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Wake Forest beats No. 4 Duke as Blue Devils struggle to score again

Duke v Wake Forest

during their game at Joel Coliseum on March 5, 2014 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Streeter Lecka

Wake Forest has made a habit of giving top teams in the ACC a tough time in Winston-Salem, and that was no different for No. 4 Duke on Wednesday night.

The Blue Devils were down for most of the first half, entered the break trailing 36-33 and couldn’t seem to get any separation from the Demon Deacons until Jabari Parker’s dunk with 5:45 left on the clock. That put Duke up 66-59, their largest lead of the game.

And it was also apparently the spark Wake Forest needed for their finishing kick.

Parker would pick up two fouls in the next 36 seconds and Wake Forest would go on a 17-0 run over the next five minutes en route to an 82-72 win over the Blue Devils. It completed Wake’s home sweep over the teams in the triangle (UNC, Duke, N.C. State) and may be enough to get head coach Jeff Bzdelik one more year at the helm of the program.

For Duke, this is now the third ugly ACC loss they’ve suffered, dropping games at Wake, Notre Dame and Clemson. This is also the second time in recent weeks that they’ve had fits offensively when a team threw a zone at them.

This is what Duke’s offense produced on the ten possessions they had while Wake was on that 17-0 run:


  • Turnover
  • Turnover
  • Missed three
  • Turnover
  • Missed layup
  • Missed three
  • Missed three
  • Turnover
  • Missed three
  • Missed three

It sounds bad when you read it. It looked worse when you watched it. Duke simply cannot have lulls like that offensively, because they are not a good defensive basketball team. They’re better than they were in December -- and they’re probably better than they were a month ago -- but that doesn’t mean they’re Florida or Arizona.

The same thing happened down the stretch against North Carolina. It happened throughout the game in the losses to Clemson and Notre Dame. They have trouble getting the ball to the high post. They settle for threes, which isn’t a good thing when they shoot 6-for-27 from beyond the arc. They lose any and all ball movement. It’s just not what we expect out of this Duke team.

And it’s something that is going to have to be rectified in the next two weeks, because it’s going to be hard to trust the Blue Devils to make it through four straight tournament games without hitting one of those lulls.