Nate Calmese saving the Deacs is starting to become a trend this season. After trailing for nearly the entire second half, Calmese’s contested floater with just 6 seconds remaining in the game gave Wake a 1-point lead and eventually the win over the Florida State Seminoles by a score of 69-68. This was definitely a game Wake could not afford to lose, and coming back from behind 9 points in a little over 4 minutes to pull out a win could be the moment that salvages the season for the Deacs.
The first half was a sloppy, fast paced affair between two teams whose offensive strategy seemed to be just shooting a ton of 3-pointers. Between Wake and Florida State, the two teams combined to take 38 3-pointers in the first 20 minutes, accounting for nearly 60% of total shots in the half. The Noles were switching every single screen on the defensive end, which basically took away any Wake penetration off of ball screens—since Wake doesn’t have a reliable post scorer, they settled for a ton of 3-pointers instead of trying to force a mismatch and getting the ball down low. Despite shooting 5-22 (23%) on those 3s in the first period, Wake was able to stay in the game once again due to the play of Nate Calmese.
Calmese finished the first half with 10 points, 2 assists and 3 steals, and at one point went on an 8-0 run by himself in the span of 40 seconds to completely erase an 8 point Florida State lead. If not for Florida State’s 9 first half turnovers, Wake would have definitely found themselves down by much more than 3 at the break.
In the second half, Florida State realized that they had a pretty big size advantage in the post, and they started working the ball down low. Wake had no answer for 6-10 senior Chauncey Wiggins, who dominated in the 2nd half with 11 of his 15 points on 3-5 shooting. Things weren’t going any better for the Deacs on offense, as Wake went almost 5 minutes in the second half without a field goal—that fueled a 10-2 FSU run that put the Noles up 64-55 with 4:26 remaining in the game.
Wake never gave up, and point guard Nate Calmese sparked the comeback effort with a couple of quick baskets to get back within striking distance with under 2 minutes remaining in the game. With 18 seconds on the clock, former Wake Forest guard Robert McCray V committed his 11th turnover of the game, giving the Deacs the ball back down by just 1 point. That set the stage for Calmese to drive the lane and go to his signature floater, winning the game for Wake Forest.
Was this game ugly? Yes. Should Wake have been down 9 points with 4 minutes left to a team ranked over 100 in both KenPom and the NET? Probably not. But at the end of the day, a win is a win. The Deacs still have serious issues in the front court—as evident by Wake getting out rebounded 28-44 by an FSU team that had been out-rebounded by double digits in 3 of their 4 ACC games this season—and struggle to score the ball when they don’t make a ton 3-pointers. Despite the promise of more depth this season, Wake is completely reliant on Calmese, Juke Harris, and Myles Colvin for pretty much all of their scoring—the trio combined for 48 of Wake’s 69 points today, while the rest of team scored just 21 points.
The good news for Wake is that since scoring 0 points in the ACC opener against NC State, Nate Calmese has been on a heater for the Deacs—in the past 4 games, Calmese is averaging 22.5 points and 5.8 assists per game and has hit 2 game winners. He has become the offensive leader of the team over the past couple of weeks, and it seems like the Deacs will go as far as he can carry them this season. We will find out just how far that is in the next couple of weeks, as Wake has some crucial games against SMU, Duke, NC State, and Louisville coming up. With 3 of those 4 games being in the Joel, Wake is going to have several great chances over the next few games to grab a some signature wins and start getting back on track for March. The Deacs are definitely facing an uphill battle with an 0-5 quad 1 record, but the only bad loss they have right now is 68-86 home loss to Oklahoma (69th in the NET).
Wake isn’t out of it yet.
Go Deacs!
