ntering his third season as Wake Forest’s head basketball coach, Dino Gaudio is now the owner of a two-year contract extension that will keep him at the helm through the 2013-14 season.

At the announcement during the Deacons’ preseason media session on Wednesday, Gaudio praised the effort of players and staff that enabled his teams to go 41-20 since he took over after the death of Skip Prosser.

“Dino has continued to move our basketball program forward, much as was anticipated when he was hired two years ago,” athletics director Ron Wellman said. “We are pleased with the progress of the student-athletes, both on and off the court, and Dino is responsible for that progress.”

In the long term, Gaudio says the extension is important because it assures recruits that he will be around while they are in the program.

In the short term, he goes to work trying to shape a team that ended the season devastated when it was embarrassed 84-69 by little-known Cleveland State in the first round of the NCAA Tournament to end the year 24-7 and then was left without its two top scorers when Jeff Teague and James Johnson opted for the NBA Draft.

The Cleveland State loss followed a first-round loss to Maryland in the ACC Tournament. The postseason collapse provided a miserable end for a squad that shot to a 16-0 start that included a defeat of North Carolina and a climb to No. 1 in the national polls. After a slump, the Deacons also won six of their last eight regular-season games, climbing back into the top 10 before finishing at No. 12.

“I thought we played well against Maryland but just didn’t shoot the ball well,” Gaudio said. “Against Cleveland State we were just horrible. I don’t know if it was because they thought they were automatically going to advance, but we just didn’t play well.”

Wake returns three starters in senior guard L.D. Williams, sophomore forward Al-Farouq Aminu and senior center Chas McFarland and will have another starter in senior point guard Ishmael Smith, who served as a backup to Teague last season.

Smith, who shapes up as the team leader, said he can’t explain the Cleveland State loss.

“I really don’t know what it was,” Smith said. “It was one of those that was so bad that you just leave it in the archive for awhile before you watch it.”

McFarland said he is putting the debacle in the past, afraid of the possibility of a repeat.

“The loss tore us apart because we knew we weren’t going to finish our dream,” Johnson said. “All season long, Coach Gaudio talked about the Final Four and we didn’t even make it to the final 32. It kills everyday. That’s why, at any moment, you might see guys up here in the gym. We didn’t finish and that’s going to be our big staple this year.”

On Wednesday, Gaudio didn’t talk of Final Fours. He talked of winning the ACC Tournament.

To do that, he must find a way to make up for the loss of 53.3 percent of the team’s scoring and 67.4 percent of its rebounding from last season.

He must do it with just Aminu (12.9 points per game) as the only double-figure scorer returning. Gaudio said Wednesday that he doesn’t expect one person to make up for the loss of Teague and Johnson, but that he does expect the Deacons to be dependent on their inside game, defense and rebounding while still playing at a fast pace.

The emphasis on the inside game places more burden on Aminu, returning centers McFarland, Ty Walker, David Weaver and Tony Woods (all listed at 7-feet or 6-11) and athletic 6-7 wing player Ari Stewart, who was rated by Scout.com as the No. 8 small forward prospect in the country.

The emphasis is to improve on shooting after missing 52 shots against Maryland in the conference tournament loss and struggling from the outside so much that the Deacons regularly saw zone defenses.

“I don’t want any of those guys thinking they are Jeff Teague or James Johnson or Chris Paul,” Gaudio said. “We’re going to have to do it together.”