NEW ORLEANS -- Wake Forest can.
Wake Forest can beat heavyweight Kentucky in the second round tonight.
That's not saying the Deacons will upset the No. 2 choice for the NCAA championship, behind Kansas. That's not saying the Deacons will come closer than the nine-point spread. That's not saying John Wall should haul his sweet dribble to the NBA before sundown Sunday, driven out of town by that one-man Texas posse Ish Smith.
But stranger things have happened. N.C. State beat Houston in 1983. Villanova beat Georgetown in 1985. In this year's first round, deep seeds Ohio U., Murray State and Cornell flipped the tables on Sweet 16 pretenders Georgetown, Vanderbilt and Temple.
Kentucky trampled East Tennessee State 100-71. Granted, ETSU is a 20-15 team from the Atlantic Sun, but the Wildcats looked stupendous, with Wall spearheading the break and Eric Bledsoe drilling eight straight 3-pointers. Big fellows DeMarcus Cousins, Patrick Patterson and Daniel Orton joined the heavy-footed stampede from one end to the other. They also jumped and dunked and twirled like ballerinas.
L.D. Williams, a Wake Forest senior sitting on 999 career points, openly concedes Kentucky's greatness, adhering to the first chapter in the upset manual (Lull Them to Sleep).
"They have everything," he said. "They have size. They have quickness. They have shooters. They defend. They do everything well. We just want to go out there and try to compete and try to make the game a good game, try to have us in a situation where we can win late in the game."
The Deacons don't need to invent an antagonist for the second chapter in the upset manual (Get Inside Their Head). Senior Chas McFarland messed with Trevor Booker's equilibrium in the vital win over Clemson and crawled under Dexter Pittman's ample skin against Texas.
Booker made two shots. Pittman (6-10, 290) whined and flashed elbows and wilted like a magnolia blossom dropped on an Austin sidewalk in August. He became useless, incapable of pushing one-foot shots over the rim with two hands.
Cousins seems hip to the stumbling blocks. He insisted that he wants to play ball, not fight McFarland or other substantial Deacons.
Coach Dino Gaudio generally sees huge plusses in McFarland's passion. "At times it's bad for him because he plays with too much emotion," Gaudio said. "I tell him at times he's, like, emotionally intoxicated."
Wake Forest lost five out of six heading into the tournament, altering perceptions of a team that had defeated Gonzaga, Xavier, Richmond and Maryland. The Deacons got their spirit back against Texas, hammering the 'Horns on the boards 59-34 and rallying from eight down in OT. They have players for the key parts: Smith vs. Wall, tall bruisers vs. tall bangers. They just need a little help.
Smith evidently has read the third chapter in the manual (Pump Up Their Heads Like Helium Balloons).
"Being as young as they are, you can have mental lapses," he said. "I haven't seen one yet."
Coach John Calipari has. "What has made this hard," he said, "is their inexperience, their immaturity of their age…. That's what you're going to get when you get a bunch of young kids together. They laugh. They grab each other, tickle their ears in the middle of practice. ‘Why are you doing that? Stop. We're practicing.' They're kids."
Kentucky lost at South Carolina and Tennessee, survived two overtime games against Mississippi State. Cousins, a 6-11 freshman who could follow Wall at the top of the NBA Draft, considers Kentucky's energy level the litmus test.
"If they come out with high energy and we come out lackadaisical, they could beat us," Cousins said.
That's the Big Blue company motto. "Basically," Wall said, "we couldn't overlook the other teams that we played, so basically you've got to go in there and feel like you're playing against Carolina or somebody…. We're the only team that can beat ourselves. Even if the other team's playing great, if we're playing defense and rebounding and making shots, it's going to be tough for any team to beat us."
But not impossible.
lrawlings@wsjournal.com
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