A dream come true: LaRue gets his due at WFU

Northwest Guilford grad Rusty LaRue moving up in the basketball world.

from the Wake Forest web site:

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. – Wake Forest head coach Dino Gaudio announced today the hiring of former Demon Deacon standout and Hall of Famer Rusty LaRue as an assistant coach.

“We are thrilled to have Rusty join our staff,” said Gaudio. “Wake Forest is a special place, and it’s the people at this institution that make it so special. This University is about academics, character and achievement. Rusty LaRue embodies all of those principles.

“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.”

Inducted into the Wake Forest Sports Hall of Fame in 2008, LaRue is perhaps the most prolific multi-sport athlete in the modern history of the school. 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.

LaRue went on to play professional basketball, spending five seasons in the NBA. He was a member of the Chicago Bulls’ NBA Championship team in 1998 and also spent time with the Utah Jazz and the Golden State Warriors, in addition to playing overseas in Italy and Russia.

LaRue was honored by the Atlantic Coast Conference in 2006, being named to that year’s class of ACC Basketball Legends.

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 was also a standout in the classroom, as he earned Academic All-ACC honors and received 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 athletic director and head boys’ basketball coach at Forsyth Country Day School in Winston-Salem. He also runs the RLBA Triad Pro-Am Summer League, as well as youth basketball camps and travel teams.

LaRue, 35, is a native of nearby Kernersville, N.C. He graduated from Wake Forest in 1996 with a degree in computer science.

2 thoughts on “A dream come true: LaRue gets his due at WFU

  1. I know his sister went to NW Guilford and was an awesome athlete there, did Rusty go to high school around here?

  2. Rusty went to Northwest Guilford along with his sister Katie and their older brother Chan attended East Forsyth HS.

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