WINSTON-SALEM – The end of Wake Forest’s football season came abruptly and about as painfully as you could’ve drawn up.

Not that anybody wanted to illustrate such a thing.

The Deacons lost their fourth straight game to end the season when Duke’s Maalik Murphy threw a 39-yard touchdown pass to Jordan Moore on the final play of a 23-17 game on Saturday.

“I thought in a lot of ways, today’s game was a microcosm of our season,” coach Dave Clawson said. “The players gave us great effort, played hard, go to the whistle. We just were too sloppy, at times, to win one-score games against good football teams.”

It was never more apparent than that final play.

Duke (9-3, 5-3 ACC) had the ball at Wake Forest’s 39-yard line, facing second-and-4, with 8 seconds on the clock in a tied game.

Wake Forest (4-8, 2-6) covered up the short routes where Murphy wanted to go with the football, as Duke was just looking for a short, quick gain and a timeout to set up a 50ish-yard field goal — which would have been wind-aided.

On the outside, Moore broke free past cornerback Jaxon Mull, who was playing extended snaps after Jamare Glasker exited the game with an injury.

“It was just a scramble and when there’s a scramble, you stay on top of things,” Clawson said. “When you don’t stay on top of things, that happens.”

Murphy threw deep to Moore, who caught it at the 10-yard line with about 2 seconds left. He spun between Wake’s defenders and into the end zone after time expired.

That’s how Wake’s season ended, the Deacons landing on the same record they had a year ago. It’s a second straight season without a bowl berth — after a streak of seven years with one — and was about as painful an ending as could have been imagined before the final snap.

“We have great kids here. … I wish I’d done a better job for them,” Clawson said, a slight choking up in his voice, when asked of his team’s effort level and what it says about the program as a whole. “They play really, really hard. And that’s all you can ask.

“When we lose one-score games, you’ve got to really examine everything in what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. This is two years in a row, so we’ve gotta do something better.”

Such solutions will have to come next year; for now, Wake Forest is left to evaluate how it lost a game it was leading 17-3 until late in the third quarter.

The Deacons converted a short field into a touchdown — Hank Bachmeier throwing a third-down strike to Horatio Fields — six minutes into the third quarter. Those were the last points the Deacons scored.

Duke made it a one-score game with a four-play, 42-yard drive, running back Star Thomas busting in for a 3-yard touchdown run with 36 seconds left in the third quarter.

The ensuing kickoff featured Wake’s only turnover of the game, as Demond Claiborne fumbled a kickoff for the third time this month. Duke turned that into a seven-play, 45-yard drive that ended with Murphy keeping the ball for a 2-yard touchdown scamper.

After it was a tied game, Wake’s offense got the ball twice. Its first drive reached Duke’s 37-yard line before a third-and-8 screen was blown up behind the line; Ivan Mora’s punt from the 39 went about 7 yards deep in the end zone.

On what turned out to be Wake’s final possession, the Deacons had a 16-yard pass to Cameron Hite—and then a 17-yard loss on the next play.

That was ruled to be a backward pass by a pressured Bachmeier. The ball squirted away and would’ve been a turnover if Duke’s Wesley Williams hadn’t had his leg slide into the out-of-bounds area when he attempted to recover the fumble. Bachmeier was sacked on third down of that series, for the fifth time in the game.

“It’s kind of a broken record, we just make bad plays. We have penalties, we have a chance to win the game with two minutes left and then we throw the lateral,” Clawson said. “Then instead of second-and-10 or a chance to win the game, now we’re second-and-forever.”

Duke scored the first points of the game but those were the Blue Devils’ only points of the first half; Wake Forest took a 10-3 lead into halftime.

The first scoring chance was Wake’s Matthew Dennis clanging a 43-yard field goal attempt off the left upright. A couple of possessions later and early in the second quarter, Duke’s Todd Pelino made a 45-yarder going in the same direction.

Wake Forest answered with an authoritative seven-play, 77-yard drive. The big play was a 30-yard strike to Fields, who beat Chandler Rivers in a physical matchup, that put the Deacons on Duke’s 8-yard line.

Tate Carney busted a touchdown run up the middle on the next play.

Three plays later, and after a 26-yard catch and run by Moore, Murphy threw his 12th interception of the season — a wide throw that was tipped and fell into the hands of redshirt freshman Rushaun Tongue for his first career interception.

Wake Forest turned the following drive into a 37-yard field goal by Dennis, which amounted to the 10-3 halftime score.

EXTRA POINTS: Wake Forest was without starting center Luke Petitbon, who entered having played the most snaps (773, per Pro Football Focus) of any player on the Deacons’ offense. … Sixth-year receiver Taylor Morin had 47 receiving yards, which moved him past Ricky Proehl for the all-time record at Wake Forest. Morin finished his career with 2,974 yards; Proehl had 2,949 between 1986-89. … Claiborne, who suffered a shoulder injury late and didn’t return, had 67 rushing yards to put him over 1,000 for the season.