Nate Calmese Leads Wake Over FSU 69-68

Nate Calmese saving the Deacs is starting to become a trend this season. After trailing for nearly the entire second half, Calmese’s contested floater with just 6 seconds remaining in the game gave Wake a 1-point lead and eventually the win over the Florida State Seminoles by a score of 69-68. This was definitely a game Wake could not afford to lose, and coming back from behind 9 points in a little over 4 minutes to pull out a win could be the moment that salvages the season for the Deacs.

The first half was a sloppy, fast paced affair between two teams whose offensive strategy seemed to be just shooting a ton of 3-pointers. Between Wake and Florida State, the two teams combined to take 38 3-pointers in the first 20 minutes, accounting for nearly 60% of total shots in the half. The Noles were switching every single screen on the defensive end, which basically took away any Wake penetration off of ball screens—since Wake doesn’t have a reliable post scorer, they settled for a ton of 3-pointers instead of trying to force a mismatch and getting the ball down low. Despite shooting 5-22 (23%) on those 3s in the first period, Wake was able to stay in the game once again due to the play of Nate Calmese.

Calmese finished the first half with 10 points, 2 assists and 3 steals, and at one point went on an 8-0 run by himself in the span of 40 seconds to completely erase an 8 point Florida State lead. If not for Florida State’s 9 first half turnovers, Wake would have definitely found themselves down by much more than 3 at the break.

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In the second half, Florida State realized that they had a pretty big size advantage in the post, and they started working the ball down low. Wake had no answer for 6-10 senior Chauncey Wiggins, who dominated in the 2nd half with 11 of his 15 points on 3-5 shooting. Things weren’t going any better for the Deacs on offense, as Wake went almost 5 minutes in the second half without a field goal—that fueled a 10-2 FSU run that put the…

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Publish date : 2026-01-18 02:18:00

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