It’s Hard to Win: Wake Forest Escapes Liberty
It’s tough to win in college football; Wake Forest put that old adage on display in a thrilling 37-36 victory over Liberty.
“It’s very hard to win,” Wake Forest Head Coach Dave Clawson said after the game. “That was a gritty, four quarter team win. There’s about four or five plays, where if we don’t make one, we don’t win the game.”
In the end, though, the Demon Deacons did make the plays. It was ugly at times, but with the game on the line, Wake Forest did what they had to do to win.
With just over a minute remaining, safety Malik Mustapha had the game-winning interception yanked out of his hands in the end zone by Liberty wideout Demario Douglas. The touchdown gave the Flames the opportunity to take the lead with a two-point conversion.
On the conversion attempt, the Flames went deep into their bag of tricks, using a double-reverse to put the Wake defense off balance. In response, the Deacs stood tall, forcing wide receiver C.J. Yarbrough out of bounds.
“[Missing the interception] was disappointing,” Mustapha said. “I knew I had to get back up. We had to stop that two-point conversion. We knew they were going to go for it all, try and beat a ranked team like us.”
“We watched their two-point plays all throughout the week,” Mustapha continued. “We had a perfect defense setup for that. Everyone had to stay with their man. We leveraged it perfectly and Jacorey [Johns] made a big play and got us off the field.”
From there, after a successful recovery of the onside kick, Wake Forest walked away victors, but with several lessons learned.
“It starts tonight, we got to look ourselves in the mirror,” linebacker Ryan Smenda said. “Don’t treat this as a win. We should treat this like we just lost. We just got our butts whooped. Everyone messed up tonight. No one played a perfect game.”
Though the defense gave up over 400 yards, they were clearly the best unit for Wake Forest, forcing four turnovers and registering five sacks. One of the turnovers involved Smenda himself — a fourth-quarter fumble recovery that put the Deacs in position to score.
“We understand the pressure that was put on us,” Smenda said. “That's fine. We're all older guys out there, we understand that it's football. Those guys are gonna line up just how we line up. We just had to go out there and do our job.”
Part of that job was keeping the team in the game with a sputtering offense. After scoring 20 points in the first half, quarterback Sam Hartman went silent, getting shut out in the third quarter. The redshirt junior threw two interceptions in the game and faltered on a number of passes that are typically routine for him.
“Sam was not on,” Clawson said. “He missed throws he normally makes in his sleep. Some of those quick outs and quick hits to the boundary — they were open and he just overthrew them.”
When the going got tough, Hartman didn’t waver. Late in the game, he made a great throw to Jahmal Banks (five catches, 55 yards, two TDs) for a touchdown, and hit Ke’Shawn Williams (five catches, 129 yards) for two big gainers that helped the offense march down the field.
“We’ve seen that in his career before,” Clawson said. “Sam gets a little shaky, and then he usually recovers, and he certainly recovered [today]. He collected himself and did a great job of getting back into the moment. He didn’t get frustrated. You don't worry about him going back out there.”
Hartman finished the game completing 26 of 44 passes with three touchdowns and 325 yards. In the third quarter, he became Wake Forest’s all-time leader in career passing yards, overtaking Riley Skinner.
As much as the game was a struggle, as much uncertainty there was that Wake Forest would win, Clawson believes games like this are necessary for the team to grow.
“I think we got a lot more from this game than if we won 47 to 20,” he said. “You have to have games like this to develop as a team. The last two games were over by the time we got to the fourth quarter. Teams have to be pushed, and you have to play four quarters. We’ll be a better team because of this game.”
Though the team was happy to escape with the win, there isn’t much time to celebrate this one.
“We know that we didn’t play our best game,” tight end Blake Whiteheart said. “There's a lot of corrections that we have to fix. We’re happy, but it’s time to move on to tomorrow. We have to watch the film, and get it corrected, because we’ve got some big time dudes coming to town next week.”
Those “big dudes” are the No. 5 Clemson Tigers, and Saturday is a battle for the top of the Atlantic.
