ACC Tournament Semifinals: No. 5 Clemson @ No. 1 Wake Forest, 7 PM (Watch ESPN)

The No. 1 ACC Tournament seed (and national number one) Wake Forest will host No. 5 seed (national number five as well) Clemson in the ACC Tournament Semifinals on Wednesday night at 7 PM at Spry Stadium in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Wake Forest enters the game with a 16-1-1 record (7-0-1 in ACC play), while Clemson stands at 12-4-1 (4-4-0 in ACC).

The top ranked Demon Deacons knocked off No. 9 seed Virginia Tech 3-0 in quarterfinals play on Sunday. The Tigers have won two games already in the ACC Tournament, defeating No. 12 seed Syracuse 4-3 on penalty kicks to advance to the quarterfinals, before upsetting the No. 4 seeded Duke Blue Devils in Durham 1-0 to move on to the semis.

This will be a rematch of the September 29th thriller in Winston-Salem that saw then ranked No. 2 Wake Forest defeat No. 6 Clemson 3-2 in double overtime on a Steven Echevarria goal in the 103rd minute. 4,781 fans were on hand to watch that game and I expect Spry to be rocking again tonight.

The winner of the game tonight will face off against the winner of No. 6 Virginia and No. 7 Notre Dame, both teams stirring the pot a bit in the Tournament by upsetting the 2 and 3 seeds in the quarterfinals. The finals will take place in Charleston, SC on Sunday, November 12th at noon at MUSC Health Stadium.

Tonight’s game will air on ACC Network Extra (Watch ESPN) and will feature two teams with a lot of talent on the field.

It was announced on Tuesday that Wake Forest pulled off the trifecta for regular season awards. Head coach Bobby Muuss won his unprecedented third straight ACC Coach of the Year honor, while Jon Bakero won Offensive Player of the Year, and Kevin Politz won Defensive Player of the Year.

In addition to sweeping the Coach and Player of the year honors, the Deacs also placed midfielder Ema Twumasi on the First Team, while Kevin Politz was pick to the Second Team and Luis Argudo and Brad Dunwell were third team members.

Freshmen Omir Fernandez and Brandon Servania each made the All-Freshman Team as well.

This was the second undefeated ACC season in three years for Coach Muuss, who has the phenomenal record of 52-7-6 overall, and is 18-1-5 in ACC play.

The key for Clemson tonight will be to see if it can break the Demon Deacons’ shutout streak, which is now at six games and a total of 603 minutes and 24 seconds long. The defense has not allowed a goal since October 6th, a 2-1 win at North Carolina. Since then the Deacs, led by goalkeeper Andreu Cases Mundet have outscored the last six opponents 20-0.

Clemson is led by a duo of All-ACC first team players in Diego Campos and Oliver Shannon. Campos leads the Tigers in points with 28 (10 goals, 8 assists), and is second in the ACC in points only to Wake Forest’s own Jon Bakero who has 39 points (13 goals, 13 assists).

If you are in Winston-Salem and have the night off then I would highly suggest you make it out to Spry to support the best soccer team in the country. Wake Forest is attempting to win a it’s second ACC Tournament in a row (and third overall) after a 3-1 victory over Clemson in the finals last season.