Wake Forest men’s basketball has been taking care of its early season business, this time with an 80-63 win over cross-Triad foe North Carolina A&T.
The Demon Deacons traded blows early on with the Aggies, although the visitors would dance back out to a seven-point lead behind three-pointers from the Aggies’ Landon Glasper.
Wake Forest bounced back, though. The Demon Deacons answered with a 12-2 run and entered halftime with a six-point lead.
Each of the Demon Deacons in the starting lineup finished in double digits, including Tre’Von Spillers, who had a 15-point, 16-rebound performance. Spillers’ 16 rebounds represented the most individual rebounds in a game in the Steve Forbes Era.
Forbes’ squad separated themselves early on in the second half, going on a 8-0 run out of the gate, including a 3-pointer from Parker Friedrichsen, who scored in double digits (10) for the first time since last March (12 at Virginia Tech).
After building up to a 20-point lead with ten minutes remaining, the Demon Deacons traded buckets the rest of the way, finishing at a final score of 80-64.
Despite the scoreline, the Demon Deacons’ 3-point shooting remains subpar, going 6-23 (26.1%) from deep, and are 15-62 (24.1%) on the season. For reference, Wake Forest converted 36.4% of 3-pointers last season, good enough for No. 41 in the country.
“We’re not going to shy away from our identity,” Friedrichsen said postgame. “We just have to keep shooting, and they’re gonna fall.”
For Coach Forbes, the offense ran the way it was supposed to regarding shots from the perimeter. Instead, Forbes saw another area that Wake Forest needed to improve.
“We encourage our guys to shoot catch-and-shoot 3s off of penetration,” Forbes said. “The biggest problem on offense were our 19 turnovers.”
“We’ve got to work together to limit [the turnovers],” Spillers said postgame. The 19 turnovers represented the most in a game since a loss at Florida State last January (20).
The Demon Deacons look ahead at their first power-conference clash against the Michigan Wolverines in the 2024 Deacon-Wolverine Challenge at Greensboro’s First Horizon Coliseum. Tip-off is set for 1 p.m. and can be found on ESPN2.
