There's no verifiable reason why being the lower seed -- if only slightly -- will help No. 9 seed Wake Forest in Thursday's first-round game of the NCAA Tournament against No. 8 seed Texas in New Orleans.
But given recent results when the Deacons were favorites, it can't hurt.
In all four postseason games the Deacons have played with Dino Gaudio as head coach, they've been the favorites. They were seeded No. 8 against No. 9 Florida State in the 2008 ACC Tournament, No. 2 against No. 7 Maryland in the 2009 ACC Tournament, No. 4 against No. 13 Cleveland State in the 2009 NCAA Tournament and No. 5 against No. 12 Miami in the 2010 ACC Tournament.
The Deacons lost all four games, all by at least 10 points. All four times, they fell down early and never made it all the way back. The average margin of defeat in the four games is 14.3 points, and each loss has been by a wider margin than the one before.
The difference this season -- unlike last when Wake Forest was a trendy pick to make the Final Four -- is that so few people expect much from the Deacons. That much was settled in the 83-62 loss to Miami in Greensboro.
But if this is a team that has packed it in, Gaudio said he didn't see it when the Deacons reassembled for practice Sunday afternoon on campus.
"I saw them competing," Gaudio said. "I told them that's what I wanted them to do. Sometimes we're a little bit better when we're the underdog, and we'll find out.
"We'll find out."
The hue and cry over Wake Forest's bid to the NCAA Tournament after its meltdown against Miami (for its fifth loss in six games) has become a story within the story this week. ESPN analyst Dick Vitale has railed at every opportunity over what he sees as the injustice of Wake Forest being included, while ACC sister school Virginia Tech was left out.
Vitale has hardly been a lone voice in the wilderness. Commentators and analysts from across the wide array of television shows and Internet sites have done their share, and at times more, of turning Wake Forest into a postseason punch line.
Senior Ish Smith has heard the clamor, and he knows that few are expecting the Deacons to get their season back together in time for Thursday's game.
"Obviously you've got no other choice but to embrace (the underdog role) with your backs to the wall because that's the only one they give you," Smith said. "So we've got to embrace that and go out there and compete and have fun with it."
Smith and Gaudio resist comparisons between this team and the one that lost to Cleveland State 84-69 last March in Miami. That team featured two sophomores, James Johnson and Jeff Teague, who weeks later were among the first 19 selections in the NBA Draft. It also featured a freshman, Al-Farouq Aminu, who might have gone even higher if he had made himself available to the NBA.
This team is probably not as talented. But Gaudio said Sunday that it has much better chemistry.
"It's night and day," Gaudio said.
Smith said that this team is better equipped to prove its critics wrong, because it has the experience of having done so over the first four months of the season. The Deacons were 18-5 overall and 8-3 in the ACC before their late-season slide.
"I can't talk," Smith said. "I can't predict because, honestly, last year people had us going to the Final Four. Am I right?
"And this year your backs are against the wall and you've lost five of your last six, obviously, people think you've kind of hit the wall. I wouldn't have it any other way.
"Think about when we were fighting to get some recognition this year. People were saying we lost Jeff and James. But we kind of pulled everything together and all of a sudden we became this team that could make a deep run in the NCAA Tournament. And we were rolling.
"And we still have that in us."
dcollins@wsjournal.com
727-7323
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement