FanHouse Tony Woods

This week, FanHouse is taking an early look at the top teams heading into 2008 with a BlogPoll decided on by our college hoops bloggers. To help with the team capsules, we've brought in some of the top fan bloggers around the internets to give us insights on their teams.

Today, we have enlisted Zach Smith of the Old Gold & Blog to break down the Wake Forest Demon Deacons.

The 2008-2009 Wake Forest Demon Deacons are poised for an exciting season in Winston-Salem. Dino Gaudio is back for his second season as head coach, and he returns all but one of his scholarship players from the 2007-2008 squad. Not only do the Deacs return every single significant contributor, but one of the nation's top recruiting classes will add even more depth to an already-talented team.

Last season Wake Forest showed flashes of brilliance, most notably in an impressive upset of the Duke Blue Devils, but were ultimately done in by several ugly losses, including an ugly first round exit from the ACC tournament at the hands of Florida State.

With the fall beginning and college basketball just around the corner, it's time to look back at what our favorite teams did during their summer vacations. Some did some good things; some had a bad time. So let's look back at who did what in our How I Spent My Summer Vacation series.

Today's look is the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Roy Williams Hits Jackpot When All His Guys Return

The Tar Heels were at quite the crossroads. After a great season ended with a disappointing loss to Kansas, Tyler Hansbrough, Ty Lawson, Wayne Ellington and Danny Green all decided to take a look at the NBA Draft. Hansbrough decided to come back, but the other three entered the draft with the opportunity to come back to school if they didn't like their draft status.

If any or all left, the Heels were facing some uncertainty heading into the season. Yes, they'd still be a good team but they'd have a few holes.

In a somewhat surprising move, all three Heels decided to come back for one last hurrah. That means Ol' Roy gets everyone back from that Final Four team (sans a transferred Alex Stepheson and a graduating Quentin Thomas -- both role players). They also bring in three McDonald's All Americans.

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: