FanHouse Al Farouq Aminu

If Maryland coach Gary Williams earned a nickel for every time he's been left for dead, he'd be able to solve this economic mess with the walk-around change in his left pocket and pay the legal defense fund of the Dallas Cowboys with the money in his right. Pay the man by check, and you'd burn through enough paper that the rain forests would be more aptly known as the rain bushes.

In the seven years since he won Maryland's only national basketball championship, Williams has been fitted for more pine boxes than suits, and yet he's still come back more times than a has-been boxer.

The most highlighted play of Wake Forest's win over Duke last night was James Johnson's lay-in with .8 seconds left. But the particular play that left me more slack-jawed than anything else was an Ishmael Smith between-the-legs pass to Al-Farouq Aminu with about 12 minutes to go in the second half. I was watching this game in a Winston-Salem restaurant, and it easily led the way on bringing the house down, Johnson's game-winner aside.

"Chippy" is a term that's thrown out a lot these days. It refers to a sporting contest that gets a little heated without getting violent. Wake Forest, the nation's top-ranked team, and Virginia Tech, a classic "look past" opponent for the Deacs, took that adjective to an entirely different level on Wednesday night in a fantastic ACC battle.

Virginia Tech led by 10 at the break, and as much as 13 throughout the second half, and while there were pendulum-like momentum swings throughout the final 20 minutes, the mistakes made by the Demon Deacons down the stretch resulted in a 78-71 loss to the Hokies. The biggest issue surrounding those mistakes, and something that will be addressed frequently over the next few days, is probably Jeff Teague, who failed to take charge late.

Wake Forest, depending on the outcome of the Pittsburgh-Louisville game, has a legitimate right to argue it deserves to be the No. 1-ranked team in the nation. The Demon Deacons have now taken out North Carolina and unbeaten Clemson, knocking off the Tigers 78-68 in Littlejohn on Saturday afternoon.

Jeff Teague led the way (again) with 24 points, while Al-Farouq Aminu posted a double-double (12/10); he and Chas McFarland, who posted 12 boards, kept anyone most of Clemson's roster off the glass all afternoon.

The game was a back-and-forth affair until the Deacs amped up the defense and held Clemson scoreless to close out the first half with an eight-point lead. Wake held close to a double-digit margin for most of the second half, but Clemson was able to ratchet down and bring the game within a single point with just under few minutes to go.

Today ... July 26th ... is my birthday. That fact is one of the reasons I will always remember Wake Forest head coach Skip Prosser, who passed away one year ago today.

I have such respect for Skip ... so much so that it pained me to see his program struggle mightily in his final few seasons at the helm. He was on the hottest of seats in the ACC as he pulled in one of the best classes any program would love to have (Ty Walker, Tony Woods and Al-Farouq Aminu).

That class will be enrolling at Wake this fall.

One of the things that makes me proud to be a fan of the ACC is how everyone reacted to Skip's death. The coaches and players who are rivals, but friends, did everything they could to comfort the Prosser family and the Deacons program. When those mega recruits were told they could look elsewhere to go to school ... the ACC coaches banded together to not recruit away any of those young men. Skip's recruits should be going to Wake Forest and no other ACC school. To their credit, they stayed.

The Sporting News decided to look at the state of the program one year after Skip's passing: