NEW ORLEANS
When a team comes out ready to play basketball, as Wake Forest proved again on Thursday night, anything can happen.
One by one the Deacons stressed leading up to Thursday night's NCAA Tournament victory over Texas the need to play free and loose. They based that on recent postseason pratfalls against Cleveland State in last year's NCAA Tournament and against Miami in last week's ACC Tournament, when they showed that only one thing can happen to a team that comes out tight and lethargic.
And it's not good.
Against Texas, the No. 9 seed Deacons were far from perfect. They turned the ball over 20 times. They missed nine foul shots. They fouled often enough to give the Longhorns 33 free throws.
But they played hard and competed, and as a result it was Texas, and not Wake Forest, that made the fatal mistakes in the 81-80 victory won on Ish Smith's jumper with 1.3 seconds remaining.
"We played with passion, we played with emotion, we played with a ton of energy," senior L.D. Williams said. "And that's how you've got to be in these tournament situations. A lot of times, the most talented team hasn't been winning. You look around the country, there's been a lot of upsets.
"So if you do that, then you're going to put yourself in a situation where you're going to be able to win the game later in the game."
The challenge will now be to take the floor with the same passion and intensity for tonight's game against No. 1 seed Kentucky, scheduled for around 8:30 at New Orleans Arena. The Wildcats, who steamrolled East Tennessee State 100-71 Thursday, will be as heavily favored as one would expect a 32-2 team playing an opponent that is 20-10.
There's no guarantee that the Deacons' best effort will be enough. But anything less could obviously make for a long day against the brawny and fast Wildcats.
"We've just got to come out and compete and play hard," Williams said. "Like everybody keeps saying, nobody expects us to win. These guys are really, really talented. They push the ball on the break. They rebound. They do everything.
"And we've just got to come out and impose our will on them."
If there is such a thing as momentum in college basketball, Coach Dino Gaudio said yesterday, then the Deacons have it after rallying from an eight-point deficit in the final three minutes of overtime against the Longhorns. He based that on the words of wisdom of Dean Smith, the former coach at North Carolina.
"He said you don't have momentum going into any tournament," Gaudio said. "You build momentum while you're in the tournament. So hopefully that helps us build momentum going into (tonight).
"We know how good they are. I think our kids are excited to play."
The best evidence of the Deacons' energy and emotion against Texas was their 59-34 thrashing of the Longhorns on the backboards. No Wake Forest team had ever outrebounded an opponent by 25 in NCAA Tournament play.
Sophomore Al-Farouq Aminu led the charge with 11 rebounds to go with his 20 points. After the game, he didn't seem intimidated by the prospects of going up against a Kentucky team that has blocked 257 shots, outrebounded opponents 41.4 per game to 33.7 and held opponents to 38 percent accuracy from the floor.
Against Texas, the Deacons swarmed the boards for 20 offensive rebounds they converted into 25 second-chance points, with freshman Tony Woods scoring eight of his 11 points on follow dunks or putbacks.
"They're a really good team," Aminu said of the Wildcats. "I think we match up pretty good with them as well. I think we match up with a lot of teams really well.
"Hopefully we can exploit some of our mismatches, key on some of their weaknesses and pull out another one and keep it going."
dcollins@wsjournal.com | 727-7323
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