In basketball, it’s often the truth that the team that dominates the glass wins the game. It’s also true that the team with the most turnovers typically loses the game. In Winston-Salem tonight, one of those had to give for the Wake Forest Demon Deacons against the Richmond Spiders. It turned out that the turnovers for the Demon Deacons were too much to overcome even though the they dominated the rebounding game. Richmond would prevail by the score of 91-82.

Wake Forest head coach Danny Manning said after the game, “We had 20 turnovers that led to 27 points for them. That’s hard to overcome.”

The Demon Deacons seemed to have the numbers to win the game aside from the glaring twenty turnovers. They shot over 50 percent from the field and nearly 50 percent from the three-point line, while putting up 82 points on the night, but it wasn't enough. The Deacons also left a lot of points at the free throw line, missing 14 in total.

For Wake Forest, a lot was expected from freshman Bryant Crawford, who played 38 minutes. He was the leading scorer with 21 points while also recording six assists and five rebounds from the guard position, but he also led the team in turnovers with seven. Crawford did make some big shots and was relied upon in the offense.

There was no bigger shot than his three that cut the Richmond lead to 84-82 with 3:08 left in the game, but Richmond’s Trey Davis responded just 23 seconds later with a layup to put Richmond back up four points and they never looked back from there. Wake went scoreless in the final three minutes due to good defense and some clutch blocks by the Spiders.

The Spiders relied a lot upon forward T.J. Cline, who contributed both in the post and from the outside getting 19 points and seven rebounds. Cline hit four three-pointers in the game and also had four steals. The Spiders with 14:09 left only had a two point lead, but due to tremendous scoring and poor defense by the Deacons, the Spiders took a 12 point lead a little over five minutes later. The Demon Deacons fought back, but could not seem to recover enough and they were handed their first loss of the season.

The Wake Forest Demon Deacons will head to Hawaii for their next matchup at the Maui Invitational where they will play three games in three days. Cornelius Hudson will make the trip to Maui with the Demon Deacons and they could use him as the competition is only going to get tougher with opponents like Indiana coming up for them. Wake Forest will have to sure up their defense and clean up the turnovers or else their Maui trip may be spoiled.