Gio Lopez leads No. 11 Wake Forest to 49-7 rout of No. 25 SMU for 7th straight win

DALLAS (AP) — Wake Forest coach Jake Dickert figures at some point it will be said that his Demon Deacons are good.

Now might work.

Gio Lopez ran for two touchdowns and threw for a score, and No. 11 Wake Forest extended its winning streak to seven games while strengthening a case for a playoff spot with a 49-7 blowout of No. 25 SMU on Saturday.

The Demon Deacons (9-1, 6-1 ACC) led 42-0 at halftime while handing the Mustangs (7-3, 5-3) their first Atlantic Coast Conference loss at home in the Ford Stadium finale of their third ACC season. SMU entered 12-0 at home in league games.

Wake Forest hasn’t lost since falling 33-20 to seventh-ranked and ACC-leading Miami almost two months ago, with those teams now poised for a rematch in the conference championship game if both keep winning.

The question would be, what becomes of the Demon Deacons if their only two losses are against the Hurricanes? Wake Forest was No. 13 in this week’s rankings for the 12-team College Football Playoff.

“People, they don’t know what to make of us because they don’t understand how we’re doing it,” said Dickert, who watched his team dominate two days after signing a contract extension. “We keep making statement after statement. Eventually, they’re gonna have to say we’re a pretty good team.”

Wake Forest opened the scoring with Ty Clark’s 27-yard touchdown on third-and-18, the first of four first-half TDs on third down. Another 1-yard score was set up by Jamar Searcy’s 38-yard run on fourth-and-1.

Kevin Jennings threw for 209 yards with a touchdown and an interception while falling to 16-2 at home in his final Ford Stadium start. He had just 40 yards passing late in the first half after Wake Forest’s sixth TD.

Flickering CFP hopes were all but snuffed out for the Mustangs, who began the year hoping for a second playoff trip in three ACC seasons with Jennings while making a Heisman Trophy push for their hometown quarterback.

Three of Wake Forest’s first-half scoring drives were 26 yards or shorter. The first came after a fourth down stop, the second on a fumble and the third when the Mustangs let a short kickoff bounce and Kyndall McCaleb recovered at the SMU 21-yard line.

“We were very noncompetitive in the first half,” SMU coach Rhett Lashlee said. “Very disappointing, in all phases. They whipped us in every area you can whip somebody in a football game. It was pretty obvious, and it showed.”

Carlos Hernandez had 94 yards receiving with a 44-yard touchdown for Wake Forest, the only team in FBC with five road victories over power conference teams this season.

The Demon Deacons outgained SMU 535-275 in a matchup of two of the top offenses in the country. Clark had 77 of the 286 yards rushing, and Lopez threw for 201 yards before Steele Pizzella took over mop-up duty late in the third quarter.

Pizzella got the start in last week’s 77-0 rout of Merrimack of FCS while Lopez nursed a knee injury. Together, they led the Demon Deacons to most of the 119 points over six quarters.

“It shows on the scoreboard, but I think we’ve played really good teams and we’ve dominated all those games,” Lopez said. “That’s not our decision, to see what (CFP committee members) decide every week on Tuesday. For us, I think it’s just ... applying the same rules every weekend, showing up on Saturday like we have been.”

The shocking rout came a year after Wake Forest beat the Mustangs 13-12 at home to end SMU’s 20-game winning streak in conference regular-season games. Nine of those were in the American Conference.

The takeaway

Wake Forest: The Demon Deacons became the first team since Alabama in 2013 to score at least 20 points while shutting out the opponent in the first half of four consecutive games, with a total score of 145-0. Wake Forest is fourth nationally in scoring offense.

SMU: Lashlee hadn’t seen anything like this in five seasons on the Ford Stadium sideline. The Mustangs came in at 27-4 at home under him, and the worst loss was by eight points (42-34 to crosstown rival TCU in 2022, his first year). His previous worst loss overall was 35 points (59-24 at Tulane, also in 2022).

Up next

Wake Forest: At Georgia Tech next Saturday.

SMU: At No. 5 Notre Dame next Saturday.