Wake Forest appears to be in the midst of an astounding turnaround. After winning just 11 total games last season, the Demon Deacons are off to an 8-3 start with all three losses coming to teams ranked among KenPom‘s top 50. And for the first time since Dino Gaudio was still the head coach in 2010, Wake is itself ranked among the KenPom top 50. Danny Manning‘s offense this season has been especially improved, moving up over 100 spots in adjusted offensive efficiency (from 132nd last year to 25th). So how has the third-year ACC coach managed to bring out the best of his team this season?

John Collins has put Wake Forest on college basketball’s radar. (Photo Credit: Bob Hebert)

The resurgence starts with sophomore center John Collins. In a modern era of shooters and slashers, Manning has gone old school in centering his offense around the 6’10” big man. The Deacs play an inside-out game focused on getting Collins touches near the basket. Per Synergy Sports, Wake posts up on 15 percent of its possessions, the eighth-highest figure in the nation. But dumping the ball into the paint only works if you have an effective scorer there, and Collins is among the very best in the nation at doing just that. He ranks seventh in the ACC at 17.5 points per game, shoots a scorching 60 percent on twos and uses over 30 percent of the Deacs’ possessions.

Consistent post scoring is a great start, but Manning has supplemented Collins’ elite skill set inside with a number of serviceable weapons around him. Wake Forest is shooting over five percentage points better from beyond the arc this season (36.8%), and that is even with several key contributors like Bryant Crawford and Dinos Mitoglou shooting worse than a year ago. With Collins wreaking havoc down low (he averages 8.1 fouls per 40 minutes, one of the 20 best marks nationally), defenses are forced to choose between leaving his defender one-on-one against Collins — and likely resulting a negative outcome — or doubling and correspondingly surrendering good looks from deep. Forcing a defense into tough choices like that are the bread and butter of good offenses as they can take whatever the defense chooses to give them.

On top of unlocking Wake Forest’s offensive strategy, Collins has been nothing less than a monster on the boards. He sports the second-best offensive rebounding (18.7%) and and seventh-best defensive rebounding (30.9%) rates in the country, per KenPom, and his presence earns a handful of extra possessions for his team every game. Though the Demon Deacons’ haven’t been as good on the other end of the floor (perhaps slightly improved from last year, but too close to make a call one way or another), getting defensive rebounds is a necessary but underrated part of team defense. Wake Forest certainly isn’t out of the woods (and yes, the pun was intended) yet, as its best win came against College of Charleston, but for a program that has fallen on really hard times through most of the 2010s, any level of improvement is a welcome move for the program. As the Deacs work into a loaded ACC schedule, Manning’s team will have to prove that they can compete with and beat some of the best teams in college basketball. If his super sophomore on the blocks puts together an all-ACC season, there’s a very good chance that Wake Forest will do just that.

Charlie Maikis (15 Posts)

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 22nd, 2016 at 3:31 pm by Charlie Maikis and is filed under acc, feature, microsites. Tagged: Bryant Crawford, danny manning, John Collins, konstantinos mitoglou, wake forest. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.