Wake Forest Trying to Fix What’s Wrong

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — Things sure were a lot more fun for Justin Gray and Eric Williams last year -- or any year, for that matter.

The inside-outside tandem from Skip Prosser’s first recruiting class thrived from the start at Wake Forest. As freshmen, they helped the Demon Deacons win an Atlantic Coast Conference regular-season title. Two years later, they joined All-American point guard Chris Paul to lead Wake Forest to the program’s first No. 1 ranking.

As seniors this season, they’re still putting up solid numbers. But with Paul now in the NBA, Wake Forest is last in the ACC, and a team that’s won 20 games a year in its first four seasons under Prosser is struggling to stay eligible for the postseason afterthought of the NIT.

How can a team with two all-conference players be in the league basement? Could the departure of Paul, who is the favorite for NBA rookie of the year, make that much of a difference?

Even the Demon Deacons aren’t sure what went wrong, with Williams wondering at one point whether there was a “plague” over the team.

“It’s been a different experience, I can tell you that,” Prosser said. “The reality is we’ve been in most of these games in the second half, but we can’t finish them. That’s very disconcerting, obviously.”

The decline has been sudden and steep.

Wake Forest (14-13, 2-11 ACC) started the season ranked 18th and was picked to finish third in the league. But since Jan. 1, the Demon Deacons have won just four times heading into Saturday’s game at Georgia Tech. They are headed for their worst league season since going 3-11 in 1990, which also marked their last losing season overall.

Their hopes of reaching a sixth straight NCAA tournament are all but gone, and in the rowdy section of students wearing tie-dye yellow-and-black T-shirts, there are a growing number of no-shows.

With three games left before the ACC tournament, Wake Forest needs at least two wins to secure a .500 record.

As Duke’s fans put it during last week’s 93-70 loss to the Blue Devils: “If you’re lucky, N-I-T!”

“You know what? The only thing we can do is keep fighting,” said senior Trent Strickland, a career reserve who has performed capably as a starter this season. “If we’re going to go down, we’re going down with a swing. We’re not just going to sit there and let people just trample on us. We’re going to get up and go fight back.”