Wake Forest vs. Boston College: Preview

Wake Forest vs. Boston College

Location: Winston-Salem, NC

Venue: Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum

Tip-off: Saturday at 1:00 PM ET.

TV/Internet: Fox Sports (Regionally) and ESPN3.com

Current records:

Wake Forest: 12-15, 3-10 ACC (Lost to Miami (Fla.) 74-56).

Boston College: 8-19, 3-10 ACC (Lost to No. 4 Duke 75-50).

Series history: The Eagles have an all-time series lead of 9-4, but the Demon Deacons won the first meeting of the season in Chestnut Hill 71-56.

Deacons Illustrated previews the game:

Not to insult anyone's hoops knowledge, but let's be real… when Wake Forest defends and wins the rebounding battle it usually comes out on top, which obviously has not happened much the last two years.

The Demon Deacons are No. 12 in the ACC in points allowed per game (70.2 points per game) and No. 11 in the ACC in rebounding.

However, when Wake defeathered the Eagles in Chestnut Hill the Deacs had the edge in both categories. Wake Forest outshot BC 44.1-percent to 31.1-percent, and had a slight 37-34 upper hand on the boards.

"I think they hit only four threes, which is something that they thrive on," Jeff Bzdelik said. "The reason that we were able to do that was Ty Walker and Carson [Desrosiers] did a really good job on their big guy inside, so we were able to stay attached to their shooters."

Walker's six points, 11 rebounds and six blocks were overshadowed by Travis McKie's 20 points and 10 rebounds.

But this is not the same Boston College team Wake beat by 15 points. No, these Eaglets have soared into what is now a competitive bunch; one that upended No. 17 Florida State 64-60 and hung with No. 4 Duke for a half.

Steve Donahue knows his team is young, so he slows the game down. Bzdelik calls Donahue's method, "False motion."

"They move a lot, but their intention is not to score, just to eat up clock and exhaust the game and shorten the game," Bzdelik said. "For example in a few games what they've done is the 20 seconds of the shot-clock they're not even looking to score. They're just running to move the ball around and running around. The last 15 seconds they start getting into their offense, looking to score when the shot-clock is within single digits."

This false motion compensates for the Eagles inability to run at the frenetic pace the Blue Devils, Tar Heels and other upper echelon teams in the ACC play at.

Bzdelik said his team must be patient defensively.

Production continues to be a balanced effort amongst the Eagles, with Ryan Anderson (10.8 points per game and seven rebounds per game) and Matt Humphrey (10.3 points per game and 3.5 rebounds per game) as the only double-digit scorers for Boston College.

It always comes back to keeping the other team from putting the ball in the hoop and winning the battle on the boards.

In the first half at Miami (Fla.) the Hurricanes only had a 15-14 edge in rebounding, while the Deacs shot nearly seven percentage points better. The game before the second half slumber in South Beach Wake snagged 42 rebounds to the Yellow Jackets 32 on its way to a 59-50 win to stay out of the conference's cellar.