Skip Prosser

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Like everyone else, I was shocked to hear the passing of Wake Forest coach Skip Prosser earlier today of an apparent heart attack. With everything you read now on the Internet you were hoping that the news that was making its way out onto the message boards and into the blogs was inaccurate.

Here at West Virginia there was an Internet scare a few weeks ago concerning former Mountaineer standout Bo Orlando that thankfully turned out to be false.

Unfortunately, this one was true.

According to school administrators, Prosser collapsed in his office early this afternoon after taking a jog at Kenter Stadium Track. He was pronounced dead at 1:41 pm.

Prosser had WVU ties, earning his master’s degree in secondary education in 1980 while coaching at Wheeling Central High School. Prosser also had friendships with several current and former West Virginia athletic department members, including WVU coach Bob Huggins. Prosser and Huggins hooked up many times on the basketball court while the two were coaching in the Queen City.

“Skip was a very dear friend. I’ve known him since his days in Wheeling,” Huggins said through WVU associate sports information director Bryan Messerly. “We became very close over the years.”

Although I didn’t know him, I did know through mutual associations what a great, down-to-Earth person Skip Prosser was. I was told that he was just as comfortable socializing with Roy Williams or Mike Krzyzewski as he was sipping a beer with a construction worker or a janitor talking about the Pittsburgh Steelers – his hometown team.

My only personal recollection of Prosser dates back to his Wheeling Central days when his Maroon Knights were winning on a regular basis. It was Prosser who was partly responsible for me hanging up my basketball sneakers as a Magnolia High School sophomore in 1984.

Of course the primary reason I quit was because I wasn't any good. I possessed the unbeatable combination of having both a lack of speed and a lack of size (small but slow in Coachspeak). But the other reason I chose to give up the game was because I knew Magnolia’s basketball season was going to be finished in the first round of the sectional tournament when it faced Wheeling Central.

Magnolia was able to turn out good baseball teams back then in part because the boys on the Blue Eagle basketball squad always got an early start in the batting cage. Skip Prosser, and later Dino Gaudio, made sure of that.

I remember sitting in the stands in New Martinsville watching one particularly bad Central beating. Back then it was customary for students to sneak a roll of toilet paper into the gymnasium and throw it out onto the floor when the home team scored its first basket.

There were several false alarms when we had our arms cocked, ready to launch our Quilted Northerns out of the stands only to see a Wheeling Central player pin a lay up against the glass or make a steal that resulted in another Maroon Knight basket. As a matter of fact, I’m certain we held on to our toilet paper through most of the first quarter before Magnolia finally scored its first bucket.

You got the sense even then that Prosser was going to move on to bigger things. He did, going first to Xavier as a member of Pete Gillen’s coaching staff before eventually taking over the Musketeer program in 1994. In 2001, he got the Wake Forest job and led the Demon Deacons to four NCAA tournament appearances and an outright ACC title in 2003.

His 2005 Wake Forest team was his best, getting to No. 1 in the national rankings for the first time in school history. In a cruel twist of fate, Prosser’s likely run to the Final Four was derailed in Cleveland when West Virginia upset the No. 5-ranked Demon Deacons, 111-105, in double overtime.

The victory goes down as one of the all-time great moments in WVU basketball history. For Prosser, it was probably the most difficult loss of his coaching career because he had two terrific players in All-America guard Chris Paul and 6-foot-9-inch, 291-pound center Eric Williams, and a bracket that was all set up for a Final Four run.

	West Virginia players celebrate their NCAA tournament second-round victory over Wake Forest in 2005. All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks

Prosser’s 2005 Wake Forest team set a school record for victories and ranked third in the country in scoring offense. His last two seasons resulted in 17-17 and 15-16 records.

But Prosser had Wake on the comeback trail, getting commitments from two of the best high school big men in the country earlier this summer. It’s a shame that he was not able to coach them.

“He’s really what this business is supposed to be about,” Huggins said. “His players have always had great respect for him.”

Huggins had a great amount of respect for Prosser, too.

“When I had my heart attack, I wasn’t allowed to have visitors. Skip flew to Pittsburgh and somehow made it back to see me,” Huggins said. “That was a busy time of year during the September recruiting period and for him to fly to Pittsburgh and find a way to get in the hospital to see me has always meant a lot to me.”

Skip Prosser, 56, meant a lot to many. He will be sorely missed.