If you weren’t concerned with which team won, that was probably an incredibly entertaining game to watch. This was a back and forth affair that went right down to the wire, with both Miami and Wake trading baskets and leads for nearly the entire game. Unfortunately, we do care who won, so none of that really matters. The only thing Wake fans will care about is that the Deacs dropped another home game to a team they could have beaten, and they now sit at 10-6 overall and 1-2 in the ACC.
The Deacs started this game red hot from behind the arc, making their first 5 3-point attempts to build a quick 7 point lead in the first half. That caused Miami to switch up to an extended 2-3 zone, where the guards extended way out on the perimeter and the big men stayed under the goal. That left a huge gap in the middle of the court for the Wake offense to work with, but the Wake big men were not aggressive in trying to score when they got the ball in the middle of the zone. The Canes were basically daring Spillers and Schwieger to shoot from around 10 feet, and most of the time they didn’t even look to the basket and just dribbled the ball back to the perimeter. The zone slowed Wake down a little, but the Deacs still had one of their best offensive halves of the season—Wake finished the first half shooting 52% from the floor, 70% from 3, and only turned it over 6 times. The only problem was that despite all that, they still trailed at the half by 1 point.
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The second half was about as even as it gets. One team would go on a run, and the other team would answer right back. By the end of the game, Miami and Wake had tied and traded leads 15 times. With 45 seconds remaining and the game tied at 77, the Deacs had the ball and a chance to take control of the game. Instead, they threw the ball away on the inbound and gave up a wide open put back layup to Miami with just under 30 seconds remaining. If that wasn’t bad enough, Juke Harris had a chance to tie the game with 11 seconds left at the free throw line, and he missed both shots to effectively end the game. That was not the first time this season that Wake played a great game only to throw it away at the end.
The difference in this one was the play of the big men between the two teams. Miami’s Malik Reneau finished with 18 points and 6 rebounds, while Ernest Udeh Jr. added 10 points and 13 rebounds. That is a stark contrast to the Deacs, where Omaha Biliew, Cooper Schwieger, and Tre’Von Spillers combined for 6 points on 2-11 shooting and just 9 rebounds. No team is going to win very often when they are outscored 42-20 in the paint and get out-rebounded by 17. I think we all kind of knew that rebounding would be an issue going into the season, but I don’t know if anyone thought it would be this bad—the fact that Wake played a full 40 minute game and only finished with 20 total rebounds is not a good sign for the rest of the season.
This is not a bad team, but the Deacs just can’t get out of their own way when it matters the most. The season could look completely different right now with just 2 made free throws in the Michigan game and 2 more tonight. The way things are going, Wake is probably going to have to upset UNC or Duke on the road for any chance of post season play. They will get a chance to do just that on Saturday in Chapel Hill.
Go Deacs.
