I promised to take this recap, and now I really wish I hadn’t. Wake Forest had a 10 point lead with 6:05 left. From there, it was an utterly inexplicable 27-12 run for Boston College to finish the game, including absolutely awful defense, the worst free throw shooting I think I’ve ever seen, and utterly terrible play in the clutch, something honestly out of character for this team the entire year. It makes no sense, none, and I’m seriously baffled. I wouldn’t even say it was particularly bad coaching; there’s only so much a coach can do for the players, and Steve Forbes schemed well enough that Boston College didn’t score a single basket from the field for over 8 minutes (13:34 to 5:06). The problem was that Wake Forest went 54.2% from the free throw line for a team that, through the entire year, was darn sure better than that, and ACC Player of the Year Alondes Williams finished with 17 points on 14 shots and 5 turnovers, including a charge in the final seconds of regulation when Wake Forest had the ball in a tie game with the shot clock off at the end of regulation. Wake Forest was better in points in the paint, bench points, fast break points...but it didn’t matter.
The bench was a spark for Wake Forest, with Cameron Hildreth providing great stabilizing energy and Damari Monsanto continuing his sharp shooting, going 4-6 from deep. Jake LaRavia was incredible offensively other than 2 major blemishes, going 9-13 from the field for 21 points, and 1-2 from deep, but a woeful 2-5 from the line and racking up an absolutely brutal 6 turnovers. That means that between Williams and LaRavia, Wake’s two best players had 11 of the team’s 17 turnovers.
This just doesn’t make sense to me. Steve Forbes can coach. He can coach in pressure situations. He orchestrated the greatest single-season turnaround for any school in ACC history in the regular season. So what happened and why? It’s not a young team, Boston College didn’t shoot red hot from deep or anything, Wake just...screwed it up. They just choked it away. It’s not even like the team has been bad at free throws this year. Turnovers are a different story; we need a pure point guard more than absolutely anything, and Wake has had a rough season with giveaways, but the free throws today are just the definition of inexplicable.
NIT here we come, I guess...
Go Deacs.