Associated Press

The Wake Forest notebook …

WINSTON-SALEM — Wake Forest coach Jim Grobe won the Bobby Dodd national college football coach of the year on Saturday night.

The 54-year-old Grobe led the Demon Deacons to the best turnaround in Division I-A, taking a team that went 4-7 in 2005 and guiding it to an 11-2 record, an Atlantic Coast Conference championship, a No. 15 national ranking and a berth opposite No. 5 Louisville in the Orange Bowl on Tuesday night.

And he did it without the team’s top quarterback (Ben Mauk) and running back (Micah Andrews), who each were lost for the year in the season’s opening weeks.

Wake Forest set a school record for victories and won the ACC for the first time since 1970.

The Demon Deacons became the first ACC team to ever go 6-0 on the road and clinched their first Bowl Championship Series berth with a 9-6 victory over Georgia Tech in the ACC title game.

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FAMILY TIES: It was a New Year’s weekend to remember for the Tereshinski family.

John Tereshinski is a junior tight end at Wake Forest. His older brother Joe is a quarterback at Georgia.

And kid brother John admitted Sunday to cheering hard for the Bulldogs during their come-from-behind, 31-24 upset of No. 14 Virginia Tech in the Chick-Fil-A Bowl.

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NO CURFEW: Wake Forest coach Jim Grobe isn’t imposing a curfew for his players. But that doesn’t mean the Demon Deacons are staying out all night — not with mandatory 6 a.m. wakeup calls.

“It just shows that he respects us as men,” Idlette said. “He set the times to be early in the morning, so if guys do want to stay out all night, that’s on them. Most of us are responsible enough, you know, we go out to see the sights and sounds of South Beach but get in at a respectable hour.”

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CONTACT-FREE: Wake Forest practiced for the fourth and final time in Florida on Sunday, and this time they worked out in shorts and jerseys — but no pads. In fact, Wake didn’t practice in pads throughout its stint in Florida.

That’s at least partly because they didn’t want one of their players to suffer the kind of injury that will keep Louisville cornerback Gavin Smart out of Tuesday night’s Orange Bowl.

Smart broke his right leg during practice Thursday.