Recap: Poor Shooting Leads to 68-86 Loss to Oklahoma

That was a disaster. In Wake’s first meaningful game in front of the home fans, the Deacs were completely run out of the gym by the Oklahoma Sooners by a score of 86-68. Wake was just bad at every level in this one, and they fall to 1-3 in non-buy games this season.

I don’t know if there’s really anything positive to take away from this one—the Deacs were terrible on both sides of the ball. Against a 140th ranked defense on KenPom, the Deacs scored just 68 points and shot an abysmal 34% from the field. Wake seemingly fell in love with the 3-pointer and spent the night shooting deep balls instead of attacking the basket. Of Wake’s 56 shot attempts, 30 of them came from beyond the arc—they made just 8. In a game where the refs were calling fouls like they were getting paid by the whistle, launching 3s early in the shot clock instead of getting the ball into the paint is just not a great strategy. The Deacs finished the game with just 20 points in the paint and never even tried to get the ball inside to Tre’Von Spillers, who finished with just 6 points. Having a bad shooting night happens. Losing games happens. What really bothers me about this one is that when things weren’t going their way, the Deacs seemingly just gave up at the 6 minute mark, giving up 4 or 5 straight wide open layups on consecutive possessions that allowed Oklahoma to push their lead from 10 to 20 points in the blink of an eye. Losing is bad enough, but getting blown out at home in what is currently a Quad 3 game is an even bigger disaster. The Deacs had done a great job all season fighting back from double digit deficits in big games, so it was a little strange to see the lack of effort towards the end of the game tonight.Wake was led tonight by Juke Harris, who was the only guy that really showed up for the game. Harris finished with 22 points and 7 rebounds and was 1 of 2 Wake players to finish in double digits—the other was Nate Calmese with 13. Mekhi Mason, Myles Colvin, and Tre’Von Spillers finished the night with a combined 20 points on 7-26 shooting (27%), including 2-14 from beyond the arc (14%). The Deacs simply aren’t going to win many games when 3 of their top scorers shoot that poorly.

This is a pretty bad loss for Wake given the opponent and the margin, but I doubt it’s a season killer—yet. The Sooners will probably not finish the season 96th in the NET (they are down to 47 in KenPom), and I think this will have a good chance of ending up as a Quad 2 loss. That said, Wake has not yet won a game over a major opponent, and clinging to close losses against good teams can only get them so far. Wake must bounce back this weekend, as they cannot afford to go 0-2 this week with another loss against a West Virginia team currently outside the top 100 in the NET.

Go Deacs.