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WINSTON-SALEM — If the ACC owned a classic British sports car, it would be painted jet black with old gold trim.

It would be Wake Forest.

The team that uses a loud custom motorcycle to rev up the home crowd shares the same characteristics of a vintage Jaguar, Austin-Healey or Triumph Spitfire.

They're sleek and fast. Not too flashy, but born to run. Built for high performance.

But with high performance comes high maintenance. Their breakdown-prone engines contain lots of moving parts, and when one is out of sync it throws off everything else.

So it is with these Deacons.

When they're right, they're a well-oiled machine. Fine-tuned, they're perhaps the best team in the country, let alone the ACC, capable of winning big against big-time competition.

These are the Deacs who won their first 16 games. The Deacs who went 5-1 against opponents ranked in the AP top 25. The Deacs who won three games in four days in California, who snapped Brigham Young's 53-game home winning streak, who climbed to No. 1 in the nation.

When they're not right, they sputter on a road to nowhere. Out of alignment, they look downright ordinary, capable of inexplicable losses to mediocre competition.

These are the Deacs who went 4-5 after the 16-0 start. These are the Deacs who lost regular-season games to Georgia Tech, N.C. State and Miami, the 12th, 10th and ninth seeds, respectively, in the ACC tournament. These are the Deacs who fell in love with the 3-point shot, who shunned their get-to-the-basket offense, who needed a refresher course in their own defense and ran early-November practices in mid-February.

So which Wake Forest will cruise down the interstate to Atlanta?

The guy behind the wheel likes the way the machine is running right now.

"I thought we finished the season rather strong, winning six of our last seven games," coach Dino Gaudio said. "&ellipses; But the big thing now is everyone is 0-0. You've got to start all over again. What you did during the regular season means absolutely nothing."

The Demon Deacons come in with the deepest, most balanced team in the ACC.

Shooting-guard-turned-point-guard Jeff Teague averages 19.4 points and 3.6 assists per game. A prolific scorer early in the season -- when he was mentioned as a national player of the year candidate — Teague has scored more than 20 just twice in the last 12 games.

But other players have become more involved. Junior guard Ish Smith — who taught Teague to play the point — averages 6.1 points per game, but he has scored in double figures off the bench in seven straight.

Wake's biggest strengths are defense and inside play.

"The biggest improvement we made was on the backboard," Gaudio said. "For most of the year, we were a really good defensive team. We had our lapses, and over 29 or 30 games that's going to happen. But at one point, when we lost two in a row and three of four, our rebound margin was really low. ... I think we're plus-19 at Virginia, we're plus-18 at Maryland, we were plus-12 against a pretty strong rebounding team in Clemson. That's really been very good for us in the last six or seven games. That's where I think we've made the biggest climb."

Starting forwards James Johnson (14.6 ppg, 8.4 rpg) and freshman Al-Farouq Aminu (13.0 ppg, 8.3 rpg) have been a big part of the rebounding renaissance, and both big men run the floor well and can take the ball to the basket. And 7-foot center Chas McFarland (9.0 ppg, 5.9 rpg) has scored in double figures three of the last four games. The Deacs are 12-0 when McFarland scores at least 10 points.

"Hopefully, we just keep playing well and playing strong," Gaudio said. "You just take them one at a time now, because when you lose now you go home."

And no one wants to make that drive.

 Contact Jeff Mills at 373-7024 or jeff.mills@news-record.com