In the late hours of Tuesday night in a back room at Joel Coliseum, senior guard Ishmael Smith tried to play the role of humble hero following another overtime victory by Wake Forest, this time 85-83 over Maryland.

He talked about Chas McFarland’s key play off the bench that included eight points and 12 rebounds. He talked about Ari Stewart’s two key buckets that were his only two of the night. He talked about his backcourt mate C.J. Harris drilling key shots that were part of a 16-point effort. He talked about key free throws made by Al-Farouq Aminu, who went 10 of 12 from the line as part of an effort than included 24 points, 13 rebounds, three blocks and two steals.

“I don’t think 100 percent of the credit goes to me,” Smith said. “Matter of fact, two percent goes to me and the other 98 percent goes to the team.”

While trying to remain a team guy and stick with the popular party line, Smith sold himself short. Without his two percent – a floating teardrop shot with 18 seconds to play – Wake could very well be 1-2 in the Atlantic Coast Conference instead of 2-1.

Smith was thankful that he got the opportunity, that coach Dino Gaudio gave him the green light even though he had hit just 7-of-22 shots before the game-winner. He was happy that Gaudio wants the ball in his hands even though he’s shot under 38.5 percent from the field in four of the past five games.

“I don’t care what the stats say,” Gaudio said. “Ish makes big shots. Excuse the redundancy. At Virginia Tech as a sophomore. Against Miami here as a sophomore. He hit a big 3 against Richmond. He makes three straight 3s in the two overtimes against Xavier. He makes big shots. I have all the confidence in the world in him. At the end of the game, I want the ball in his hands.”

The buckets against Richmond and Xavier came in two of Wake’s past four games. Gaudio also put the ball in Smith’s hands last Saturday at Miami, but that time there was no magic as the Hurricanes changed defenses and Smith missed in a 67-66 Deacon loss.

“We had a play set for man to man but they switched to zone,” Smith said of the closing seconds against the Hurricanes. “I just tried to put my head down and make a play. A guy deflected the ball out of my hand a little bit. I regathered it and threw it up to the rim so my teammates would have a chance to get a rebound and make a play. If they had knocked the ball out and I had gotten the ball, I was ready to knock it down.”

He didn’t get that second chance against Miami, so Smith was glad to get a chance against the Terrapins. Gaudio said there was no option for Smith to kick it out to someone else.

“I was hurt that I didn’t make that shot at Miami,” Smith said. “But you can’t dwell on the past. You can only think about the present and the future. Luckily, I made that tough shot.

“I appreciate Coach and my teammates trusting me with the last shot. I felt like I let my guys down in Miami, so I wanted to redeem myself.”

Redemption became sweet in part because the Terps’ senior go-to guy – Greivis Vasquez – failed to his make his last five field-goal attempts after getting the first bucket of the overtime to give Maryland its last lead at 78-76.

Vasquez misfired for the final time on a 3-point attempt with 10 seconds to play. Sean Mosley grabbed the rebound and missed a 3 with three seconds left. The battle for the rebound went off the Deacs with three-tenths of a second remaining, but hopes of a Maryland miracle disappeared when Aminu grabbed the inbounds pass.

Vasquez finished with 30 points but hit just 9 of 27 shots. Smith said he wasn’t concerned about putting up better numbers than his counterpart.

“I thought I shot a lot, but he shot 27 times,” Smith said. “He’s a good friend of mine. But, I don’t think about the matchups. I could have no points and no assists, but as long as we come out with a win I’m happy. It’s more than anything the team.”

The personal matchups may not matter to Smith. Making those clutch last-second shots do.