Wake Forest was riding the bus home after beating Clemson when a walk-on broke the news: Pittsburgh lost, clearing the way for the Demon Deacons to jump to No. 1.

The last remaining unbeaten team in Div. I then greeted that update with a collective yawn.

“Nobody really got excited, like, ‘We’ve got a chance to be No. 1,'” guard Jeff Teague said. “It was like, ‘Oh. It doesn’t matter to us — (the Panthers) don’t play in the ACC.'”

Forgive their tunnel vision. Wake Forest may have returned to the top of college basketball after its school-record 16-0 start, but the Demon Deacons can’t stop to enjoy the view. Just down Tobacco Road are No. 2 Duke and No. 5 North Carolina in a concentration of big-time basketball power.

“You really can’t enjoy it much, because your goal is to be No. 1 at the end of the year,” guard Ishmael Smith said. “The funny thing is, you can be No. 1 today, and Wednesday night after the (Virginia Tech) game, you could drop down to 10 or 12 just as easy. … When people recognize it, you say, ‘Thank you,’ but you’ve really just got to keep pushing and keep pressing.”

Through the years, it has been an occasional struggle for tiny Wake Forest — the smallest school in the ACC, with an enrollment of about 4,500 undergraduates — to claw its way past instate rivals Duke, North Carolina and N.C. State and claim the spotlight. Each of those three programs has won multiple national championships while combining for nine NCAA tournament titles.

The Demon Deacons have produced plenty of household names — Tim Duncan, Josh Howard, Muggsy Bogues — but they reached their only Final Four in 1962, when they were led by eventual TV analyst Billy Packer.

Their only previous appearance at No. 1 came four seasons ago when late coach Skip Prosser and guard Chris Paul guided them to the top spot for two weeks in November.

This season, the Demon Deacons have made a rapid climb from a preseason ranking of No. 21. They snapped BYU’s Div. I-best 53-game home-court winning streak, beat the then-No. 3 Tar Heels and went on the road last week to knock Clemson from the ranks of the unbeatens.

Teague averages 21.4 points and is the ACC’s second-leading scorer, trailing only defending national player of the year Tyler Hansbrough of North Carolina.