After ending November with a whimper by losing to William & Mary at home, Wake Forest started December with enough of a bang to be leading at No. 4 Purdue in the second half.
Then the Deacons hit one of their all-too-frequent scoring lulls to fall to the Boilermakers 69-58. They're now 4-2 and searching for answers going into today's second brutal road test in four days, at No. 17 Gonzaga.
Tipoff is scheduled for 5:30 at the McCarthey Center, where the Bulldogs are 65-3 since the arena opened in 2004.
"We're a team that's going to have scoring droughts," Coach Dino Gaudio of Wake Forest said. "That's OK. That's all right. That's who we are.
"But we've got to keep defending during those times because it's not if it happens, it's going to be when. So we've just got to keep guarding and take care of the ball so that we can keep getting opportunities at the basket."
A victory over the Bulldogs of the West Coast Conference would send the Deacons into next week's exam break with renewed optimism. Wake Forest will not play again until Dec. 13, at home against Elon. That game will be followed in relatively short order by a game at UNC Wilmington on Dec. 16 and the ACC opener, at home against N.C. State on Dec. 20.
"I think this could be a springboard game for us if we're able to go out there and play like we're capable of playing," Gaudio said. Gonzaga is ranked surprisingly low for a team that has rebounded from its only loss, to Michigan State, to beat Wisconsin, Cincinnati and Washington State for its past three victories. The Bulldogs are outscoring their opponents by more than 10 points a game (76.9 points vs. 66.4) and outrebounding them by more than five a game (39 rebounds vs. 33.3). They're shooting 48 percent from the floor and 36 percent from 3-point range.
Gonzaga's star is Matt Bouldin, a 6-5 senior guard who has been first team All-West Conference two years in a row.
Bouldin is averaging 17.9 points after pouring in a career-high 28 against Washington State. In that game, he made 7 of 12 3-point attempts to rally the Bulldogs from a 12-point deficit midway through the second half.
"We got probably the most courageous performance I've seen in this building from one of our players," Coach Mark Few said afterward.
Bouldin said that the Bulldogs have a toughness that previous Gonzaga teams might have lacked. Elias Harris, a 6-8 freshman forward from Speyer, Germany, scored 21 of his 24 points in the second half, and Gonzaga held Washington State without a field goal for 10 minutes. "I think this is the grittiest team I've played on," Bouldin said. "We've got a lot of guys that love to bang."
Harris is averaging 14.3 points and a team-high 8.3 points, and Bouldin is averaging 5.9 rebounds. The other starters are: Steven Gray, a 6-5 junior guard averaging 14.1 points; Robert Sacre, a 7-0 sophomore center averaging 13.1 points and 5.9 rebounds; and Demetri Goodson, a quick 5-11 sophomore guard averaging 6.4 points.
"Bouldin, I think the kid's an All-American," Gaudio said. "He does so many things well. They were down (against Washington State) and he just put them on his back. He hit big shots in the game.
"He does that."
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