Recap: Wake Forest Closes Out 2025 with 57-70 Loss to NC State

It seems the 10 days off for the holidays did not fix very much for the Deacons—in their first game since getting blown out at home by Vanderbilt, Wake Forest lost by double digits yet again, falling to NC State by a score of 57-70. The Deacs repeated many of the same mistakes they did in that Vandy game, mainly turnovers and shot selection, and were out of the game for pretty much the whole 2nd half. With the loss, Wake moved to 0-1 in the ACC and 9-5 overall.

I’m not really sure what to say about this game that wouldn’t just be a repeat of all the same issues we’ve seen from Wake so far this year. The team had to know NC State was going to come out in this one and press and play pressure defense, and yet the Deacs seemed like they were not prepared for that at all—Wake committed 11 turnovers in the 1st half alone, leading to 13 points for the Wolfpack. The Deacs finished the game with 16 turnovers, giving them 33 total turnovers over the past 2 games.

A team is just not setting themselves up for success when their 4-year, veteran point guard is making freshman mistakes and throwing the ball directly to the other team for fastbreak alley-oop dunks. Despite the 11 turnovers and 40% shooting from the floor, Wake managed to go into the half down just 4 points, 32-36.

Just like the Vanderbilt game, Wake came out of the locker room at the half and things completely fell apart. The Wolfpack scored the first 7 points of the half, while the Deacs missed their first 6 shots. Wake didn’t get on the scoreboard in the 2nd until nearly 4 minutes had passed, and by that time, the 4-point deficit had already turned into double digits. The Deacs got the lead down to 9 a couple of times, but for the most part, they trailed by double digits for the majority of the 2nd half. If not for 7 points from Omaha Biliew in the final 2 minutes of the game, Wake likely would have lost by 20 or more points. Biliew was really the only Deac who played well today, finishing with 18 points and 10 rebounds.

The Deacs finished the game shooting a miserable 34% from the field and 26% from beyond the arc, which now puts them with below 40% shooting in 5 of their 7 non-buy games this season. At this point, that is a large enough sample size that I am willing to declare that Wake’s poor offense is not simply do to shooting variance, and that the team has some real problems on that side of the ball. One of the issues, in my opinion, is that the Deacs are far too reliant on 3-pointers—they hardly every try to work the ball inside or look for easy baskets. Most of Wake’s possessions today ended with a player shooting a contested 3 after a single pass, or the team passing around the perimeter for 25 seconds and then someone launching a 25+ footer as the shot clock was running down.

The offense just has a total lack of cutting or penetration of any kind, making things extremely easy on the opposing defense. Of Wake’s 59 shots today, 31 come from beyond the arc—they only made 8. Wake has now fallen to the 103rd ranked offense on KenPom, and they are rapidly approaching the 145-mark set by last year’s team. The Deacs have become the definition of a “live by the 3, die by the 3” offense—and they haven’t done a whole lot of living over the past few games.

I don’t want to overreact too much to this game, as it’s still a quad 1 game on the road in Raleigh, but it seems very clear that things are not trending in the correct direction for the team. Saturday’s game against VT may be a must-win game at this point, because if the Deacs fall to 0-2 in ACC play and 9-6 overall in the first game of the year, we may be in danger of seeing the wheels fall off completely. That being said, there are a ton of games left to be played and plenty of time to turn things around. Whether this team has the roster—or the coach—to accomplish that is to be determined. All we can do is hope the Deacs leave the last couple of games in 2025 and start with a clean slate in 2026.

Let’s drown out the memory of this one in Mayonnaise on Friday.

Go Deacs.