Wake Forest Crushed By Virginia Tech 46-84 as Struggles Continue

Wake Forest’s struggles continue as the Deacs were completely run out of the gym by the Virginia Tech Hokies by a score of 46-84. The blowout loss is the 4th straight double digit loss for Wake as the Deacs drop to 6-13 overall and 3-13 in the ACC. The 38 point margin is Wake’s worst conference loss since falling to UNC 95-57 back in 2019 and VT’s biggest ACC margin of victory in program history.

At this point, I’m fresh out of clichés and positive takeaways for games where Wake trailed by nearly 40 points for much of the 2nd half. Simply put, this was just a beat down. The Hokies jumped out to a 14-3 lead in the first 6 minutes and the Wake deficit just kept growing and growing until at one point in the 2nd half, Wake Forest trailed by 43 points, 39-82.

Virginia Tech dominated every aspect of this game. The Hokies finished the game shooting 31-58 (53%) from the floor, including 13-24 (53%) from 3. VT scored 34 points in the paint and outrebounded the Deacs 38 to 34. VT was led by Keve Aluma, who finished the game with 23 points on 9-11 (5-5 from 3) shooting and 8 rebounds. Tyrece Radford, who led the Hokies with 20 points in the Wake’s first game against VT, added 15 points on 5-7 shooting in his 2nd game back after suspension. Jonah Antonio was the lone Deac in double figures with 12 points on 4-9 shooting from beyond the arc.

It should be pretty obvious by now that the Deacs have issues that aren’t going to be solved this season—that’s not anybody’s fault. After the firing of Danny Manning and the transfers of Chaundee Brown and Olivier Sarr, Steve Forbes was basically forced to throw together a roster of available players in a matter of a couple of months. He didn’t get meet his team until almost August and lost a whole month of time in December due to the pandemic. After all of that, it’s hard to be too upset at the outcome of the past month.

There’s no way to sugarcoat how awful this game was, so I won’t try. It was bad. Very bad. The Deacs have a ways to go before they can start contending consistently with the top teams in the ACC. We didn’t get to this point in a year, so it’s going to take time for Forbes to turn this thing around. As the saying goes, “A great leap forward often requires taking two steps back.”