WINSTON-SALEM – The locker room scene after Wake Forest’s 70-56 win over Army last year is well-documented to this point.

The Deacons’ offense celebrated a win; the Deacons’ defense felt like it’d lost.

“Army. Army by a long shot,” defensive end Rondell Bothroyd said before the season when asked what the low point last year was.

Get that? The low point last season wasn’t allowing 59 points in the first loss of the season at UNC, nor was it stumbling at Clemson. It wasn’t the ACC championship game loss.

It was giving up 56 points to a triple-option offense.

“It’s the first time I’ve ever seen … not a split-up locker room, but one side, the offense was happy,” Bothroyd said. “The defense, we were all just sitting there like, ‘That sucked.’

“It was a pretty low point.”

That was then; this is now, with Wake’s entire team riding a high of notching an impressive win at Florida State over the weekend. It was the palette cleanser that it needed to be after the previous weekend’s double overtime loss to Clemson.

Now comes a litmus test of Wake’s defense, which heads into a rematch of a game that saw it gashed in every way imaginable last season.

“I think we’re improving, I think we’re better,” coach Dave Clawson said when asked to assess his defense through five games. “I think we’re fixing problems. Against Clemson we were awful on third downs.

“We went back, looked at what we did. We had to make some change-ups and we did, and we were a much better defense on third down against Florida State.”

Some of the numbers aren’t friendly for Wake’s defense this season: tied for 87th in scoring (28.6 points against per game), 59th in rush defense (134.2 yards per game), 89th in pass defense (245.6), 75th in total defense (379.8).

And per usual at Wake Forest, some other numbers matter more.

The third-down conversions allowed number is a wild one. In four wins, Wake Forest has allowed opponents to convert 14 of 59 third downs – a 23.7% clip that would rank fifth nationally.

The Clemson game happened, though – and the Tigers converted 16 of 23 third downs. That weighs down the Deacons to 36.6%, which is 62nd in the country.

(instead of shoehorning feature-ish content into this story, we’ll have a separate story on Deacons Illustrated this week about Wake’s third-down package with three linemen.)

In an appreciated moment of transparency, linebacker Ryan Smenda Jr. admitted that Wake’s defense is “up” a little more going into this week because of what happened last year against Army.

“Oh yeah. Because we understand, like, the only reason it was close was because of us,” the fifth-year linebacker said. “Offense put up (70) points and, you know, a triple-option team putting up 56 points, I think that’s kind of unheard of.”

Last year’s game is remembered for all of what went right with Wake’s offense and all of what went wrong with Wake’s defense.

The Deacons only scored nine touchdowns on 10 possessions, though; that 10th score was a game-changing pick-6 by Traveon Redd.

“You know, our defense never quit,” center Michael Jurgens said. “That play at the end of the game by Trae Redd won us the game. If we don’t make that, who knows what happens?”

Avoiding such hypotheticals will be a nice way to play this season’s matchup against Army.