WINSTON-SALEM – Senior Night at Wake Forest was chilling in temperature and when Syracuse took a two-score lead in the second quarter.

The Deacons warmed up with 35 unanswered points — though the temperature was static — rolling to a 45-35 win over the visiting Orange on Saturday night at Truist Field.

Wake Forest (7-4, 3-4 ACC) halted a three-game losing streak that slashed some season goals, but the win is perhaps the first step to the Deacons authoring a strong finish to their season.

“You feel like you’ve got a black mark on you for the longest (time) when you lose three in a row, or even one,” quarterback Sam Hartman said after his final home game.

Hartman threw four touchdown passes, giving him 104 in his storied career and putting him three shy of Tajh Boyd’s ACC record.

Three of the scores went to A.T. Perry, all of them in the first half, who’s now the program’s all-time touchdown receptions leader (27, breaking Ricky Proehl’s record).

“My mind was wrapped around Senior Day, coming in and getting this dub for the team,” Perry said. “I wasn’t keeping up with (the record) until halftime when someone said I got the record.

“I was like, ‘Oh, snap.’”

Hartman’s fourth touchdown was a 17-yarder to Ke’Shawn Williams with 4:20 left in the third quarter, giving the Deacons some beathing room at 31-21.

Quinton Cooley carried four straight times to start the fourth quarter, the last of those being a 4-yard touchdown run to put the Deacons up three possessions in the opening minutes of the fourth quarter.

“Just proud of our football team,” coach Dave Clawson said. “The last couple of weeks … have been tough. But we kept working, kept preparing and I’m glad we could send our seniors out with a win. I don’t feel like it was clean football. It was really, in a lot of cases, very sloppy football.”

Punter Ivan Mora, who also handles kickoffs, was injured after Wake’s second kickoff of the game. Already a kickoff unit that’s struggled this season, Wake Forest resorted to a few variations of kickoffs — without much success on any of them.

Zach Murphy, it should be noted, did an admirable job filling in for Mora on punts and kickoffs for the rest of the night. The walk-on kicker/punter/holder — special teams jack-of-all-trades, really — had a touchback after Brendon Harris’ fourth-quarter pick-6 sealed the result, and had both of his punts wind up inside Syracuse’s 20-yard line.

Syracuse led 21-10 halfway through the second quarter, having scored a couple of touchdowns on two drives that combined for nine plays and 169 yards — the second one was a four-play, 94-yard drive after Hartman botched an under-center snap on fourth-and-1.

Wake’s defense got four straight stops to help the Deacons surge to the front.

“We went down 21-10 and the defense all got together, and I just tried to tell them, ‘we’re embarrassing ourselves right now,’” senior linebacker Ryan Smenda Jr. said. “We came out here on Senior Night with the goal to win and we’re not doing that right now.”

Wake Forest snapped into gear with a six-play, 75-yard drive, the last 29 yards coming on a dime from Hartman to Perry.

After a week spent on reversing fortunes when it comes to starting games, this (again) wasn’t the smoothest of starts for the Deacons.

Syracuse scored first, starting the game with an 11-play, 75-yard drive that featured two third-down conversions and Sean Tucker’s 9-yard touchdown run.

Wake Forest settled for a field goal on its first drive after Taylor Morin dropped a pass at the goal line on third down. The Deacons’ next possession ended with a punt after the other slot receiver, Williams, dropped a third-down pass.