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Football Week 2 - Virginia-Wake Forest - 7 p.m., 9/7

Alright alright alright, firing up the Week 2 thread.

Kind of feels like a return to normal with the schedule -- player interviews and Dave Clawson's press conference will be on Tuesday this week and I'll be there. So I'll have something off of the presser, maybe a mini-feature on Wednesday, a Q&A with somebody who covers UVA on either Wednesday or Thursday, and then a comprehensive preview of Saturday night's game. Followed by full coverage of the game.

Getting you up to speed on links from the past few days (film review still pending):

Buzzer story on Wake's win over N.C. A&T.

My Take on Wake's QB battle.

PFF's grades for Wake's offense | PFF's grades for Wake's defense.
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Football Week 5 - Louisiana-WF - 3:30, 9/28

Wake Forest emerges from a newsier-than-expected off week to play Louisiana on Saturday. The Ragin' Cajuns are 2-1 and lost to Tulane 41-33 this weekend.

At risk of sounding too dramatic: This is about as much of a must-win game as you can have in September. At 1-2 and with a game in Raleigh and against Clemson in the next two, I'm not sure Wake Forest recovers from a 1-5 start to make a bowl. At 2-4, at least, there's a path to winning 4 of 5 between UConn/Stanford/Cal/UNC/Duke (and the game in Raleigh, I think, is not quite a foregone conclusion in the way the Clemson and Miami games are).

As a programming note: I've struck out on finding a stringer to cover this game. Since it's not an ACC game and I'll be in Durham for UNC-Duke, we'll have a remote story on Wake's game. It's not ideal, I hate missing home games ... but it's just where things landed, given the schedule.

Here are some links to get you up to speed:

My Take on the Ole Miss game

My Take on Wake's initial silence about scheduling | My Take to wrap up the scheduling of Ole Miss/Oregon State

PFF quarterly grades for Wake's offense | PFF quarterly grades for Wake's defense

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Football Week 6 - WF-N.C. State - Noon o'clock, 10/5

Welllllllllllllllllll,

Things obviously went from bad to worse with Wake Forest's loss to Louisiana. It felt like a game WF needed to win to have a halfway decent shot at making a bowl game. Instead, the Deacons lost to a Sun Belt team and have lost 8 straight games to FBS teams.

I don't know where things go from here. Pretty quickly, WF is staring down the barrel of a 1-5 start, given how scarce wins in Raleigh have been for this program given Clemson has made its opener look like an aberration.

But we'll press on with coverage here. And in Raleigh, as the programming alert comes that I'll be there for Saturday's game against N.C. State. Here are some links to get you caught up -- and as a reminder, the PFF grades and input will come Monday morning and be posted on the Louisiana game thread.

Preview of the Louisiana game.

Story off of the Louisiana loss.

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Basketball Preseason basketball

Alright, here goes ...

I'm just back from Wake's open-to-media practice this afternoon. I've got one story I want to get up tonight, kind of a theme/overview type, and then I've got content for several others in the days to follow.

But I want to get something up in the meantime, so I'm going to bullet point some general thoughts. Some of them might wind up getting repeated with stories; if so, oh well. I'm trying to juggle a lot of things right now and just want to get *something* posted about today before moving forward on other things.

- Today was the last day of summer practices; they're off for about 2 weeks before coming back for the fall semester. Two of the guys we talked with -- Cam Hildreth and Parker Friedrichsen -- were thrilled to be going home.

- Hildreth talked about his wrist injury not needing surgery, thought that was interesting. I doubt anyone other than staff and teammates has a full grasp of how much pain he was in last year, but he said it hasn't bothered him for a while.

- Talking to Hunter Sallis about his decision to come back was interesting. What exactly he has to improve on has been alluded to and such -- ball-handling and initiating offense -- and there was more of that today. But there was also a little more directness, I think Hildreth mentioned that Sallis will be playing some point guard.

- Also on the agenda for Sallis to improve is leadership/vocality. That's not really who he is ... but it's what WF needs him to be.

- Today was the *first* day that Omaha Biliew could participate in contact stuff and that was just in halfcourt drills. "He moves different" was a Forbes quote, referring to his athleticism and size. Forbes lauded how much he attacked his rehab, which is why he was able to get back today.

Biliew hit a corner-3 and Forbes had everybody on the court clap to show him love, able to finally participate in practice.

- Juke Harris had probably a better summer entering his freshman season than any other incoming freshman has had under Forbes. That's not the largest sample size, given how many transfers have entered, but it does mean he's been as good, possibly better than Friedrichsen was last year.

Not to break my arm patting myself on the back ... but I tried to tell yall as often as I could that Juke wouldn't be coming in and riding the bench for a season. He's 6-7, can score at all three levels, is long and athletic, has some really good basketball IQ, and has a lot of coachable characteristics. I doubt he's a starter, but he's also not on the very end of the bench.

- Speaking of ... I don't know if this team is going to be as deep as it appears now. But the indications -- AT THIS POINT, can't stress that enough -- are that they'll have 11 playable players. Every time today I found myself thinking that Churchill Abass or Marqus Marion would be difficult to find minutes for, they'd do something good.

- They're not going to replace Demetris Nichols on staff, nor are they going to sign a player for the 13th scholarship. So the assistant coaches are Jason Shay, Matt Woodley, BJ McKie and Antanas Kavaliauskas, and director of player relations Darnell Harris (has been in that role for a year, played one season at Northwest Florida for Forbes) will be the team's fifth coach on the floor in practices.

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That's all I've got for now. Check in later tonight for an in-depth story and keep checking in the following days for more content.

Football Week 3 - Mississippi-WF - 6:30 p.m., 9/14

So, you just blew a two-touchdown lead in the 4th quarter. Who do you want to play next?

No. 5 Ole Miss probably doesn't rank too highly in the desired opponents.

This will be the thread for this week's game. Wake Forest has a 64-game losing streak against top-10 teams, the last such win coming in 1946.

Programming for this week will be pretty normal, coverage-wise. Player interviews via Zoom on Tuesday morning, Clawson presser Tuesday afternoon. I'll be at Saturday night's game for full coverage.

Getting you up to speed on links going into the week:

Buzzer story about the UVA loss.

My Take on the players who made the costly mistakes.

(PFF grades are coming Monday morning and those links will be in the UVA game thread.)

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Preseason baseball - 2025 season

I'm not sure I can promise much content here until January or February, but here is at least Wake's fall baseball schedule, per news release:

Scrimmages:
Saturday, Oct. 19 - at St. John's
Sunday, Oct. 27 - vs. West Virginia

Intersquad scrimmages:
Friday, Sept. 27 - First pitch 4:00 p.m.
Sunday, Sept. 29 - First pitch 1:30 p.m.
Saturday, Oct. 5 - First pitch 3:30 p.m.
Sunday, Oct. 6 - First pitch 1:30 p.m.
Friday, Oct. 11 - First pitch 4 p.m.
Sunday, Oct. 13 - First pitch 1:30 p.m.
Saturday, Oct. 26 - First pitch 3:30 p.m.
First pitch times are subject to change.

Football Week 4 - first off week

Alright alright alright, time for a thread for a week that won't have a game at the end of it!

There's not exactly going to be a dearth of Wake Forest football coverage this week. I'll have PFF grades from the Ole Miss up tomorrow (and posted on the game thread), and have quarterly PFF grades up later in the week. I want to get a state of the program My Take done (time-pending, per usual) sometime this week.

Links to get you caught up until there's fresh content:

Buzzer story on last night's game.

My Take on a few different topics from last night.

News that Wake Forest has bought out next year's trip to Ole Miss.

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Basketball Recruiting Bball recruiting info

Going to pin this thread to (attempt to) keep track of all developments -- visits, offers, pending commits -- on the basketball recruiting front.

To start things off:

Wake Forest doesn't a commit in the 2023 class yet and that should be alarming to absolutely nobody. If you read the State of the Program breakdown of recruiting (linked here), you know the changing landscape of recruiting and Steve Forbes' thoughts on the situation.

Forbes isn't going to panic and take players just to take players. That is, bluntly, one of the reasons he's coaching at Wake Forest and Danny Manning isn't. Forbes looks for who fits in his system, at the school, and who can play in the ACC ... and he's not lowering the basket to squeeze players into that criteria. If he can't get recruits that fit, he's going to scour the portal -- which has proved quite fruitful (invest in Andrew Carr, Ty Appleby and Jao Ituka stock now).

You've also got to note that Wake Forest -- at least right now -- doesn't line up to be in need of a large recruiting class entering next season. Daivien Williamson and Appleby are the only players who are out of eligibility after this season, and there's an open scholarship. So that's 3 current vacancies to account for in the 2023-24 season. Will that number stay at 3? Unlikely. Can Forbes go out and oversign? Well, yes, but only if he plans on running off current members of the team.

Frankly, I don't see that last part happening, though.

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Football Recruiting Class of 2025

We'll start this thread with Wake's first commit of the class:

Locklan Hewlett, a QB from St. Augustine, Fla.

Running down some quick takeaways:

- Always good to get the first commit of a class going into their junior season.
- This *should* do it for QBs in the class but there's always the chance Wake adds another.
- It's an extensive offer list that includes Miami, Texas A&M, Rutgers and many others.

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