Duke Blows Wake Forest Out, 80-44

Duke’s win streak has now reached 13

Summarized by AI ⓘ

What is the story about?

Duke ran its already impressive win streak to 13 with an 80-44 Sunday win over Wake Forest.

Perhaps most impressive was forcing 31 turnovers from the Demon Deacons. It was a tough day for freshman guard Milan Brown, who had 7 personally.

Obviously Wake wasn’t able to get much of a rhythm going; the Deacs shot 38% from behind the line and a meager 30% overall. They did win the rebounding war, but with 49 missed shots, there were a lot of opportunities. Brown had 17 which is spectacular for a 5-8 guard

who had a tough day handling the ball.

Duke had a pretty balanced outing offensively. Riley Nelson led with 16, Toby Fournier had 14, Arianna Roberson got 12, Delaney Thomas scored 11 and Tania Mair scored 9. Everyone got in the scoring column too.

We can’t prove this, but this may have been the first ACC game, women’s or men’s, to have two Norwegians compete against each other (Duke’s freshman Anna Wikstrom and Wake’s Aurora Sorbye).

Delaney Thomas picked off 8 of those 31 turnovers herself, which is pretty great. On the men’s side, Kenny “K-Dog” Dennard still owns the single-game steal record with 11 against Maryland. Eight is highly impressive. Taina Mair had 4 also.

Any way you cut it, what Duke has done to turn its season around after starting 3-6 including a dreadful meltdown against West Virginia, is just tremendous. There’s still a long way to go, but who has done a better job in the ACC than Kara Lawson? A lot of teams might have fallen apart after that start and the awful loss to the Mountaineers. But she got her team sorted out and playing brilliantly. If that’s not at least ACC Coach of the Year material, we don’t know what is.

Next up for Duke is a significant challenge: #7 Louisville on the road. Whatever happens there, this team has done something wonderful: it turned what could have been a train wreck of a season into a beautiful run. It’s something for the team and fans to take great pride in.