Wake Forest Basketball Coach Dies

When things weren't going well for his Wake Forest University basketball team, Skip Prosser was known to quote Thomas Paine: "These are the times that try men's souls."

At heart, Prosser considered himself a high school history teacher who happened to coach basketball.

And when he died at 56 Thursday of an apparent heart attack after a lunchtime jog, the reverberations were felt nationwide - particularly in Cincinnati, where he was either an assistant coach or head coach at Xavier University for 15 seasons.

"We always stressed family," said Byron Larkin, who played at Xavier from 1984-88 and is the school's all-time leading scorer with 2,696 points.

"He would come back to attend the graduations of kids he recruited. He was just a good person like that, but a mentor, and humble. He used to tell me he was just a high school history teacher coaching college basketball.

"For him, it was always about doing the right thing, with character No. 1. And No. 2, be a good basketball player. I admired that about him. I remember thinking, he isn't getting paid to make me a better person. He's getting paid to make me a better basketball player. But Skip wanted you to be a good player and a good person."

Prosser, head coach at Wake Forest in Winston-Salem, N.C., the past seven seasons, was found slumped on his office couch and unresponsive by director of basketball operations Mike Muse shortly after returning from his noon jog, athletics director Ron Wellman said Thursday night.

Medical personnel performed CPR and used a defibrillator on Prosser, who was taken to Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center and pronounced dead at 1:41 p.m.

Wellman said he was unaware of any previous health issues for Prosser, calling his death "a devastating loss" during a news conference.

"Because of his strength, we'll be able to go on and we'll be just fine eventually," Wellman said. "We're not right now. We're all suffering right now."

Dr. William Applegate, the dean of the university medical school, said the events were "typical of a sudden massive heart attack."

"This kind of attack, when it's not witnessed by someone next to the person and CPR is not started within seconds, then the outcome is often not good," Applegate said.

Confirmation of Prosser's death was delayed until Thursday night because his wife, Nancy, was traveling to Cincinnati - where the couple still kept a home in Mount Lookout - and could not be reached, Wellman said.

Wellman said team officials gathered several players in the afternoon and took them to an off-campus location without their cell phones for about four hours in an attempt to temporarily shield them from news reports of Prosser's death.

Former University of Cincinnati coach Bob Huggins, who had known Prosser since Prosser was a high school coach and coached against him in the Crosstown Shootout seven times, said the news of Prosser's death was "just terrible."

"We were very close. He's a great guy," said Huggins, who was ousted from UC in 2005, coached at Kansas State last season and is now the coach at West Virginia. In 2002, Huggins had a heart attack in Pittsburgh and was hospitalized there.

"I wasn't supposed to have any visitors, but then Skip came in," he said. "That was during a contact (recruiting) period when all of us were really busy.

"The year I was out (after his ouster at UC), Skip called me once a week, just to check on me, make sure I was all right."

Mick Cronin, the current UC coach, called Prosser's death "a tragic loss for college basketball."

"Skip was a great coach and meant a lot to the Cincinnati community for many years," Cronin said. "He was a better person than he was a coach, and he was a great coach."

Current Xavier head coach Sean Miller said, "College basketball has lost such a great person, who prided himself on working hard and being a teacher. But he didn't think he was better than anybody else. He was a humble, very giving person. And he will be sorely missed by a lot of different people, especially in the Xavier community, where we have lost a great friend."

Tributes poured in from the Xavier community, typically saluting Prosser's off-court qualities as much as his coaching acumen.

"'Carpe diem' ('seize the day') was his favorite phrase," said Andy MacWilliams, former Xavier broadcaster. "And he sucked the marrow right out of life. He worked hard and he played hard. He loved his family. He enjoyed his Guinness beer, and his Irish music. He was an ordinary guy who achieved at a very high level. It's quite a story, and it's a very sad day to know he's not with us any more."

Said Tom Eiser, associate athletic director for media relations: "He genuinely loved Xavier, and he loved Cincinnati. We're going to miss him for a long list of reasons. I will miss him as a friend. I never heard anybody say a bad word about him, in great part because there is nothing phony about him. He's a great example of what college basketball and college athletics should be like."

George Edward "Skip" Prosser was born Nov. 3, 1950, in Pittsburgh. A 1972 graduate of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, Prosser earned his master's degree in secondary education from West Virginia in 1980 while he was a high school coach. He joined the Xavier staff as an assistant before the 1985-86 season, spending eight years on the bench there.

After a season coaching at Loyola (Md.), he returned to Xavier as head coach in 1995 and stayed for seven seasons before taking the Wake Forest job in the prestigious Atlantic Coast Conference.

Prosser averaged nearly 24 wins in his first four seasons at Wake Forest - including a school-record 27 in 2005 - with his up-tempo offense.

But his last two teams struggled to a combined 32-33 record, including 8-24 in the ACC, with youth-laden teams.

Prosser was excited about recent commitments from several highly regarded recruits, said Pete Gillen, who hired Prosser as an assistant at Xavier and coached against Prosser while at Virginia.

"He was a lot smarter than me at Xavier and he was twice as smart at Wake," said Gillen, who lost five of eight ACC meetings with Prosser. "I felt bad when he beat me. I felt bad when I beat him. It was a lose-lose."

Prosser is survived by his wife, Nancy, and sons, Scott and Mark.

Mark Prosser is an assistant coach at Bucknell.

Post staff reporter Victoria Sun, Post contributor Marc Hardin, the Associated Press and the Baltimore Sun contributed to this report.

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