Deacs Shoot Lights Out, Beat Colonels 75-48

While nobody was going to mistake this performance for a solid effort in the middle of the conference season, Wake Forest looked commanding at times and streaky at others en route to a 75-48 victory over the Nicholls State Colonels. In their first ever game against a team from the Southland Conference, the Demon Deacons simply overpowered Nicholls who was unable to compete with a taller, more athletic Atlantic Coast Conference opponent.

Nicholls was able to keep the game close early behind a quick start from Liam Thomas, who contributed the Colonels first eight points, but the Deacs quickly turned a 12-8 lead to a 28-14 margin before stretching it out even more to 41-18 by the five minute mark of the first half. Devin Thomas was able to get inside and draw contact to get to the charity stripe consistently while Codi Miller-McIntyre exhibited explosive bursts in spurts to spark a solid offensive effort by the Demon Deacons. All-in-all Wake had nine players score in the first half with freshman Mitchell Wilbekin leading the way with nine points. Entering the half Wake secured a safe 47-20 lead and it would only get worse for Nicholls.

Both teams got out to a slower start in the first few minutes of the second half, but Wake jumped out to a 58-24 lead following a solid performance by Madison Jones, Darius Leonard, and Dinos Mitiglou aggressively getting down the lane. Nicholls continued to be unable to stop Wake's overt aggressiveness and paid the price as Wake got to the line a whopping 36 times, converting 28 of those opportunities. Following a Wilbekin three from the corner with just under ten minutes left and an easy look from two feet for Dinos, Wake took a resounding 65-28 lead with 8:53 left. At this point Manning started to get more lineups into the game with the walk-ons getting an early appearance.

For the game, Thomas' double-double streak was broken as he played sparingly in the second twenty minutes ultimately finishing with seven points and six rebounds. Similarly CMM did not get a lot of minutes and finished with eight points, three assists, and two rebounds. Freshmen Cornelius Hudson and Mitchell Wilbekinled all Wake players with 12 points a piece. Thomas and McClinton both hauled in six rebounds and 16 Demon Deacons saw action in total. The game was delayed several minutes after a power outage at the Joel, presumably from Wake's hot shooting.

Wake returns to action on Wednesday against Mount St. Mary's in Winston-Salem at the LJVM.