Dino Gaudio seems like the kind of guy who would never back down from a challenge. But the longtime assistant coach is now facing the biggest trial of his professional life as he tries to pick up the pieces left by last summer’s sudden death of Skip Prosser, the legendary men’s basketball coach at Wake Forest University. It’s a challenge that Gaudio never wanted, but he knows that Prosser - his mentor and best friend - would have none of that talk.

Sitting in his Miller Center office, the fit, dark-haired Gaudio looks as if he could take a regular turn at point guard for the Demon Deacons. He offers the undivided attention of a man who - although preparing for a game that evening - believes in focusing on tasks immediately at hand.

“Maybe if another guy took over, he’d get a little tired of hearing about how great a coach and person Skip Prosser was and say, ‘Hey, that’s enough.’ But I am where I am today because of Skip. That’ll never, ever be the case with me.”

When asked about the heralded 2008 recruiting class, Gaudio is quick to talk about his current team.

“We’re starting three sophomores and two freshmen tonight, so yes, we’re young. Some people say, ‘Well you’re young, don’t worry about winning this year.’ But I don’t feel that way at all. If these guys work hard and play smart, we can be good now . and it’s my job to make these guys believe in themselves. We’ll never, ever make excuses.”

Driven to succeed
No one can claim that Gaudio ever had anything handed to him; he comes by his well-known work ethic honestly. He was raised in the tiny, blue-collar hamlet of Yorkville, Ohio (population 1,200), by the Ohio River and on the West Virginia border. His father, Joey Gaudio, worked in a mill, cutting sheets of steel to send to Detroit automobile manufacturers.

“My father usually worked the assembly line 6 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. shift, where the more you produced, the more you worked and were paid. Not many guys wanted that shift because there was no rest . no taking time off,” he explains.

Gaudio fondly recalls a childhood where sports dominated his life. “It was a different time,” he says. “There were no AAU or select-travel teams. We rode everywhere on our bikes and played ball outside pretty much all day long. The high school was a block from our house, and I was always in the gym. When I was in junior high I hung around the high-school team doing stuff that managers do, and then went to my practice. I was there from 3 to 8 p.m. every day. I just loved being in the gym and around the game.”

A three-sport high-school athlete and self-proclaimed basketball junkie who idolized “Pistol” Pete Maravich, Gaudio says he didn’t think college was for him, despite his parents’ urgings. That changed after one summer spent working in the mill. “If you grew up in Yorkville, you graduated from high school and either went to college or worked in the mill. I had no interest in going to college, but that one summer in the mill . that’s all it took. I said to myself, I’m not gonna do this for 30 years.”

Recruited by Division III schools, Gaudio says he ended up at Ohio University because the tuition was affordable. He earned a degree in accounting and returned home to work in the steel company’s corporate office. “It took me about a week to realize that working in a cubicle wasn’t for me, and I enrolled in night courses in order to earn a degree in education. I knew I wanted to coach, and a teaching certification was my ticket.”

Twists of fate
Gaudio’s introduction to Skip Prosser was hardly auspicious. He was offered a job at Wheeling Central Catholic High School as a business teacher and assistant basketball coach. At that time Prosser, the school’s head coach who had another candidate in mind, asked, “Who’s Dino Gaudio, and can he coach?” When assured by the school’s principal that Gaudio could coach because “he told me he could,” Prosser fired back, “Do you hire every teacher who tells you he can teach?”

But it didn’t take long for Prosser to realize that in Gaudio he had a soul mate who shared his passion for the game. “I think Skip saw in me a young guy who loved what he was doing and was going to work his tail off,” Gaudio says. “And for me, Skip was the greatest mentor a young coach could have, and in time he became almost like an older brother figure for me.”

When Prosser got his big break and joined the Xavier University coaching staff, Gaudio took over the Central Catholic head-coaching reins, guiding the Maroon Knights to two state championship games, the latter ending in a Central Catholic state title. When Prosser and head coach Pete Gillen extended an invitation to join the Xavier staff, Gaudio couldn’t pack fast enough. “As much as I loved working at Central Catholic, in some ways it was the right profession at the wrong level. I had a passion for basketball and wanted to be able to devote more time to coaching.”

After six highly successful years at Xavier, Gaudio accepted the task of leading the United States Military Academy program, considered by some to be the most challenging coaching job in Division I basketball. “Lots of people asked me why I would even interview for the Army job, but I was a young, hard-headed assistant coach who thought he could win anywhere. In the end, I wouldn’t trade the experience I had at West Point for anything,” he says.

“The cadets were under tremendous time constraints, and you had to fit everything in - lifting, shooting, film work, team practice - between 3 and 6 p.m. To coach at West Point you had to develop tremendous organizational skills.”

Gaudio left West Point after four years to become head coach at Loyola College, but he soon chose to once again join forces with Prosser. The pair arrived at Wake Forest in 2001 and oversaw an era of Demon Deacon basketball that included five consecutive postseason tournament trips, a regular season ACC championship, and a No. 1 national ranking. With a talented young team returning and one of the nation’s most heralded recruiting classes slated to arrive on campus in 2008, the future looked bright. This is, until the fateful day last summer when 56-year-old Prosser collapsed after an afternoon jog.

Up to the task
In the weeks that followed Prosser’s death, the Wake Forest and Winston-Salem communities mourned. It was up to Wake Forest Director of Athletics Ron Wellman to pick up the pieces and appoint a new coach. “The easiest thing in the world would have been for me to make an emotional decision, but I knew I couldn’t do that,” Wellman says. “I had to do what was in the best long-term interest of the program and the university. But I had the opportunity to work with and observe Dino for six years, and that combined with the support he had from our players and so many other people both here at Wake and elsewhere had a real impact on my decision.

“Of course, the way Skip always talked about Dino . the respect he had for him as a person and a coach may have been what really sealed the deal in my mind. Dino has exceeded my expectations in what he has done with the program in a particularly difficult time, and my expectations were very high.”

Assistant Coach Pat Kelsey notes that for all their tactical similarities, Gaudio and Prosser are “night and day” in terms of coaching styles. “Skip was stoic and even cerebral in nature, while Dino is something of a firecracker. But he’s as good a coach as I’ve been around in terms of reading the flow of a game and suggesting the right strategy for a situation . and Skip gave Dino a lot of well-deserved credit for his success both at Xavier and here at Wake Forest,” Kelsey notes. “Skip used to joke that Dino is sometimes right, sometimes wrong, but never in doubt.”

Gaudio acknowledges that he is not one to mince words or opinions: “I’m more emotional than Skip, more direct. Where Skip might pull a guy aside and talk to him quietly but firmly, I want to bring the situation to a head right there. But as I’m faced with different challenges, I often wonder how Skip would handle a particular situation, because he handled most of them right.”

Still, Gaudio’s players seem to know that his bark may be far worse than his bite. Sophomore L.D. Williams is quick to point out that “with Coach, you need to listen to what he’s saying, not how he’s saying it. He talks to you man-to-man.” Sophomore Jamie Skeen adds, “Sure, Coach can be tough on us, but he’s just trying to make us better. He’s definitely a player’s coach.”

Gaudio clearly has great affection for Wake Forest, even its challenging academic standards. “Our academic situation is a huge positive. We tell recruits that they won’t get a good education here - they’ll get a great education. And I can speak credibly given the fact that my oldest daughter is a Wake Forest graduate,” Gaudio explains. “We take great pride in the fact that every kid who has stayed in the program has graduated. Even [current NBA star] Chris Paul, who left after his sophomore year, is taking classes, and he’ll graduate.”

Whether it be a key Atlantic Coast Conference match up or a 3-on-3 game in Wake Forest’s faculty/staff noontime hoops league, Gaudio only knows one way to play: 110 percent. In a tightly contested game last fall he and his teammates were one basket from defeat when an opposing player broke away for an uncontested, game-winning lay-up.

“Whose guy is that?” pleaded the ever-direct Gaudio. “How could he be so open?”

Wake Forest President Nathan Hatch sheepishly raised his hand and replied, “My man, Coach.”

As President Hatch learned instantly, when you sign on to play with Dino Gaudio, you’re expected to carry your weight.