After watching last year's team shoot its way out of more games than he cared to count, Coach Dino Gaudio has imposed some serious gun control on Wake Forest's run-and-gun offense.
A season ago the Deacons attempted 20 3-pointers a game.
This season, going into today's home game against Bucknell at 7:30, the 15th-ranked Deacons (7-0) are averaging 10 -- fewest in the ACC.
The newfound discretion is by design.
"I told our guys that if our feet are set and we're in rhythm, to go ahead and shoot the ball," Gaudio said. "We took some bad threes last year and I think that's what hurt us. And I would like to think that for the most part we're cutting out a lot of our bad 3-point shots.
"I really think in my heart that we're a 36 or 38 percent 3-point shooting team if we take the good ones. But there's no question that we're trying to play to our strengths more than relying on the outside jump shot.
Wake Forest, for the record, shot 31.6 percent last season, last in the conference. This season its shooting 27.9, again last in the ACC.
It didn't take Gaudio and his team seven games to identify their strengths and weaknesses. Featuring five players in the rotation 6-9 or taller -- including two of the conference's most talented forwards in James Johnson and Al-Farouq Aminu -- the Deacons are difficult to keep away from the basket.
Conversely, James Teague is the only player in the rotation who has proven he can consistently hit the open 3-pointer.
So it shouldn't have been surprising to see the Deacons play 13 minutes Wednesday night against Indiana before they attempted their first 3-pointer. They took 11 for the game, and made five.
"Our strength is getting to the basket," junior L.D. Williams said. "We're not really shooting well from three, and when we do shoot well, we don't shoot many.
"We don't pride ourselves with the three. We don't live or die by the three. But if we have open looks, Coach encourages us to shoot them."
Wake Forest has faced some zone defenses this season, and should expect to see even more as teams dare the Deacons to beat them from the outside. Indiana took a different tact, deploying a box-and-one with four players in a zone and the fifth shadowing Teague.
Bucknell, a team with a 1-5 record from the Patriot League, will likely mix some zone with their man-to-man in tonight's game at Joel Coliseum.
"I think teams are who they are," Gaudio said. "I think coaches, if they are man-to-man coaches, then they're going to play man-to-man.
"But I think we'll see some zone. And for the most part, we've been very good against it. We've been able to, when teams have gone zone, to take them out of the zone."
New coach Dave Paulsen of Bucknell has had a rough first month after replacing Pat Flannery, the Bison coach the previous 14 years. Flannery was a good friend of Skip Prosser, the former Wake Forest coach who died 16 months ago. Prosser's son Mark was an assistant at Bucknell, but left for Wofford when Flannery stepped down.
The Bison were drilled at Maryland 81-52 in the season opener, and have since lost three of four close games. They beat Old Dominion 83-82 in double overtime and lost to Boston University (71-68), St. Francis (69-59), Wagner (83-79 and LaSalle (68-65). The losses to BU and St. Francis were in overtime.
The Deacons beat Bucknell 72-56 last season at Joel Coliseum on Dec. 16. Three Bison who started that game, 6-1 senior Justin Castleberry, 6-8 junior Patrick Behan and 6-11 Josh Linthicum are back.
Castleberry leads Bucknell with 14.8 points a game. Behan is averaging 12.7 points and a team-high 6.2 rebounds.
"I think their record is incredibly deceiving," Gaudio said. "They're very well-coached.
"We went to Bucknell two years ago and won in overtime. Last year we're up two points at half and it's 59-52 with 6½ minutes to play. This is going to be a hard-fought game for us."
■ Dan Collins can be reached at 727-7323 or at dcollins@wsjournal.com.
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