Wake Forest Demon Deacons: The Hardest NBA Loss?
The Wake Forest Demon Deacons may not have the biggest profile but they might have suffered the biggest loss as players decide their NBA futures.
The Wake Forest Demon Deacons are in a bit of a pickle. The last week has seen some major decisions in the conference, Justin Jackson leaving and Grayson Allen staying, but none of those moves had more impact on their team that John Collins’ decision to stay in the NBA draft.
North Carolina and Duke would likely have been fine no matter what Jackson and Allen decided to do, but Wake Forest was hoping to build off a breakout season of sorts. That’s harder to do when the sparkplug for doing that, Collins, is no longer there. The sophomore averaged nineteen points and just under ten rebounds a game last year. He finished second in the ACC Player of the Year voting.
Now he will be gone. He is projected as a late lottery pick by some mock draft sites. If that is true, he had to go, but Wake could have used one more year. This upcoming season will mark the senior seasons of Coach Danny Manning’s first freshman class. Collins and Bryant Crawford were the power behind those guys.
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Manning has tried to make the best of a bad situation. He tapped into the European big man pool three years ago for Konstantinos Mitoglou. He tapped into it last year for rising sophomore English center Sam Japhet-Mathias. Now he will try to replace Collins with 6’11” French center and recent signee Olivier Sarr. How much success he has doing that will determine the course of Wake’s season
It will really be on Sarr’s shoulders. Japhet-Mathias averaged only four minutes a game with minimal impact last year. Senior Mitoglou is more of a European style big more comfortable shooting threes than operating in the paint. All the Collins-type points will have to be filled by Sarr if they are filled at all.
His fellow freshmen signees are all wings. That includes Melo Eggleston and Chaundee Brown. The preferred walk-on Sunday Okeke is a 6’8” player who did most of his damage in the post in Nigeria, but it is too early to know how much the Deacs will try to use him.
The loss of Collins may mean a step back for Wake. However the conference is also in flux around them. State will likely be down next year. Virginia has lost some transfers. The Tar Heels will likely even take a step back. Opportunities still exist for Wake, and there is still a lot of time before basketball season starts.