FanHouse JeffTeague

LAS VEGAS -- Last year's Wake Forest squad had two of the first 19 picks in the NBA Draft -- James Johnson and Jeff Teague -- and another player who would have been a first-rounder had he decided to declare (Al-Farouq Aminu).

Johnson was the 16th pick of the Chicago Bulls and tallied 16 points in the Bulls' 87-72 summer league loss to Milwaukee on Wednesday. Johnson, who left Wake Forest following his sophomore season, is prepared for his next challenge, but he can't help but look back to his days at Winston-Salem, N.C.

The one-time top-ranked Demon Deacons limped into the NCAA Tournament and were soundly beaten by Cleveland State in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, a crushing end to a sparkling season. Johnson admitted that he and some of his teammates may have been looking ahead to their NBA Draft prospects.

* Memphis general manager Chris Wallace allegedly tells Spanish sports page Marca that the Grizzlies won't pass on Ricky Rubio, though there are matters to be worked out. The rumor out there has been that Wallace and the team's scouts love Rubio, but owner Michael Heisley is reluctant to take a risk on the young point guard, given the bad dissolutions with Pau Gasol and Juan Carlos Navarro. (And as with all things Ricky, this could very well be posturing.)

* Jrue Holiday can see himself going as high as No. 4 to Sacramento, the point guard tells Jonathan Givony of DraftExpress. (Ignore his fingers. Sam Presti wouldn't dare destroy the galaxy by pairing Holiday and Russell Westbrook.)

* The Baseline's Sean Deveney talks about Lester Hudson's strange path to the NBA Draft.

FanHouse covers the 2009 NBA Draft.

All mock drafts are not created equal. And why would you want them to be? That'd be awful boring, just reading lists of names over and over. At FanHouse, we emphasize the commentary -- so in our mocks we'll (try to) explain why we think certain players fit in their theoretical slots. We will also project our own biases (positive and negative), of course.

At this early stage -- and let's be honest, at every stage -- this is 5% homework, 5% supreme divination, 90% guesswork. (A great endorsement, no?) After the jump, a full first-round mock draft for your amusement bemusement.

Poor Dave Neal. He never stood a chance. Sure, it was senior night in College Park, Mary. And sure, Neal was white hot and having the best night of his career when he decided to try and defend the moving freight train that is Jeff Teague. Teague goes baseline, hops about 30 feet in the air and plants his unmentionables on Neal's face. At least it wasn't Neal's final home game or anything though, right?



Via Shutdown, er, the Dagger.

Ranking the rankings criticizes the critics when the polls come out.

Headlining: Pittsburgh beat Connecticut to kick off the week, led by DeJuan Blair's ridiculous 22-point, 23-rebound effort. It seemed relatively unlikely at the time that the Panthers could manage to jump both North Carolina and Oklahoma, providing that either one of the two won out for the week.

But then Saturday rolled around. The Tar Heels fell to Maryland and Oklahoma, without Blake Griffin for most of the game, coughed one up to Texas.

Wake Forest was on a very unexpected two-game losing streak heading into today's game against Boston College, following losses to Miami and Georgia Tech. The Eagles, meanwhile, were surprisingly all alone in third place in the league.

But a funny thing happened on the way to a tight battle of teams near the top of the ACC -- Wake drubbed Boston College 93-76.

"Chippy" is a term that's thrown out a lot these days. It refers to a sporting contest that gets a little heated without getting violent. Wake Forest, the nation's top-ranked team, and Virginia Tech, a classic "look past" opponent for the Deacs, took that adjective to an entirely different level on Wednesday night in a fantastic ACC battle.

Virginia Tech led by 10 at the break, and as much as 13 throughout the second half, and while there were pendulum-like momentum swings throughout the final 20 minutes, the mistakes made by the Demon Deacons down the stretch resulted in a 78-71 loss to the Hokies. The biggest issue surrounding those mistakes, and something that will be addressed frequently over the next few days, is probably Jeff Teague, who failed to take charge late.

Wake Forest, depending on the outcome of the Pittsburgh-Louisville game, has a legitimate right to argue it deserves to be the No. 1-ranked team in the nation. The Demon Deacons have now taken out North Carolina and unbeaten Clemson, knocking off the Tigers 78-68 in Littlejohn on Saturday afternoon.

Jeff Teague led the way (again) with 24 points, while Al-Farouq Aminu posted a double-double (12/10); he and Chas McFarland, who posted 12 boards, kept anyone most of Clemson's roster off the glass all afternoon.

The game was a back-and-forth affair until the Deacs amped up the defense and held Clemson scoreless to close out the first half with an eight-point lead. Wake held close to a double-digit margin for most of the second half, but Clemson was able to ratchet down and bring the game within a single point with just under few minutes to go.

Were Wake Forest ever to erect its own coaching Mount Rushmore, exactly two faces, Bones McKinney and Skip Prosser, would qualify for a place in oversized granite. Every one else would get patted down for so much as trying to get into the souvenir shop.

McKinney, who led the Deacons to their only Final Four appearance in 1962, was the perfect confluence of coaching and charm. Had the State Department opted to have McKinney oversee that Cold War business, he might've brought the two sides together and had Brezhnev telling knock-knock jokes.

Prosser, who led the Deacons to their only No. 1 ranking in school history and a record 27 wins, was a larger-than-the-sidelines, self-described "renaissance man," some parts Neitzsche, some parts Nitschke.

This week, FanHouse is taking an early look at the top teams heading into 2008 with a BlogPoll decided on by our college hoops bloggers. To help with the team capsules, we've brought in some of the top fan bloggers around the internets to give us insights on their teams.

Today, we have enlisted Zach Smith of the Old Gold & Blog to break down the Wake Forest Demon Deacons.

The 2008-2009 Wake Forest Demon Deacons are poised for an exciting season in Winston-Salem. Dino Gaudio is back for his second season as head coach, and he returns all but one of his scholarship players from the 2007-2008 squad. Not only do the Deacs return every single significant contributor, but one of the nation's top recruiting classes will add even more depth to an already-talented team.

Last season Wake Forest showed flashes of brilliance, most notably in an impressive upset of the Duke Blue Devils, but were ultimately done in by several ugly losses, including an ugly first round exit from the ACC tournament at the hands of Florida State.