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WINSTON-SALEM -- Virginia Tech elbowed its way past top-ranked Wake Forest on a bloody Wednesday night in ACC basketball.

Three days of the No. 1 ranking was too much for the Deacons, who lost 78-71 then reasoned that maybe it was for the best. A team that rose from nowhere to gain the top spot in the country broke down under the weight of national attention.

Wake center Chas McFarland, who didn't score, said it was good that the Deacs lost.

"It was good for us to lose early, so we kind of wake up and don't get a big head," he said.

Jeff Teague, the team's leading scorer, said it will be better now that the pressure's off.

"You never want to lose, but I'm kind of glad we got it out of the way," he said.

Teague reasoned that the entire team was trying to play perfectly against the rugged Hokies, and on an imperfect night against a team with no design on playing perfectly, Wake was out of its element on its own floor.

Wake forward Al-Farouq Aminu got four stitches from an inadvertent elbow, coach Dino Gaudio was called for his second technical foul of the season and several Deacons jawed at various Virginia Tech players throughout the night. But at every breaking point of the game -- and there were many -- the Hokies made the plays and Wake backed off.

"I think we got them at a good time," said Virginia Tech coach Seth Greenberg.

With second-ranked Duke coming in next week, and the run-up to that event swallowing Wednesday night's game in the heady fumes of Joel Coliseum, the Deacons lost for the first time and took their first step back since last year's longest season ended in the ACC tournament.

"The hardest part about it was we were getting so much attention," Teague said "We never got any attention coming from where we came from last year. Now all of a sudden the media's talking to us, guys are on TV and things like that."

Virginia Tech, now 13-5 and 3-1 in the ACC, took the lead seven minutes into the game and led by as many as 16 before Wake began to come back. But in the end, with players fouling out and Gaudio's deep rotation in disarray, the Deacons wilted in the heat of the moment.

"It was fun while it lasted," Wake forward James Johnson said. "But now it's just going back to the drawing board and practicing hard and playing hard like we've been doing."

The drawing boards this week probably didn't show point guard Malcolm Delaney getting eight rebounds for Tech or McFarland playing only 11 minutes for Wake or the Deacons not being able to get to the rim for the first time all season or the Hokies shutting down Wake's running game in a frantic first half.

"Guys on their team that we didn't expect to make shots were making shots," Teague said. "I think everybody was making shots. They're out there hitting fade-away jumpers and things like that."

Gaudio said the better team won on this night, and that landed hard on 14,110 fans arriving fashionably late for the first game since November 2004 with Wake atop the national rankings. Everything seemed normal as the Deacon mascot goosed the engine on the school's motorcycle, spraying smoke and exhaust fumes into Virginia Tech's pregame huddle as noise bounced off the rafters and Wake's tie-dyed students tried to rattle the visitors.

In the end, with security escorting the officials out and Tech's players and coaches looking warily into the stands, Wake vacated its home court and began preparing for what comes next.

That would be a long five days before the next polls come out and a long week before Duke comes to town. Wake will endure the fallout from this one before getting the chance to redeem itself on its own stage, much less the national stage.

Wake was right where it wanted to be Wednesday night, and for brief moments the Deacs looked as if they belonged right where they were. But the ACC eats its own sometimes, and the young Deacons found that out the hard way.

Now 16-1 and no longer the only undefeated team in the country, Wake Forest will find out if it can stand the sight of its own blood.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin @news-record.com