Wake Forest’s season ends vs. UNC, and Steve Forbes remembers what went right and wrong
READ MORE
2025 ACC Men’s Tournament
Follow all the action from the 2025 ACC Men’s Basketball Tournament in Charlotte, NC, with updated scores, standings, game recaps and analysis from the team of writers from the News & Observer, Charlotte Observer and The State.
Expand All
The finality didn’t hit Hunter Sallis until he trudged into the quiet locker room. The Wake Forest senior guard called it “emotional,” as any end is. The thing that got him, of all things, was handing the tape cutters back to one of the team’s trainers, as if he was a boxer who’d just exited the ropes for the last time.
It goes to show, Sallis said, “how much I genuinely love these guys.”
It also alludes to the fight Wake Forest put up.
The Demon Deacons’ season ended, unless they accept a bid to the NIT, in a 68-59 loss to North Carolina on Thursday in Spectrum Center in Charlotte. The loss came despite an 11-2 lead to start the contest, despite the exchange of proverbial punches and literal technical fouls, despite a thunderous second-half run that questioned for a moment if this crowd belonged to Wake — and the Duke fans who stayed for extra basketball — or to the Tar Heels.
It was a fight as much as a game, one between two ACC teams in many ways playing to extend their seasons. North Carolina, in many projections, earned a “First Four In” spot in the NCAA Tournament with Thursday’s win, regardless of what happens Friday against the Duke Blue Devils. Wake needed an ACC Tournament title to play in March Madness.
And in the end, it’s North Carolina’s season that continued and Wake’s that ended in sadness. But there was pride, too, head coach Steve Forbes said.
“The defensive effort was off the charts,” Forbes said. “I mean, I’m really proud of my team, how hard they played.”
The coach added: “Everybody knows what’s on the line. Two prideful programs. What a great environment to have Duke, Carolina, Wake in the afternoon session. Great fans, a lot on the line, two teams playing their tails off.
“Then the added excitement of getting in the tournament. You know, there was probably a time not that long ago when that wouldn’t have been the case. Maybe you’d have already been in, and you’d just be fighting for some seeding. But obviously, they’re still fighting. We were fighting. A credit to both teams for (that) — and I think it was a hard-fought, well-played game.”
Outside of Wake’s 11-2 start and then North Carolina’s slow slog back to tie the contest with 2:21 left in the first half, Spectrum Center fans saw a back-and-forth battle. Many moments to remember came in the final 12 minutes alone — a stretch that saw eight ties and 10 lead changes. The three decisive ones came thanks to UNC big man Ven-Allen Lubin. There was the offensive set where an offball screen cut Lubin free for an alley-oop dunk via a pass from Elliot Cadeau with 1:59 left. And then, the next possession, a missed Jae’Lyn Withers three was cleaned up with a putback dunk to put the Tar Heels up by six and seal the contest. There was also the Wake Forest possession in this stretch where Lubin pinned a layup to the backboard — the play Forbes considered the turning point.
“Just some mental errors,” forward Tre’Von Spillers said as to what went wrong Thursday. “I feel like we played an amazing game. We couldn’t have played much better than what we did. I feel like we executed the stuff that we needed.
“We guarded, we rebounded. It was just some mental mishaps that happened.”
Pinpointing what went wrong for Wake Forest
Wake finished its season 21-11 and 13-7 in the ACC and lost five of its last eight. The stretch started in late February with a 72-70 loss to Florida State and an 85-73 loss to N.C. State in Raleigh.
Forbes offered what went wrong this season postgame.
“That’s one thing for me that, thinking about the end of the season, I would say rebounding and three-point shooting, those things were something that we definitely have to go and improve,” Forbes said. “I really haven’t sat down to study from, I guess, Florida State on. I really haven’t had time for that. But every year when the season is over, we do a deep evaluation of the entire program, and so we’ll get on that and figure that out.”
In normal times, this would mean the end of careers for seniors center Efton Reid III, guard Cameron Hildreth, guard RJ Kennah, Kevin Dunn, Spillers and Sallis. But these aren’t normal times, they’re portal times, as Forbes reminded reporters postgame, and that’s where the attention will eventually go once the 2024-25 season’s dust settles.
Another way it’s not normal? Having a Top 5 seed at the ACC Tournament fighting for its NCAA Tournament life. Forbes offered some ideas for how the once-considered “conference of basketball” can reverse the troubling trend.
“Well, obviously, we’re not the ACC of old,” Forbes said. “We’ve had a lot of changeover with coaches. And then since I’ve took over, we’ve had this new era of the predictive and the résumé metrics. I think it’s pretty apparent to me that we need to do better in November because a lot is put into November, and in my opinion, I think once the league play starts, it’s hard to move, especially in our league this year because if you look at my schedule, we played 20 league games, and 10 of those were either Quad 3 or Quad 4 games.
“How do you get to the tournament? You have to win. You have to win all those Quad 1, Quad 2s for sure. But you just don’t have as many opportunities. So how do we fix that? Well, we have to be creative.”
Being creative means perhaps cutting the conference games to 18 instead of 20 to open up more non-conference opportunities. Maybe moving the SEC-ACC Tournament challenge to February.
But those futures aren’t controlled by Forbes. There’s another one that is: Finding the guys who will replace this core of Wake Forest basketball.
“So every year is just different. It’s a new team. It’s a new challenge. It’s a new journey,” Forbes said.
“So you never know who’s going to step up and be that person, and so I’m excited to get out there and get some new players and work really hard in the spring to raise our program to another level.”
This story was originally published March 13, 2025 at 7:35 PM with the headline "Wake Forest’s season ends vs. UNC, and Steve Forbes remembers what went right and wrong."
.JPG)
