Wake Forest mixes in a zone defense to close out the game
Stever Forbes must have made a note and underlined it in red when scouting the UNC game against Stanford. The Cardinal mixed an aggressive zone defense throughout the game that stymied the Tar Heels, keeping them from scoring whenever the zone was deployed.
Wake Forest went into an aggressive 1-3-1 zone at the end of the game, and it helped seal the victory. North Carolina is a smaller team, and they didn't have much faith in their posts' ability to generate good looks by just dumping the ball down low and letting the bigs go to work. Stanford was able to let the top of their zone play really aggressively, and so did Wake Forest.
The top of the zone was very in-your-face, and prevented North Carolina's guard from making incisive passes into the middle. It was lobs around the perimeter again. That's two games in a row where a zone defense has broken down UNC's offense. This needs to be corrected by Saturday, or the Tar Heels will drown zones as the rest of the ACC copycats this strategy.