This week, FanHouse is taking an early look at the top teams heading into 2008 with a BlogPoll decided on by our college hoops bloggers. To help with the team capsules, we've brought in some of the top fan bloggers around the internets to give us insights on their teams.Today, we have enlisted Zach Smith of the Old Gold & Blog to break down the Wake Forest Demon Deacons.
The 2008-2009 Wake Forest Demon Deacons are poised for an exciting season in Winston-Salem. Dino Gaudio is back for his second season as head coach, and he returns all but one of his scholarship players from the 2007-2008 squad. Not only do the Deacs return every single significant contributor, but one of the nation's top recruiting classes will add even more depth to an already-talented team.
Last season Wake Forest showed flashes of brilliance, most notably in an impressive upset of the Duke Blue Devils, but were ultimately done in by several ugly losses, including an ugly first round exit from the ACC tournament at the hands of Florida State.
With All-ACC freshmen James Johnson and Jeff Teague returning for their sophomore seasons, and the junior leadership of Ishmael Smith, L.D. Williams, and Chas McFarland, the Demon Deacons have some talented experience to lead the way. Freshman forward Al-Farouq Aminu is an early favorite for ACC rookie of the year, and freshmen centers Tony Woods and Ty Walker also hope to contribute. If they can put all the pieces together and find ways to win the big games in the ACC, it could be a special season for Wake Forest.
Why they should be ranked here: There doesn't seem to be much doubt that Wake is one of the better teams in the ACC this season, while not quite being the best. They have enough depth at every position to hang with the best in the conference and the nation, but probably aren't quite talented enough to beat the elite teams. Those things considered 16 sounds about right.
Why they should be ranked higher: If Wake Forest's talented young freshmen prove themselves to be ready to compete at this level right away, then Wake may very well be better than the 16th team in the nation. Nonetheless, until they prove themselves it would be difficult to rank them much higher.
Why they should be ranked lower: If you don't put a lot of stock in unproven potential, you'd be likely to rank this Wake Forest this high. This team finished in the middle of the pack in last year's ACC and wasn't anywhere close to being ranked in the top 25. They added three very talented freshmen, but they have yet to prove they add enough to the team to deserve this high of a ranking. If they don't live up to the hype, Wake won't stay ranked for long.
Thanks to Zach Smith of Old Gold & Blog for coming into the 'House to break down the Deacs.
