Wake Forest didn’t just steal a win on the road Saturday-they clawed, scrapped, and rebounded their way to it, literally. After getting dominated on the boards for most of the game, the Demon Deacons flipped the switch when it mattered most, grabbing six straight rebounds in the final four minutes to erase a seven-point deficit and pull off a gritty 69-68 comeback win over Florida State.
The game-winner came from Nate Calmese, who muscled his way through a swarm of defenders in the paint to sink the go-ahead bucket. It was a fitting finish for a team that refused to back down after getting pushed around for much of the night.
“Really proud of my team - it was a resilient win and they played their guts out,” head coach Steve Forbes said postgame. “It’s a hard way to lose when you lead most of the game, but you have to finish, especially in this league right now.”
And finishing is exactly what Wake Forest did. Down the stretch, the Deacs were surgical on offense, scoring on eight consecutive possessions in the final minutes. On the other end, they locked in defensively, holding the Seminoles without a field goal for the last 4:27 of regulation.
The turnaround started with a renewed focus on the glass. Wake Forest had been outmuscled all game, eventually losing the rebounding battle 44-28.
But when the moment called for toughness, the Deacs delivered. “We did a much better job of rebounding the ball,” Forbes said.
“It’s been basically a hard time getting our hands on rebounds, and it’s discouraging, because we do such a good job defensively. You got to get the ball, and we got it.”
Florida State’s perimeter-heavy lineup forced Wake Forest to adapt defensively. The Seminoles went small, leaned into their three-point shooting, and challenged Wake to switch more than they had all season. Forbes made the adjustment, and it paid off.
Offensively, Calmese led the charge with 18 points, including the clutch bucket that sealed it. Juke Harris and Myles Colvin added 15 apiece, giving Wake Forest a balanced scoring effort that proved critical in a tight game.
Forbes credited the team’s second-half shot selection as a key factor. “I thought we did a good job in the second half of getting into the lane,” he said.
“Only four possessions were non-paint. We just did a really good job of not settling for threes in the second half.”
The Deacs also turned defense into offense, forcing 16 Florida State turnovers and converting them into 18 points. Perhaps the most crucial of those miscues came in the final seconds.
Former Wake Forest guard Robert McCray, now running point for the Seminoles, committed 11 turnovers-including a costly one with 18 seconds left when he threw the ball out of bounds under full-court pressure. That miscue set the stage for Calmese’s game-winning shot.
Despite the rough outing, Forbes expressed nothing but admiration for McCray. “I’m very proud of Robert McCray,” he said.
“He believed in me when, during COVID, he signed with me and never met me. I appreciate him-he’s become a really good basketball player, and he’s a great human being.”
With the win, Wake Forest keeps pace in a tightly contested ACC race, where every possession and every rebound seems to matter just a little more. The Deacs will look to carry that late-game momentum into their next matchup, a home tilt against SMU on Tuesday night at the Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum.
If Wake Forest can bottle up the grit and execution they showed in those final four minutes, they’re going to be a tough out for anyone.