Winning ACC road games is clearly hard enough without the stats — 19 turnovers, 3-for-13 3-point shooting — that doomed Wake Forest on Saturday at Clemson.
Those were Wake’s key numbers in the Tigers’ 73-62 win on Saturday at Littlejohn Coliseum.
It sends the Deacons (9-4, 1-1 ACC) into their second 10-day break of the month on a sour note, given they played their best offensive game Tuesday night against James Madison.
Clemson (10-3, 2-0), in a building where Wake Forest hasn’t won since 2009, is clearly better than the Dukes.
Wake Forest scored the first four points of the game and led 6-4 after six minutes; Clemson led for almost the last 34 minutes of the game. The Tigers stretched the lead to 15, at 30-15, in the first half.
The Deacons’ charge came both immediately after that, at 11-0 to tighten things up before halftime, and the better push came early in the second half. Clemson’s lead was down to 44-41 with almost 16 minutes left; they put away the Deacons by never allowing them to score on consecutive possessions until the last five minutes of the game, when the cushion was up to 20.
Hunter Sallis led Wake Forest with 26 points on 11-for-15 shooting and Cameron Hildreth added 15 points. They were the only two Deacons to score in double figures and were a combined 17-for-26 shooting; the rest of Wake’s team was 8-for-24.
But Sallis (five) and Hildreth (four) also combined for nine of Wake’s 19 turnovers. Ty-Laur Johnson played nine minutes off the bench and committed three turnovers; Clemson scored almost half of its points (35) off of Wake’s turnovers.
Sallis was 2-for-4 shooting 3s and Hildreth made the only he attempted; otherwise, Parker Friedrichsen was 0-for-4, Tre’Von Spillers missed two, and Davin Cosby Jr. and Johnson each missed one 3.
Clemson had five players in double-figure scoring, led by sixth-year guard Chase Hunter’s 16 points on 5-for-9 shooting. Jake Heidbreder scored 15 off the bench, going 3-for-3 on 3s in the first half, and the Tigers’ starting frontcourt of Viktor Lakhin and Ian Schieffelin scored 13 points each. Jaeden Zackery scored 12.
