It seemed everything that could go right did go right for Wake Forest in the second half of Thursday’s 84-53 rout of Kansas.
The undefeated, No. 11-ranked Demon Deacons scored 46 points on 17-of-25 shooting, looking like a team that could have beaten anybody in the country on that fateful early December night.
“You can’t look at it that way. You can’t attribute it to that,” KU senior Luke Axtell said of Wake Forest simply being on fire. “In the (NCAA) tournament, something like that ends your season.
“We have to figure out what we didn’t do defensively and go from there.”
Defense has been a problem for No. 3-ranked KU (7-1) the entire nonconference season.
“You can’t be a great team if you don’t guard people and it’s what we have to get better at,” KU coach Roy Williams said. “In 1997, with the bunch we had, we shot 27 percent and won at Kansas State. The only way you can do something like that is if you guard the dickens out of people and they can’t do a blessed thing.
“Until we show we can do that it’s going to be hard to be as good as we want to be.”
Wake’s Josh Howard and Craig Dawson were the main culprits Thursday, hitting five of 12 threes while tallying 21 and 20 points respectively.
The Demon Deacons, who hit 49.2 percent of their shots, were equally effective against KU’s man-to-man and point zone defenses.
“The good thing is we have a long way to go,” Williams said of learning to play sticky defense. “We are working at it every day. The kids want to get better defensively. Hopefully we’ll get there. I have seen teams really improve during the course of a season.
“The first half of the Boise State game is the only time this year I felt our defense dictated,” Williams noted. “We had teams in the past who did it every single night regardless of the opposition. We’ve got to get this team to that point.”
How to do that?
“It’s where we’ve got to get our level of concentration and maintain it over a long, long period of time to build some habits,” Williams said. “Our kids want to. At the same time we have some kids with bad feet.”
KU has had some injuries to feet Luke Axtell, Kenny Gregory, Mario Kinsey and Jeff Boschee have had foot, ankle and leg problems. That’s not a positive for a team not overabundant in athleticism.
“Larry Bird was not quick, but was good defensively. He was so alert. He studied the game. He had great savvy and concentration,” Williams said of the NBA Hall of Famer. “Steve Woodberry (ex Jayhawk) was not the quickest by any means, but was fantastic defensively.”
Defense is vital for Williams’ team to be successful.
“In 1997 we could take it away from you defensively and convert fast break opportunities,” he said of 34-2 KU. “This team has not taken it away from people, but also has not converted all fast break opportunities either.”
KU’s next test will come Tuesday against DePaul (8:05 p.m., Chicago’s United Center). The Blue Demons, 4-3, defeated Chicago State, x-x, on Saturday at All State Arena on the Blue Demons’ campus.
