It wasn’t pretty, but the Deacs moved to 6-2 after taking down the Northeastern Huskies by a score of 86-73.
The first half was definitely not the Wake Forest team we have come to expect this season. That is sort of expected since it is the day after Thanksgiving, but the Deacs just seemed kind of lackadaisical and weren’t really playing with any urgency at all. The Huskies, on the other hand, suddenly learned how to shoot and couldn’t miss from the floor. After shooting under 27% from the 3-point line for the season, Northeastern was red hot in the first half, making 6 of their first 9 attempts from deep (61%). Freshman Miles Newton, who entered the game averaging 3.7 points per game on 38% shooting from the floor and 18% shooting from beyond the arc, scored 19 points in the opening frame, hitting 7 of his 10 shots, including 4-5 from beyond the arc. The Deacs were playing as good as we have seen offensively, but because of the lack of effort on the other end of the floor, they led by just 1 point at halftime, 45-44.
Wake did a much better job in the second half of amping up the defensive pressure and causing a lot of issues for the Northeastern offense. The Deacs forced 13 turnovers in the second half alone and converted them into 16 points to retake a double-digit lead with about 13 minutes left in the game after a 7-0 run.
Wake eventually pushed the lead out to as much as 15 points, but the Huskies never allowed Wake to hit the knockout blow to put the game away. Every time the Deacs got the lead back up to around 15, Northeastern would score a couple of quick buckets to keep the game within striking distance. Ultimately, the Deacs would win by 13 points.
Wake was once again led by the duo of Tre’von Spillers and Juke Harris. Harris had a poor shooting day at just 3-11 from the field, but he made 10 of his 11 free throw attempts to compensate. Spillers was once again ultra efficient, shooting 8-11 from the floor, and added 10 rebounds for the double-double. The third leading scorer for the Deacs was Denver transfer Sebastian Akins with 13 points on 6-8 shooting—Akins played 22 minutes filling in for the injured Nate Calmese, who had surgery on his injured nose on Wednesday. Calmese played 18 minutes, but it seemed pretty clear his mask was giving him trouble—he finished with 7 points. The Deacs also got 35 points from the bench today, another sign that the depth of this team might actually be as advertised.
This was certainly not what I was expecting after the Deacs blew the doors off Campbell in their last outing, but given the day and time of the game, I think it’s understandable. Northeastern definitely looked like a better team than the Camels, but a lot of the difference can be chalked up to variance in 3-point shooting—Campbell finished 4-26 from beyond the arc on Tuesday night, whereas the Huskies were an uncommon 10-18 from downtown, their best shooting performance of the season by a large margin. Regardless, it never felt like the Deacs were ever in any real danger of losing this one, and they still managed to pull off a double-digit win.
The Deacs now have 3 days off before facing Oklahoma in the SEC challenge and West Virginia in a neutral site game. So far, Wake really only has a couple of close losses and a win over Memphis to hang their hat on, so grabbing one or both of the games next week would be big for their resume. Next week at this time, we will probably have a much better picture of just how good Wake is this season.
Go Deacs!
