Wake got a rare ACC road win in a sluggish game against Pittsburgh on Wednesday night.
Wake Forest (11-17, 4-12) got its sixth conference road win in the past 9 years after defeating Pittsburgh (8-21, 0-16) in a 63-57 victory.
This was, to put it bluntly, a battle of two subpar teams. Wake is better than Pitt, there’s no doubt about that, but there were a lot of head shaking moments across the board all night.
Doral Moore was pretty much unstoppable for much of the night, finishing with 13 points and 9 rebounds, and when Wake remembered that he was in the game it was great offense by going in to him. He did fail to reach double-digit rebounds for the first time in 10 games.
The Panthers were led by Jared Wilson-Frame and Marcus Carr with 11 points.
Pittsburgh actually led at the half 28-27, but as it has done so often this year, just could not get anything at all going in the second half, starting with a lot of misses in a row from the field in the second half, many of which were wide open shots.
Despite the win for the Deacs this was not exactly a game that will win over a fan base that is chomping at the bit. The same problems that have been there all year continued to pop up tonight, particularly the miserable defense that left many Panthers wide open throughout the game.
Fortunately for Danny Manning and the Deacs, Pittsburgh was simply unable to convert on the open shots and showed why it has been a long year for Kevin Stallings and the Panthers.
I haven’t really written a lot on Pitt this year because I don’t like to kick a team when it’s down, but the Panthers are one of the worst teams in ACC history, ranking 230th in KenPom before this result.
The coaching strategy down the stretch to keep Doral Moore out was just mind-boggling. I understand he is not good at free throws, but he is also Wake Forest’s best interior defender. He rarely played in the final minute.
Not a lot really to say about this one other than Wake Forest took care of business on the road, which has not been said much at all in the past few years.
The Deacs return to action on Saturday at 3 PM when it hosts Notre Dame, while Pitt will host Virginia (yikes) on Saturday
