UVa (12-6, 4-4 ACC) at Wake Forest (9-9, 2-6)

Noon, ACCN

After coming up short against NC State on Monday night, the Cavaliers have had an extra day or two to rest heading into this two-game swing before the team’s “bye” week. Before they can get to that week-long break following the matchup against No. 5 Florida State on Tuesday night, the Hoos must head to Winston-Salem on Sunday to face Wake Forest.

The Demon Deacons haven’t beaten Virginia in seven tries, not since they won 55-52 in Lawrence Joel Memorial in January 2013. Relatedly, that means that Danny Manning (74-102 at WF with a 30-percent win percentage in ACC games) has never beaten UVa.

Currently, Wake (rated No. 103 nationally by KenPom) comes into Sunday’s matchup having lost four of its last five games, with only an 80-62 home win over BC breaking up the losing streak.

As one might expect, the Deacs aren’t exactly killing it this season. They are currently 69th nationally in adjusted offensive efficiency while coming in at 141st on the defensive side of the floor.

Overall they are one of the top 100 teams in terms of tempo, which is especially the case when they have the ball. Their offense overall is pretty rough, ranking 218th in effective field-goal percentage and 254th in turnover percentage. While they don’t shoot it well and turn the ball over often, the one place where Wake Forest seems to excel is in getting to the free-throw line: The Deacs are seventh nationally in free-throw rate.

Unfortunately for them, outside of being able to get to the line, they’re not really that good at much else. At 122nd in 3-point percentage, the Demon Deacons are better than UVa (346th) but they’re 251st in two-point percentage, 288th in block percentage, and 324th in steal percentage. So, it’s an offense that shoots it okay from deep but doesn’t get much inside, gets blocked a lot, and has the ball stolen away frequently.

On D, meanwhile, the Deacs are 339th in turnover percentage and, while they’re 49th in offensive rebound percentage defense and 28th in free-throw percentage D, they struggle pretty much everywhere else. They don’t generate a lot of steals or block many shots and teams don’t typically turn the ball over all that much against them. It's a group that does much of what you expect from lackluster defenses outside of keeping opposing offensive boards down and not letting teams get to the line. For a group like UVa, that seems kind of perfect.

It seems way too simplistic to say this with certainy but if the Cavaliers can keep senior guard Brandon Childress from channeling his father too much, UVa should win this one.

The younger Childress, at 6-foot, 190-pounds, leads the team with 15.2 points per game in addition to 4.7 assists (also a team high) and 2.8 rebounds. He’s the one player on Wake’s roster than can hurt you with regularity. Both Olivier Sarr and Chaundee Brown (who average 13.0 and 13.3 points, respectively) can score but the Deacs really come down to Childress. He went scoreless at Duke but has scored 16, 20, and 14 since with a season-high of 30 in a loss to NC State in December.

Now, at 7-feet, 235 pounds Sarr could be a handful for UVa’s bigs and this might be a game where Francisco Caffaro sees some nice burn. Given the success DJ Funderburk had this week, this will be a matchup to watch for sure.

Brown, though, has missed the past five games due to a “lower leg” injury. Though he was not officially out for the Clemson game this week, it’s safe to say there’s a good chance that the 6-foot-5 junior guard doesn’t play against the Hoos. And if that’s the case, it’s even harder seeing Wake pull off the upset.

Lastly, Andrien White, a 6-foot-2, 200-pound senior guard, seems to have been the beneficiary of more room to operate with Brown out. He had a season-high 22 points against Clemson the other night and is second on the team with a 40-percent average when shooting from long range.