WFU wary of Purdue defense

Deacons to face highly ranked foe

By: By Dan Collins | JOURNAL REPORTER
Published: December 01, 2009

As a former assistant to Ben Howland at Pittsburgh, Coach Ernie Zeigler of Central Michigan knows good defense when he sees it.

Zeigler saw far more of it than he wanted to Saturday when his team shot 27 percent in a 64-38 loss at Purdue.

"We ran into a buzz saw here defensively, and it actually reminded me a lot of some of those teams we had at Pittsburgh," Zeigler said afterward. "These guys all buy into that level of toughness, a lot like we had with some of those Big East championship teams."

The Boilermaker buzz saw will be spinning again tonight when Wake Forest plays Purdue at Mackey Arena in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge. Given that Coach Matt Painter's team is ranked No. 4 at 5-0, with victories over Saint Joseph's (85-60) and Tennessee (73-72), the test will be Wake Forest's stiffest against a nonconference team on the road since a 91-73 loss at No. 5 Illinois on Dec. 1, 2004.

Juniors E'Twaun Moore, Robbie Hummel and JaJuan Johnson are three of the best players in the Big Ten and are all averaging between 15.8 and 13 points a game. Hummel, a multi-talented 6-8 forward, leads the Boilermakers with 7.4 rebounds, and Johnson, a 6-10 center, is averaging 6.0.

But a bigger concern for Coach Dino Gaudio of Wake Forest (4-1) is finding a way to score enough against a physical and tenacious Purdue team that allows opponents to shoot just 38 percent from the floor. Wake Forest is coming off its first loss of the season, 78-68 Saturday at home against William & Mary. In that game, the Deacons shot only 35 percent against the Tribe zone.

Gaudio expects to see little to no zone tonight.

"They're really up and into you defensively," Gaudio said. "I think they do a great job on the defensive end of the floor."

But not as good as Painter wants.

"I appreciate (Zeigler's) positive comments about our team, but I think we have a long way to go," Painter said. "We have to do a better job of putting pressure on the ball, and also containing it. We have to do a better job on the interior of not letting the ball get into the post.

"Maybe we're a good defensive team in comparison to some other teams at this time of the year, but to give us that label at this time, I would think that would be unfair."

As if they needed it, the Boilermakers have the motivation of having lost their last two games in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge, at Clemson two years ago and at home last season against Duke.

Wake Forest, on the other hand, has won eight of its nine games in the series, and the ACC, as a conference, has won all 10 Challenges.

"I'm sure you would like for your conference to have more success when you go head-to-head against another conference," Painter said. "And they have dominated it.

"But when you talk to your colleagues and your coaches in the conference, each one of us just look at each other. We've got to do our part. The ACC is a very, very talented league with very good players and very good coaches, and I think ours is, too. We obviously in the past 10 years have been on the short end of the stick in terms of the ACC/Big Ten Challenge."

dcollins@wsjournal.com.

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