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Deacons freshman Jeff Teague scores 26 points

WINSTON-SALEM - The Duke Blue Devils, the No. 2 team in the nation, got to that point because they haven’t let games end the way Sunday’s game against Wake Forest did.

Trailing the deepest into a game since a loss to Pittsburgh on Dec. 20, the Blue Devils couldn’t make up an eight-point deficit in the final 1:54 of the game and the Deacons beat the ACC’s first-place team 86-73.

The fans didn’t need prompting; they stormed the court to celebrate Wake Forest’s biggest win of the season and its biggest under first-year head coach Dino Gaudio, who replaced Skip Prosser after Prosser’s death last summer.

The last time Wake Forest put down a top five-ranked team, Prosser paced one sideline against the then-No. 4 Blue Devils at Joel Coliseum back in 2005.

This time, Wake Forest freshman guard Jeff Teague ran the Devils from baseline to baseline while scoring 26 points in the upset victory.

Duke freshman guard Nolan Smith, with a career-high 21 points, bravely stepped in when the Devils were feeling the pain of 8-for-28 shooting night from 3-point range and the discomfort of seeing so many starters deal with foul trouble.

“I don’t think we just laid down and died,” Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said, praising the way the Deacons played defense. “I think Wake had something to do with it. … We haven’t always played like we needed to win. … That’s part of learning.”

Duke falls to 22-2 but still holds a one-game lead in the ACC standings at 10-1. Wake Forest improved to 16-8 and 6-5 in the conference, with one very pretty win to hold onto in case the NCAA Tournament committee comes knocking next month.

All five Duke starters played with four fouls at some point during the final 10 minutes of the game, and all left with five — the fifth time in school history five players have fouled out.

But Teague and forward James Johnson, who had 24 points and 16 rebounds, owned a stretch in the second half that pushed the Devils further than they’d been pushed in nearly two months.

Wake Forest came out of the locker room after halftime running hard. When Ishmael Smith hooked up with L.D. Williams for an alley-oop jam, the coliseum crowd went appropriately insane.

Williams, after forcing Duke senior captain DeMarcus Nelson to step out of bounds while guarding him along the baseline, dropped a 3 a few seconds later, giving the Deacons a healthy 52-44 lead.

But Kyle Singler isn’t getting praise as one of the nation’s best for nothing. He calmly knocked down an important 3 — for three of his 17 — to answer Williams.

That’s how the second half went, back and forth with the teams trading leads several times.

Nelson added 18 points, but the way he, Gerald Henderson and Jon Scheyer kept driving the baseline and the lane and the way Johnson or Jamie Skeen kept turning them away or forcing the Devils to take off-balance shots was the story of the game.

That’s how Duke wins games. Wake beat Duke by taking that away.

Though Duke scored 42 first-half points, the Devils found the middle of the court closed to dribble penetration.

The Devils didn’t deal well with the pressure either. They committed 13 turnovers in a win over Maryland on Wednesday and had 13 in the first half against the Deacons while trailing 47-42 at halftime.

Read On:News & Observer