Pitt takes down Wake Forest behind historic shooting night

The Deacs fell to 14-7 and 6-4 in the ACC

Wake Forest dropped their second-straight game on Wednesday night, falling 81-79 on the road to Pitt behind the Panthers’ torrid performance from behind the arc. Jeff Capel’s group drilled 18 threes, the most in a single game in school history, eight of which came from standout forward Blake Hinson. In the end, the historic shooting performance was too much for the Demon Deacons to overcome.

“Congrats to Pitt,” Wake Forest head coach Steve Forbes said after the game. “They played an outstanding offensive game. They’re a very unselfish team. They’ve got good size, those guys all shoot the ball with confidence. I really like Jeff [Capel]’s team, I think they’re really good. Credit to Pitt. You guys could stand in the gym by yourself and not make [those] shots.”

For the second consecutive game, Wake Forest fell behind by double digits in the first half, at one point trailing as many as 15. The Deacs found themselves playing from behind once again, which made overcoming Pitt’s offensive clinic all the more difficult.

“There’s no reason to start games like that defensively,” Forbes said. “Offensively, we’ll probably look back and see a lot of shots blown at the rim again. It’s frustrating, because we have a good basketball team. It’s not [the] time of year to be doing that. That’s something you do early in the year. To me, it’s a lot of effort, and that’s on me. I don’t like playing from behind, I want to be ahead.”

Wake Forest gave up 18 three-pointers and 81 points to a Pittsburgh team that was only averaging 74.1 per game going into the contest. The Panthers also had 22 team assists on 28 made field goals — Pittsburgh played a phenomenal offensive game, but there was plenty of room for improvement on the defensive end for Wake Forest.

“We can’t come out and defend like that in the first half,” Forbes said. “That’s on me, I just don’t think we played hard enough. They did a really good job early of getting the ball quick out of the ball screen and getting across the midline. Our guards did a really poor job of guarding the tag, tagging the roller and getting back out. You have to do both. We’ve got to clean up our ball screen defense.”

Part of what hurt the Demon Deacons down the stretch was their free-throw shooting — they went just 11/18 from the line and Cameron Hildreth missed three foul shots in the final two minutes. Though those points may have changed the complexion of the game, they aren’t solely to blame for the final outcome.

“It’s part of the game,” Forbes said. “I’m not going to blame anyone for missing free throws. Cam made two big free throws to beat Wisconsin. Nobody’s hurting worse than he’s hurting. He feels bad, but there’s a lot of plays that can change a game.”

After trailing by 10 points at half for the second-straight game, Wake once again fought back, even taking a one-point lead late in the second half. However, trailing by two with six seconds remaining, Tyree Appleby’s game-winning three bounced off the rim and out.

“[We] fought hard,” Forbes said. “Like against Virginia, [we] got down, came back, this time took the lead. Had a chance to win it — last play, high screen and roll. When Ty shot it, he got a good look. I take that every time. I have no problem with the shot that Ty took.”

This is the second time this season that Wake Forest has dropped consecutive games, the other being when they fell to Clemson and LSU back-to-back in early December. The Deacs responded the first time with a buzzer-beating win over Appalachian State in the Joel. The mission for Steve Forbes and co. is clear when the NC State Wolfpack come to Winston-Salem on Saturday.

“We’ve got to score one more point than NC State,” Forbes said.

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