Jeff Teague, widely proclaimed as one of the best players in the ACC if not the country, scored two more points than David Weaver on a night when Wake Forest beat the No. 1 team in the nation.
The Deacons' 70-68 victory over Duke on Wednesday night rendered two conclusions inescapable.
Weaver, a 6-11 junior center from Black Mountain, is a better player than his 2.4 points a game average might suggest.
And the Deacons, for all of the acclaim with which Teague has been showered over the first half of the season, are far from a one-man team.
"We've got a lot of different guys who can score the ball for us," Coach Dino Gaudio said. "I have the utmost confidence in all of our kids when I put them in the game."
Which is nothing that Teague, to his credit, hasn't been saying since the beginning of the season -- even while averaging 21.5 points over the first 17 games of the season. Wake Forest beat Duke on a night when Teague made four of 14 shots from the floor and scored 11 points.
"That shows a lot about our team," Teague said. "On any given night we can have anybody put up 20 or 25 points. That's what's special about our team."
Not even Randolph Childress, the player to whom Coach Mike Krzyzewski of Duke compared Teague earlier in the week, was a hero every night. Childress had a game against Maryland in his junior season of 1993-94 in which he made one of eight shots from the floor, scored four points in an 81-58 loss and had his nose broken by an inadvertent elbow from teammate Tim Duncan.
Now that's a bad night.
Teague hasn't suffered any such nightmares in his season and a half, but he has struggled the past two games after setting the college-basketball world on fire for about a month. He scored 23 against Virginia Tech, but contributed little in the final five minutes as the Hokies were putting the game away.
And against Duke he was just not himself, which he admitted afterward.
The Blue Devils defended him well, guarding him with an entire team instead of just one player.
"We just tried to have a lot more awareness for Teague," Krzyzewski said. "But in saying that, all that awareness opens up for some other guys. So even if he doesn't score, he creates space for his teammates to score. That's what a great player does."
But Teague acknowledged that he didn't enter the game in the most prepared state of mind. Gaudio, sensing his hesitancy, actually sat him down for a second time in the first half.
"I just couldn't make anything," Teague said. "I was getting to the rim, but I was just hitting the side of the backboard. I wasn't making good shots.
"Coach Gaudio told me before the game ‘Now you know they're going to be after you. Just play your game and stay aggressive.' I was like, ‘OK, OK.'
"I came out kind of tentative. He pulled me out and said, ‘You're playing scared.' "
One player with far more reason to be apprehensive was Weaver, who before Wednesday night had scored a total of two points in the month of January. But Weaver played well in the first half and even better in the second, scoring seven points during a 5½-minute stretch while the Deacons were controlling the game. Weaver has been splitting the backup role with freshman Tony Woods, who didn't play.
"Dave Weaver came in and did a great job for us," Gaudio said. "Dave has always been a terrific defender, terrific.
"Tony Woods has done a great job for us all year, but I just thought with a game that we had (Wednesday), Dave is a little more veteran guy and he might be better in there than Tony would have."
With Chas McFarland suffering foul trouble for the second game in a row, Weaver logged a season-high 19 minutes. Despite averaging 6½ minutes during the previous five games, Weaver was ready when his name was called.
"If you play a game like this the intensity is just ingrained in you," Weaver said. "You really don't need any more motivation to go out there and play. I mean it's (No.) 1 vs. (No.) 4. I think everybody should be ready to play."
■ Dan Collins can be reached at 727-7323 or at dcollins@wsjournal.com.
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