Wake Forest, which had been out of the taking-care-of-business business for an uncomfortable while, did what it needed to do on Wednesday in the ACC Tournament, defeating Notre Dame, 72-59.
The win sets up what amounts to an NCAA Tournament play-in game on Thursday with Pitt, another of the ACC’s bubble teams.
“Well, the most important thing is, first, we’re playing Pitt,” Wake coach Steve Forbes said after his team’s survive-and-advance win, which was really never much in doubt.
The Demon Deacons (20-12) led by 10 four minutes in, briefly let Notre Dame (13-20) back into it just before the half, got the lead back to double-digits at the 14:51 mark, and never looked back.
Kevin Miller led four Wake players in double-digits with 17 points. Andrew Carr had 12 points and 11 rebounds for the Deacs.
Markus Burton had a game-high 21 points for the Irish. Burton only made four of his 16 shots from the field, but was a perfect 12-of-12 at the free-throw line.
Notre Dame made just five of its 25 shot attempts in the second half, probably a reflection of tired legs from having played on Tuesday, in the 84-80 win over Georgia Tech that advanced the Irish to Wednesday’s second round.
“I don’t know if it was energy early,” first-year Notre Dame coach Micah Shrewsberry said. “You talk about desperate teams, that’s what, they lose this game, they’re not going to the NCAA Tournament, everybody knows that probably for a fact. So, this is a game they had to have, and it looked like a veteran team that understood that, that knew that, that knew how they had to start this game to come out on top.”
Wake and Pitt (21-10) met once in the regular season, not that long ago, on Feb. 20. The Deacs won that one, 91-58, shooting 60.8 percent from the field in the win.
“What I know is in front of us is that we have a great opportunity to play the Pitt Panthers, who we respect as much as anybody in this league, and Jeff Capel and I have been good friends for a long time, and he’s really a good person, somebody I respect,” Forbes said.
“I’m just looking forward to the game, playing on Thursday. We came here to play on Friday and Saturday, and the only way to do that is to win on Wednesday and play on Thursday, and that’s what we’re looking at right now,” Forbes said.
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Chris Graham
