Virginia hands Wake Forest first home loss of season

Wake Forest falls to 14-6 and 6-3 in the ACC with the defeat

Wake Forest’s comeback bid fell short on Saturday afternoon, as No. 10 Virginia outlasted the Deacs 76-67. Steve Forbes’ group fell behind by as many as 19 points in the first half following a 17-0 UVA run, but clawed to within a single point in the second period. In the end, though, Wake Forest just couldn’t get over the hump.

“I think they scored on eight straight possessions in the first half, a 22-point run there,” Wake Forest head coach Steve Forbes said. “And so we’re playing from behind the rest of the game. It’s hard to do that against an elite basketball team. We had three chances to take the lead, we just couldn’t get it done. I just felt like we were right there. We didn’t execute offensively to get the lead and see where it could go from there. It just didn’t happen.”

“Down the stretch, I think our decision making as a team wasn’t great,” Andrew Carr added. “But we can capitalize off it. We got practice and we’ve got two big games coming up next week.”

Though Wake Forest couldn’t come away with the win, the Deacs showed impressive resilience to work their way back into the game against an elite Virginia team. The game could have slipped away when Wake trailed by nearly 20 points in the first half, but instead, Wake Forest settled in and gave themselves a legitimate shot to win. The Deacs trailed by 10 at half but turned up the intensity on defense in the second period, forcing seven UVA cough-ups compared to none in the first 20 minutes.

“I thought our fight was tremendous,” Forbes said. “I’m proud of them for that. To our credit, we kept going because it could have gotten a little ugly there. They were rolling. I had to burn a couple of timeouts. We found our way. We started to finish, started to get some stops. I thought they had a hard time guarding us in transition in the second half. Once we could get stops and run, we were going. All the credit goes to Virginia, but the fight was awesome.”

Damari Monsanto shouldered much of the offensive burden for the Demon Deacons, scoring a career-high 25 points including seven big three-pointers. It was Monsanto’s shooting that kept the Deacs competitive in the first half when Virginia caught fire and hit nine straight field goals.

“That was the only thing that kept us in it,” Forbes said. “I thought our offense stunk. He made some incredibly hard shots. I thought they had us discombobulated. Damari made some big-time shots. He did in the second half. He’s playing at a pretty high level right now.”

For Virginia, the story of the game was the three-point shot. After missing their first six attempts from beyond the arc, the Cavaliers nailed seven-straight deep balls and opened up a huge lead. Tony Bennett’s group finished with 15 triples in the nine-point road victory. Armaan Franklin led the way with 25 points and five deep balls. The Hoos’ red-hot shooting was too much for Wake Forest to overcome.

“Everyone talks about their defense, but I think they’re really good on offense,” Forbes said. “I guess they showed it today, when they banged 15 threes on us. [Armaan] Franklin got them going. But they spread it out, it’s not just one guy. They had a bunch of guys make threes on us. I didn’t think we were guarding them very well at the beginning of the game.”

Despite the loss, there are certainly plenty of positives for Wake Forest to take away from Saturday’s game. Forbes and co. have no choice but to regroup and move onward — a tough road matchup with Pittsburgh awaits on Wednesday night, and there’s still a long road ahead to push through the rest of conference play.

“It’s a tough game,” Forbes said. “We’d [have] loved to have won it. [We] didn’t. We’ve got to move on. We’ve got to go to Pitt, and then we’re only at the halfway point.”

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