Eighteen games into Danny Manning’s fifth season as the Wake Forest head basketball coach, the Demon Deacons again find themselves mired in an undesirable yet wholly self-inflicted conundrum for a college basketball program. “Again” I say because this is nearly the identical position Wake found themselves during Jeff Bzdelik’s final season at the helm in 2014 prior to bringing Manning on board.
Just two years removed from an NCAA Tournament berth, Wake sits in the basement of the ACC standings with an embarrassing 8-10 overall record and 1-5 record in conference play. The past two games, a road swing through Virginia, revealed how far Wake truly is from competing night in and out in the difficult ACC as the Deacs took back-to-back beatings to the tune of two double digit losses.