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A luckier bounce of the ball here or there, and the Wake Forest Demon Deacons could be entering Tuesday night’s game in South Bend against the Notre Dame Fighting Irish fresh off a victory over No. 2 ranked Virginia in Charlottesville on Saturday. But down one in the final seconds, the Demon Deacons turned the ball over and were unable to get off a final shot.
Regardless, anyone looking at tomorrow night’s game as a cakewalk for a talented and very good Notre Dame team needs to think again. Wake is 3-2 in their last five, and while the 4-9 record in the ACC might not look that good, the fact is the Demon Deacons are playing solid basketball now as they continue to be molded by first-year head coach and college basketball legend Danny Manning.
Wake Forest (12-14 overall) is in the middle of a three-game stretch against top-10 teams, as the Demon Deacons’ next game is also against Virginia, this time at home. To succeed against tough competition, Wake Forest will need continued production from Konstantinos Mitroglou. The 6-foot-10 forward from Greece was a matchup nightmare for Virginia, as his ability to hit three-pointers not only improved the deep threat portion of Wake’s offense, but it moved Virginia’s post defenders out of the lane, allowing for drives by guards and open looks down low for teammates.
Mitroglou has hit 21-of-36 (58.3 percent) of his three-point shots over Wake Forest’s last five games and is one of the main reasons why the Demon Deacons are playing better. However, Notre Dame knows all about hitting three-pointers, so perhaps, given what the Fighting Irish see in practice every day, they may be better equipped to stop Mitroglou than were the Cavaliers on Saturday, when the big man hit 6-for-12 from outside — the second straight game he has connected a half-dozen times from three-point range.
Notre Dame needs no counsel on outside shooting. The Fighting Irish hit 40 percent of their shots from beyond the arc and average nearly nine makes a game. The problem for the Demon Deacons, however, is that Notre Dame can shoot from anywhere. The Fighting Irish are second in the nation in field-goal shooting at 51.2 percent. Combine that with Notre Dame’s ability to take care of the basketball (15 assists per game to just nine turnovers) and you have a very tough defensive assignment for the Demon Deacons.
Ranked No. 10 this week, the Fighting Irish (22-4, 10-3) will find themselves in a battle on Tuesday against what should now be a pretty confident Wake Forest team. But while the Demon Deacons have a couple players who can cause issues offensively in Mitroglou and leading scorer Codi Miller-McIntyre (14.2 PPG), Notre Dame’s offensive depth and the star power of Jerian Grant is going to eventually be too much for Wake Forest.
Prediction: Notre Dame 72, Wake Forest 61
Ed Morgans is an ACC Basketball Writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @writered21 and add him to your network on Google.
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