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Rusty LaRue goes home to Wake Forest

Rusty LaRue, a three-sport star during his playing days at Wake Forest, has been hired as an assistant coach for the Demon Deacons basketball team.

LaRue, who was inducted into the Wake Forest Sports Hall of Fame last year, will replace Pat Kelsey on head coach Dino Gaudio's staff. Kelsey left Wake in April to take the associate head coach at Xavier.

"We are thrilled to have Rusty join our staff," Gaudio said in a statement released Wednesday by the university. "... As a student-athlete he excelled in the classroom as well as on the court and fields of competition. No student-athlete has better represented what Wake Forest is all about better than Rusty. He will be a great addition to our staff as a coach and recruiter and will serve as a terrific mentor and role model not only to the basketball players but to all of the student-athletes at Wake Forest."

As a junior in 1995, LaRue became the first athlete since 1952 and just the second in ACC history to compete in football, basketball and baseball in the same year.

On the basketball court, LaRue was a member of Wake Forest's back-to-back ACC championship teams in 1995 and 1996. He is one of seven players in program history to play in four NCAA Tournaments.

From 1993-96, LaRue scored 667 career points and made 151 career three-point field goals. He currently ranks seventh all-time at Wake Forest in both career three-point field goals and three-point attempts. His career three-point percentage of 43.4 percent is the fifth-best mark in school history.

After college, LaRue played five seasons in the NBA for the Chicago Bulls -- he was a member of the 1998 championship team -- the Utah Jazz and the Golden State Warriors. LaRue also played professionally in Italy and Russia.

LaRue was named to the ACC Basketball Legends Class of 2006.

LaRue also played football and baseball for Wake Forest. A four-year letterwinner at quarterback from 1992-95, LaRue set school and ACC records that still stand including marks for total offensive yards, total offensive plays, pass attempts, pass completions and passing yards in a game. He finished his football career with 5,016 career passing yards, the fifth-highest total in school history.

In 1995, LaRue pitched in one game for the baseball team, earning a save with three innings of two-hit relief in a win over Furman.

LaRue also excelled in the classroom, earning Academic All-ACC honors, winning the ACC Scholarship Award and an NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship. He was named Wake Forest's Male Scholar-Athlete of the Year in 1996 and was also selected as the Arnold Palmer Award winner as a senior.

Following his professional basketball playing days, LaRue spent one season as the head men's basketball coach at Greensboro College in 2004-05.

Most recently, LaRue was the athletics director and head boys' basketball coach at Forsyth Country Day School in Winston-Salem. He also runs the Rusty LaRue Basketball Academy Triad Pro-Am Summer League, as well as youth basketball camps and travel teams.

LaRue, 35, grew up in Kernersville. He graduated from Wake Forest in 1996 with a degree in computer science.

-- Jeff Mills, Staff Writer