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The Court Report: An analysis by Rob Daniels

WINSTON-SALEM -- Nobody knows what lurked inside the mind of Virginia Tech senior A.D. Vassallo with 29 seconds on the shot clock, 76 ticks remaining in the game and his team up by five points Sunday evening.

Wake Forest didn't bother to launch an inquiry into the curious 3-point field-goal attempt. What Wake launched instead was a comeback that felt more like March than December.

Slump-ridden point guard Ishmael Smith and seldom-used freshman shooting guard Gary Clark instigated and capped the 77-75 victory, in which the Deacs scored the game's final 10 points in stunning succession.

Smith swished the last shot with 0.6 seconds left and flashed the biggest smile, a gesture he manages even when things are going the way they went for nearly all of Sunday's second half. Let there be no doubt he had help.

"Shocked? No. But grateful? Yeah," Clark admitted.

After all, 'tis the season for gratitude, right?

"The last time I felt this good before Christmas was that Carolina game," coach Dino Gaudio said, referring to a triple-overtime victory at UNC on Dec. 20, 2003.

The Demon Deacons (8-3, 1-0 ACC) scored 18 points in the first 16 minutes of the second half and 14 in the final 3:06, overcoming an eight-point deficit in the final 82 seconds. They missed their first 12 attempts from the 3-point line in the second half and lost a 45-36 halftime lead. They lost two starters -- James Johnson and L.D. Williams -- to fouls and key reserve Jamie Skeen to an ankle injury from which he did not return.

Lest you call this a choke job, understand that the Hokies went 29-for-32 from the free-throw line and beat Wake on the backboards.

Vassallo had the strangest of nights -- 19 points, 11 rebounds, seven turnovers and one shot he hoped would be a dagger. The needless deep ball became a Wake rebound and a Jeff Teague layup in short order, and it was 75-72.

"What are you thinking?" Hokies coach Seth Greenberg implored during a timeout.

Elsewhere, there were no such interrogations.

"I said, 'Thank you.' And he's an experienced player," Clark said. "We didn't expect him to take that shot, but we were grateful for that shot."

Clark had just entered the game, having played only 19 of the Deacs' previous 198 minutes. One of his running mates, Smith, was 4-for-20 from the free-throw line before Sunday and was benched for the home stretch of a 13-point victory over South Florida four nights earlier.

There was one redeeming possibility for the Deacs. The Hokies occasionally were negligent in ball-control, as their 22 turnovers attested. Clark's swipe of another Tech senior, Deron Washington, gave Wake another life. In the chaos that followed, everything went right for Wake Forest. Harvey Hale, 1-for-8 from 3-point range for the game, passed up an attempt out of the corner and fed it to Clark on the left wing. No, Clark did not predict the shot would bank off the glass and go in. Style counts in gymnastics. Not here.

"In big-game situations, I have no fear," he said.

As Greenberg put it later, "We put ourselves in position to win, and we made some bad decisions and we paid for them. When you make bad decisions, guys bank shots in."

Then Hale arrived in time to get a hand on the ball and disrupt Jeff Allen's shot with 25 seconds left. When Chas McFarland rebounded, the Deacs were set up for the last shot. But what would they do about it? Might the Hokies, who had committed only six team fouls in the half, foul Smith and take their chances with a one-and-one free-throw situation?

When they didn't, Gaudio had no problem entrusting the possession to his best ball-handler, who got free from Malcolm Delaney and hit a 14-footer with less than a second to go. Smith missed five of his first six shots against Tech but made six of his final eight.

"The boys we've got in that locker room are a resilient group," Smith said. "We could have easily withered or stopped, but we kept playing. I did the easy part."

Contact Rob Daniels at 373-7028 or rob.daniels@news-record.com