Basketball is hard.
It's getting hard to have to continually write the same recap, especially when the recap has a terrible ending for the team you love. Wake Forest played pretty well for a while, but they failed to play well for all 40 minutes, and as a result they lost by 20 points to Florida State, despite being only a 2.5 point underdog in this one and playing at home. Wake was tied with the Seminoles at 48 with 13:50 remaining in the half, but then got completely outclassed over the remainder of the game.With the loss, the Deacs drop to 10-13 on the season, including just 1-10 in ACC play. The Florida State Seminoles improve to 16-7 on the year, including a 6-5 ACC record.
The schedule won't get much easier, as Wake's next three contests are on the road. Georgia Tech, North Carolina State, and Pittsburgh are all better teams than Wake Forest, and Wake is probably looking at a 1-13 record in conference play.
Wake allowed Florida State to grab far too many offensive rebounds and open three point shots. There were a number of times when Wake Forest played good initial defense, but then gave up offensive rebounds and allowed the Seminoles to get easy second chance points. When Florida State buried Wake for good, they did it behind many WIDE OPEN looks for deep. Winning teams simply cannot allow ACC players to have wide open looks from deep.
Florida State had great balanced scoring in Saturday's contest. The Seminoles had five players score in double-figures, plus two additional players (Devon Bookert and Benji Bell) who scored nine points. Florida State had 17 more field goal attempts than the Deacs due to offensive rebounds and limiting turnovers. Those are fundamental things, but things that Wake Forest isn't currently doing.
One positive for Wake Forest today was the play of Cornelius Hudson, who has played with confidence over the past two games. The sophomore scored 17 points on just 11 field goal attempts. I also thought that Codi Miller-McIntyre looked more like his old self. The senior scored 12 points, dished out 7 assists, and grabbed 4 rebounds, while turning the ball over just once. Bryant Crawford has 13 points, but also had 5 bad turnovers.
It's getting difficult to continue watching, but we will keep watching and see how the team performs over the remainder of Danny Manning's second season at Wake Forest.
Florida State will travel to Syracuse on Thursday. Wake Forest will travel to Georgia Tech on Wednesday.
