentage – the Blue Devils' lowest mark of the season. Wake Forest also collected eight steals.

How It Happened

Reid opened the scoring for the Deacs with a dunk off the inbounds pass from Hildreth.
Following a short Duke run, Hildreth made a driving layup to cut the Duke lead down to 7-4.
Harris hit a tough layup at the 11:18 mark to make it 9-6.
Following an 8-0 Blue Devil run, Sallis finished off an alley-oop from Johnson to cut the deficit down to nine.
Johnson converted a jumper to make it 17-10 out of the timeout.
Reid finished a layup and an ensuing free throw at the 6:02 mark to cut the deficit down to four.
Harris made a free throw with 5:01 remaining in the first half to make it 20-14.
Out of the timeout, Sallis converted a free throw to cut the deficit down to eight.
After a short run by the Blue Devils, Harris converted a driving layup to make it 28-17.
- Reid added one from the line on the next possession.
Harris converted two free throws to make it a 10-point game with 1:05 left in the half.
Sallis finished a dunk off the feed from Reid to make it 35-22 at the end of the first half.
- Harris led the Demon Deacons in the first half with seven points.
- The Deacs forced the Blue Devils into 10 first-half turnovers.
The Demon Deacons opened the second half on a 7-0 run to force a Duke timeout.
- Sallis opened the second half with a jumper to make it 35-24.
- Sallis added the Demon Deacons' first three-pointer of the game to cut the deficit down to eight.
- Spillers recorded his first points of the night on a dunk off the find from Hildreth to make it 35-29.
The Demon Deacons exploded on a 10-0 run coming out of a timeout to take their first lead of the game.
- Johnson swished two free throws to cut the Duke lead down to five with 14:32 left.
- Harris drilled a three-pointer two possessions later to make it 36-34.
- Spillers drilled a three-pointer to give the Deacs the lead for the first time in the game at the 12:48 mark.
- Spillers finished an alley-oop from Johnson to make it 39-36.
The Deacs rattled off another quick 6-0 run out of a timeout.
- Johnson sank two free throws out of the timeout, giving the Deacs a 41-39 lead.
- Johnson added a fast-break layup two trips later to extend the lead to 43-39.
- Harris recorded a tough layup to give the Deacs a six-point advantage with 9:47 to go.
After a short spurt by Duke, Harris made a pull-up jumper to give the Deacs a 47-43 lead.
Duke went on a 10-0 run.
Hildreth made both free throws to make it 53-49 with 2:49 remaining.
Reid sank one from the charity stripe to cut the Duke lead down to 56-50 with 2:06 left.
Reid added a pair of free throws to make it 56-52 with 1:02 left to play.
- Spillers added a layup the next trip down to make it 59-54 with 43.7 seconds remaining.
Sallis slammed it home to make it 61-56 with 18 seconds left.
The Deacs' comeback efforts came up just short, falling to the Blue Devils 63-56.

Stats of the Game

The Demon Deacons held Duke to its lowest field goal percentage of the season, holding the Blue Devils to 36.8 percent from the floor, including only 28.6 percent in the second-half.
Juke Harris finished with 14 points – his second-highest point total of 2024-25.
Wake Forest outperformed Duke in paint points (26-20).

Coach's Comments
"Really proud of the way that we played in the second half. We didn't play well in the first half. Credit to them because they had us down by 13 at the half. We didn't finish really well, but I felt okay because I knew we just had some things to fix offensively that weren't that hard to fix. We fixed those things and came out in the second half and played really well. We had five kills in the second half. We went on a 17-4 run to start the second half and had the building pretty loud. Credit to Jon [Scheyer] and his team for staying composed. We had a couple of times where we could have taken our lead up to eight or more and we couldn't do it. They jumped into a zone like they did last year and we just didn't execute very well against it. They got stops and they converted on those stops. They were having a hard time getting stops in man, so credit to them. They continued to get stops and score. Mason [Gillis] was a big factor in the game. He plays really hard, he's a good rebounder, and he made a couple big threes that were huge. I was very impressed with him. Obviously they have [Cooper] Flagg and [Kon] Knueppel. They have a really good team and Jon has done a really good job with them. Everybody gets caught up in talent, but you still have to coach the talent, and he's doing a really good job at coaching that talented team. They come at you in so many different ways, but we were good defensively throughout the game. We're talking about a team that shoots 50 percent from the field and 40 percent from three, which is just off the charts, and we guarded them well. It caused them a lot of trouble. We just didn't execute offensively when we needed to in that stretch where we had that six-point lead, and that cost us." - head coach Steve Forbes

Up Next
Wake Forest heads to Kentucky next week to visit No. 25 Louisville on Tuesday (Jan. 28).

Tip is set for 7 p.m. and the game will air live on ACC Network.

Next Event

Team Stats

Juke Harris

Hunter Sallis

Efton Reid III

Tre'Von Spillers

Players Mentioned

Juke Harris

Ty-Laur Johnson

Efton Reid III

Hunter Sallis

Tre'Von Spillers

Wake Forest Athletics