Wake Forest downs No. 14 Duke behind balanced team effort

Wake Forest stunned No. 14 Duke on Tuesday night, leading for over 36 minutes of gameplay in a dominant 81-70 win. Tyree Appleby and Cameron Hildreth led the way for the Deacs, combining for 34 points. Hildreth added nine rebounds, and Appleby chipped in eight assists. The victory was much needed after a disheartening loss to Rutgers last weekend.

“I’m really proud of my team,” Wake Forest head coach Steve Forbes said. “You go to Rutgers and get your butt kicked, that’s life. It’s how you bounce back. I thought they did a really good job of coming back and preparing to play Duke.”

“Credit to Wake,” Duke head coach Jon Scheyer said. “They were the hungrier team. They outplayed us. I thought their sense of urgency coming off their game on Saturday, you could really tell, and for us we didn’t have that.”

There were several points throughout the second half where Duke threatened to make a big run and mount a comeback effort. At one point, the Blue Devils cut the Wake Forest lead to seven points with just over three minutes remaining. The Deacs never let up, though, which was the Achilles’ heel in some of the team’s losses earlier this season.

“I don’t think we survived,” Forbes said. “I think we won the game. I think that’s what we’ve tried to do. We’ve tried to survive. I told the guys that we don’t play to survive, we play to win. You’ve got to play. They’re not going to give it to you.”

“We put ourselves in situations in practice where we get pushed every single day,” Hildreth added. “We never take it easy in practice. We always watch film, we always learn from our mistakes. We had a chip on our shoulder and did well today.”

One of the keys to Wake Forest’s victory over the Blue Devils was the rebounding battle — the Deacs controlled the boards, out-rebounding Duke 37-29 overall and 28-22 on the defensive end. Wake also excelled at getting to the free throw line, playing their way into the bonus with over 12 minutes left in the second half.

“Tonight, I thought we did the best job we could rebounding the ball against them,” Forbes said. “That was huge. They didn’t get a lot of points off of offensive rebounds. And in the second half, we got into the double-bonus, we haven’t been able to do that in a while. That hurt them.”

Wake Forest also debuted a balanced scoring attack — all five starters finished in double figures. That metric is indicative of the way Steve Forbes’ group played tonight: together.

“We’re a team,” Forbes said. “We’re not a bunch of individuals. And they feed off each other, like any good team does. We have great balance, right? It’s not like we had to rely on one guy, two guys to go play great for us to win. We need everybody.”

With the victory, Wake Forest likely earned a proverbial Quad 1 win, a crucial bullet point as the team builds its NCAA Tournament resumé. Even so, Forbes knows there’s a long road of ACC play ahead, and every game counts.

“We’ve got 18 more of these [ACC games] to go,” Forbes said. “So, enjoy it. And then you move on. Usually, you have a 24-hour rule. We have a few days off, so maybe we’ll take 48 hours on this one. We’ll rack them up and try to win as many as we can.”