These things can’t be considered “secret” scrimmages when information about them is readily available within hours of completion and coaches — like Wake Forest’s Steve Forbes did Wednesday — provide rundowns of minutes played.
Wake Forest’s men’s basketball team, if you hadn’t heard, played a scrimmage against Ohio State on Sunday. It was played at Concord University, which is in Athens, W.V., a neutral site.
In a Wednesday morning Zoom press conference, Forbes stopped short of providing score — though it was an 80-67 victory for the Deacons, according to the Columbus Dispatch — but provided a breakdown of how his team played.
Here is what you need to know:
- Wake Forest started Tyree Appleby, Daivien Williamson, Cameron Hildreth, Andrew Carr and Matthew Marsh.
That’s two sophomores from England (Hildreth and Marsh), two transfer additions new to the Deacons (Appleby from Florida, and Carr from Delaware), and Williamson, the fifth-year guard and Winston-Salem native who’s played all of those seasons for Forbes (two at East Tennessee State, three at Wake Forest).
- Wake Forest had a terrible practice Friday and Forbes told his team they were going to get crushed by Ohio State. That led to some good-natured ribbing by his team after the scrimmage on Sunday.
- Appleby played 31 minutes, Williamson played 25, Hildreth 26, Carr 24 and Marsh 10.
Off the bench for Wake Forest: Freshmen Bobi Klintman (25) and Zach Keller (16) played the most minutes. Damari Monsanto played 15, Davion Bradford played 10, and sophomores Robert McCray and Lucas Taylor played 5 minutes apiece.
- Jao Ituka, the transfer guard from Marist, only played 5 minutes because of a “tweaked knee.” In those five minutes, he had three points and three assists.
Ituka, Forbes confirmed, is the only injury concern at this point moving forward for the Deacons. Their next action is an exhibition game against Winston-Salem State on Nov. 1.
- Wake Forest had 10 players score in the first half, which Forbes cited as “tremendous balance.”
As previously reported on the message board, six Deacons finished in double figures. Nobody scored more than 12.
- The Deacons made 13 3s, and seven players accounted for that number. They shot 44% on 3s.
- Wake Forest had 19 assists, which means 70% of its baskets were assisted. There were 13 turnovers on 77 total possessions. Nine of them were live-ball turnovers.
- Wake’s points-per-possession number with eight minutes left was 1.17, which Forbes said is outstanding. The frame of reference is anything at or above 1.14 is elite offense.
But Wake’s points-per-possession in just the final eight minutes was 0.38 — obviously he was less than thrilled with that.
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UPDATE: Positives of the scrimmage, Forbes said, were how Wake’s guards read the ball-screen progressions.
“I thought our overall shot selection was good,” Forbes said. “I was pleased with the way we shared and moved the ball. We drove the ball with physicality.
“Limiting our live-ball turnovers allowed us to set our defense and defensive transition wasn’t really an issue because we played a lot of 5-on-5.”
Forbes also liked what he got from his team in terms of conditioning, crediting strength and conditioning coach Mike Starke.
Forbes started his breakdown of the negatives by saying the Deacons didn’t start the scrimmage well, which was particularly irksome because every practice has a segment that’s designed to simulate the first four minutes of games.
And as noted, the Deacons didn’t play well in the last eight minutes of the scrimmage.
Other areas of concern included: Too many fouls, too many drives going left off of one foot, gave up too many offensive rebounds, need to have a better understanding of ball-screen defenses, have to do a better job of pushing back when defending the ball.
To reiterate: Wake Forest won the scrimmage, reportedly by 13.
“I thought overall our guys did a good job of making the game look like our practice,” Forbes said.
