Wake Forest vs Clemson: GIF Recap

Wake Forest traveled to Clemson on Saturday in search of the much desired ACC road win, and man did this one hurt. The Deacs led this one for about 37 minutes, and played well up until about the 4 minute timeout. They then went onto to score 1 point in the last 4 minutes. Clemson led this game for all of about 25 seconds, but unfortunately those 25 seconds included when the clock hit 0:00.

For this first 36 minutes the offense wasn't too bad. There were some points where Wake Forest's offense took some questionable shots, which resulted in 30% shooting for the game. The ball movement was still good and the Deacs were able to hit the open man multiple times for wide open looks.

Clemson made several runs throughout this game to decrease Wake Forest's lead, but it seemed like Wake found a way to answer each time until the end of the game.

Clemson went on a quick 7-0 run with about 16:00 left in the game to close the gap to just 5 points. The Deacs would stop that run when Dinos Mitoglou drained an open 3 from the corner to increase the lead to 8 points.

Clemson slowly crept back and then went on a small 5-1 run with about 7 minutes left to finally tie the game at 49 on a massive slam dunk from Jaron Blossomgame.

The Deacs would again answer this run from Clemson by scoring on the following 2 possessions on a layup from Codi Miller-McIntyre and an easy basket from Devin Thomas to push the lead back to 4 points.

Codi finished the game with 14 points, 6 rebounds and 4 assists. Devin finished the game with another double-double, scoring 17 points and grabbing 12 rebounds. This game would start to go downhill for Wake Forest at this point.

Late in the game, the Deacs led 54-56, but just couldn't get another basket to close out the game. Clemson started double teaming Thomas in the post, and the offense struggled.The shot selection was not great during this period of the game either.

Wake's possessions late included: a turnover, a contested three pointer, a floating CMM pull jumper, and a layup that unfortunately got blocked, all in the last 2 minutes of the game. Clemson was able to tie the game at 56-56 on the free throw line due to Wake Forest's lack of scoring.

With the game tied 56 all, Clemson had one last possession to score. With time winding down, Rod Hall drove the lane and forced up a shot. The shot was no good, but when Greg McClinton and Devin Thomas both went for the rebound, they knocked the ball right into the hands of Josh Smith who would make the game winning layup with 0.5 seconds left on the clock.

This final play was just unfortunate for the Deacs, but the possessions leading up to this play were where the game was lost. You can't finish a game scoring 1 point in the final 4 minutes and expect to win.  The Deacs lost another close road game in this one, which hurts substantially more because Wake Forest led almost the entire game. Eventually this team will figure out how to close games on the road, and when they do, the rest of the ACC better watch out.