Duke has learned plenty from a recent road trip to the West Coast. The fifth-ranked Blue Devils come home looking to build off that knowledge against Wake Forest on Saturday in Durham, N.C.
The Blue Devils (17-1, 6-0 Atlantic Coast Conference) are the lone remaining team without a blemish on their ACC record.
“I’m really proud of our guys for their maturity, their preparation, and then being able to not just get the win, but also grow and get better,” Duke coach Jon Scheyer said.
Duke is going for its 29th victory in its last 30 games against league competition, including three ACC tournament games last sesaon.
Wake Forest (11-8, 2-4) lost 91-79 to visiting SMU on Tuesday after the Demon Deacons won their most-recent road game on Jan. 17 at Florida State.
Duke has achieved plenty away from home, going 6-0 in a stretch that included four road games.
“I think we’re growing,” Duke swingman Dame Sarr said. “And in January, that’s when you start to know which type of team you are. We’re trying to grow. The ultimate goal, of course, is to win as many games as possible.”
Duke star freshman forward Cameron Boozer has nine double-doubles, including last Saturday at Stanford.
“Part of what makes him special isn’t even the 30 (points) and 14 (rebounds),” Scheyer said. “It’s the fact that he didn’t love how he played in the last game, which he still played well. And so he gets so wired to come back the next game and just go dominate.”
Boozer, who for the fourth time was named the ACC’s Player of the Week and Rookie of the Week for the same week, said he’s intent on playing at a certain level.
“That’s been the thing for me, just coming out and being the aggressor,” he said.
The Blue Devils have four players averaging nine or more points per game, led by Boozer at 23.2. Wake Forest, which has four players averaging 10.8 points or better, will look for upgrades on perimeter defense after SMU shredded the Demon Deacons at times.
“It’s pretty simple, we couldn’t guard their guards,” Wake Forest coach Steve Forbes said. “We couldn’t keep them out of the lane.”
Forbes digested the statistics from that game and sensed Wake Forest is doing many good things offensively.
“Just by looking at our numbers, we had 20 assists on 28 baskets,” he said. “So that tells me when we were moving the ball, what could we do? We could score, and when we did it, we did it well.”
Wake Forest guard Juke Harris had 27 points in the SMU game. He’s averaging 20.5 points per game, marking the second-biggest jump in scoring average in the country from a season ago (when he was at 6.1 points per game).
Senior forward Tre’Von Spillers of Wake Forest is closing in on a milestone. He has a combined 970 career Division I points after one season for Appalachian State and now in his second season for Wake Forest.
This will mark Wake Forest’s third road game against an in-state ACC opponent after losing at North Carolina State and North Carolina.
This is the only Wake Forest-Duke meeting on the schedule this season. The Demon Deacons lost 63-56 last season in Winston-Salem and 93-60 in Durham.
–Field Level Media
