No. 11 Wake Forest is suddenly chasing big goals entering a mid-November trip to No. 25 SMU

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (AP) — Jake Dickert brought enough energy and competitive edge to his first Wake Forest team that the first season ended with nine wins, along with the ridiculous sight of he and his kids being doused with a celebratory cooler full of mayonnaise after a bowl win against a Southeastern Conference opponent .

The encore is proving far wilder.

The Demon Deacons have gone from being picked 13th in the Atlantic Coast Conference to No. 11 in the AP Top 25 poll . That has Dickert's team in the chase for a trip to the final ACC championship game and a berth in the 12-team College Football Playoff entering Saturday's visit to No. 25 SMU.

Thus far, Dickert and his staff have found the right answers to identifying talent and developing players, down to studying personality traits of how those players are wired to best understand how to engage with them.

The goal now is maintaining the play from a series of romping wins since the start of October, which has opened possibilities that seemed improbable in August.

“I think it's an elite mentality,” Dickert said in an interview with The Associated Press. “Our players, they feel this mission that we're on. As a coach, you're always like: ‘Oh man, when’s the lull coming? When are we going to take a step back? When are we going to overlook somebody?'

"It just hasn't shown up, period.”

The Demon Deacons (8-1, 5-1 ACC, No. 13 CFP) have won six straight since falling to No. 5 Miami on Sept. 18 in a game that saw the Hurricanes' defense need multiple fourth-quarter stops to maintain control. They followed that by winning a close one at then-ranked Louisville , and then beat Stanford 57-3 for their biggest margin of victory ever in an ACC game.

Turned out, that was just a start.

They outscored N.C. State 28-0 after halftime in a 38-14 road win . Won 41-7 at California . Beat Virginia 51-7 at home , then routed Merrimack 77-0 in a tuneup against a Championship Subdivision opponent while star quarterback Gio Lopez sat out after being banged up against the Cavaliers.

Wake Forest joins No. 4 UCLA and No. 5 Miami as the only Bowl Subdivision teams with four road wins against power conference opponents, with SMU coach Rhett Lashlee saying Dickert has done "a fantastic job” and should be a candidate for national coach of the year.

All this comes at an elite private university in central North Carolina with the smallest undergraduate enrollment (roughly 5,600) of any power conference school, an outlier compared with the state schools with massive stadiums, huge followings and bigger budgets for player acquisition.

This weekend's test comes against a Mustangs team that is 12-0 at home in ACC games since joining the league in 2024.

“I think he does a great job of just setting the standard for us every week before we open up the new gameplan for a new team,” said receiver Carlos Hernandez, who played two seasons under Dickert at Washington State. “But I feel like Coach Dickert is just a guy who knows what he wants and gets it done.”

Dickert, 43, arrived in Winston-Salem in late 2024 amid a winding journey that had taken him from Division III player and Division II coaching before his second stint as a Bowl Subdivision head coach.

He saw potential in a Wake Forest program that had been a regular bowl team under Jim Grobe and Dave Clawson, a run that included winning the ACC championship under Grobe in 2006 along with reaching the title game and ranking in the top 10 nationally under Clawson in 2021 .

His first team leaned on defense and the running game. Lopez's arrival has been the catalyst for more.

Lopez struggled at North Carolina last year as NFL icon Bill Belichick made his college coaching debut in Chapel Hill. So he moved west for a fresh start and a reunion with offensive coordinator Rob Ezell, who helped him thrive before at South Alabama.

Lopez has thrown 18 touchdown passes against one interception while running for six scores, with Dickert saying Lopez's arrival has “gotten us toward our ideal" offensively. That's helped the Demon Deacons rank fourth nationally in scoring (43.3) and ninth in total offense (487.7), joining a defense a top-25 defense in both scoring (15.9) and yardage (310.0).

Lopez, who has looked comfortable and far different from at UNC, represents an example of how Dickert's staff has found the right fits. That work has gone beyond just studying tape or 40-meter dash times; Dickert said the entire team — coaches, too — conducted CliftonStrengths assessments as a way to identify talent, personality types and motivations for success among individual players and position groups.

“I'm a big believer in player strengths,” Dickert said. “A lot of people don't take kids because, ‘Hey, they can’t do this.' The 20% of the things they can't do, people get caught up in that versus the 80% of things the kid can do. Let's develop and then let's have him do those things."

It's all part of a common emphasis for Dickert, even as he acknowledges that success in developing players carries the risk of losing them as transfers to a program with a bigger budget. Regardless, the goal remains finding success stories like Lopez or the addition of Vincent Firenze, a safety from Dayton in the FCS ranks who twice has been named ACC linebacker of the week.

Or it's developing a holdover like redshirt freshman Aidan Martin to an every-game starter at right tackle.

“When we create clarity in the plan, these guys — bam," Dickert said, clapping his hands, "they just accelerate like a team like I've never been around. I give all the credit to the players. These guys are just driven, we practice really hard and our players buy into what it takes.”

Sign up for Top 25 poll alerts here . Visit the Top 25 here and see AP’s full college football coverage here