Wake signs its top 3 recruits

The signing of 6-foot-8 Al-Farouq Aminu, 6-10 Tony Woods and 7-foot Ty Walker this week was a huge development for Wake Forest and coach Dino Gaudio.

After coach Skip Prosser's sudden death in July, one of Gaudio's immediate challenges was to maintain the commitments of those three players to Wake Forest. When he did, a program that slipped in Prosser's last two seasons had the ACC's top-ranked recruiting class.

Along with promising freshmen James Johnson and Jeff Teague, the three signees will give the Deacons as good a young talent base as any other team in the ACC. After struggling for years defensively and on the boards, Wake Forest should be solid in those areas next season.

Wake Forest had a much more important reason to hire Gaudio, who was Prosser's top assistant. After the heartbroken Deacon players lost their head coach, it would have been cruel to rip the rest of the staff away from them and hire from outside the program.

Keeping Aminu, Woods and Walker in the fold got Gaudio off to an encouraging start less than a week after his opener as the Deacons' head coach. -- Ken Tysiac