 | |
| Biographical details | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1950-11-03)November 3, 1950 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Died | July 26, 2007(2007-07-26) (aged 56) Winston-Salem, North Carolina, U.S. |
| Playing career | |
| 1969–1972 | Merchant Marine |
| Position(s) | Guard |
| Coaching career (HC unless noted) | |
| 1977–1979 | Linsly Military Institute |
| 1979–1985 | Wheeling Cent. Catholic HS |
| 1985–1993 | Xavier (assistant) |
| 1993–1994 | Loyola (MD) |
| 1994–2001 | Xavier |
| 2001–2007 | Wake Forest |
| Head coaching record | |
| Overall | 291–146 |
| Tournaments | 6–9 (NCAA Division I) 5–3 (NIT) |
| Accomplishments and honors | |
| Championships | |
| MAAC tournament (1994) MCC regular season (1995) Atlantic 10 regular season (1997) Atlantic 10 tournament (1998) ACC regular season (2003) | |
| Awards | |
| ACC Coach of the Year (2003) MCC Coach of the Year (1995) | |
George Edward "Skip" Prosser (November 3, 1950 – July 26, 2007) was an Americancollege basketball coach who was head men'sbasketball coach atWake Forest University at the time of his death. He was the only coach inNCAA history to take three separate schools to theNCAA tournament in his first year coaching the teams.[1] In 21 years as a collegiate coach, he made 18 postseason appearances.[1]
Previously, he coachedXavier University for seven seasons, where he achieved great success. He spent his first year coaching at the collegiate level atLoyola College in Maryland, taking the Greyhounds to the team's first modern-day NCAA Tournament appearance.
Prosser was theAtlantic Coast Conference Coach of the Year in 2003.
Prosser was born and raised in thePittsburgh,Pennsylvaniasuburb ofCarnegie[2] and graduated from Carnegie High School, where he playedfootball and basketball.[1] He played basketball andrugby union at theUnited States Merchant Marine Academy where he earned a degree in nauticalscience in 1972.[3][4]
Prosser coached atLinsly Military Institute inWheeling, West Virginia, where he achieved a 38–9 record.[5] He then was hired as a historyteacher atWheeling Central Catholic High School, where he coached his teams to a state championship in 1982, five regional championships and three conference titles over a period of six years[3] and a record of 104–48.[5] Prosser would say later in his career that he would be happy if he were still teaching and coaching at Central Catholic High.[2] One of the players on his championship team wasDoug Wojcik, former head coach at theCollege of Charleston.[6] Prosser earned hismaster's degree in secondary education fromWest Virginia University while he taught at Wheeling Central.[1][6]
Prosser coached 15 seasons as head coach at the collegiate level.[1] He began his college coaching career when he was hired by CoachPete Gillen as an assistant coach for eight seasons atXavier University inCincinnati,Ohio, starting with the 1985–86 season,[7] and he became Gillen's top assistant.[5]
His collegiate head coaching career began atLoyola College in Maryland on April 1, 1993. Besides replacing Tom Schneider, who had resigned amid a then-school-worst 2–25 season, Prosser inherited a program that had completed its sixth straight losing campaign.[8] In his only season at Loyola, the Greyhounds finished with a 17–13 overall record and won theMetro Atlantic Athletic Conference Championship to earn its first-everNCAA Division I tournament berth. He returned to Xavier precisely one year later, on April 1, 1994, to succeed Gillen, who had accepted a similar position atProvidence College two days prior.[9] Prosser became the second-winningest coach in Xavier history after Gillen.[10]
Prosser began his career atWake Forest in 2001 and led the Demon Deacons to the NCAA tournament in each of his first four years there.[3] Prosser is credited for sparking participation in the Wake Forest student Screamin' Demons and increasing attendance with game-time antics, like having the Demon Deacon mascot enter Lawrence Joel on a Harley Davidson and filling the coliseum withZombie Nation's "Kernkraft 400" at tip-off and when the Deacons would go on a run. During Prosser's tenure as head coach, home season tickets sold out for the first time ever in 2004.[1] During the 2004–05 season, the team was ranked #1 by theAssociated Press for the first time in the school's history and won a school-record 27 games. At Wake Forest, Prosser won 100 games faster than all but two ACC coaches.[1] In 2003, his Demon Deacons squad became the first from the ACC to ever lead the nation inrebounding.[1] In the summer of 2007, Prosser had organized what was said to be a top-five recruiting class for the upcoming year.[2]
Prosser was the collegiate coach of current or formerNBA playersAaron Williams,James Posey,David West,Josh Howard,Darius Songaila andChris Paul; he won national recruiting wars for Paul andEric Williams. He amassed a career record of 291–146 (.666).[3][11]
Every senior whom Prosser coached earned his degree in four years.[1]
Prosser's teams were known for their fast tempo[7] and offensive explosiveness.
During his last two troubling seasons, Prosser would quoteThomas Paine,Henry David Thoreau,Friedrich Nietzsche, orWilliam Shakespeare to his players to inspire them.[2][3] In the spring semester before summer exhibition tours, Prosser would require that every member of his team take a one-credit class on the history of the place they would be visiting. He would also attend the class and write the required term paper.[2]
Prosser and his wife Nancy met inCincinnati.[12] He had two sons, Scott andMark, who are from his first marriage to Ruth Charles.[3] Mark was formerly the head coach atDivision IIBrevard College, served as an assistant coach at Winthrop University,[13] and is now head coach at Winthrop University.[14]
An avid sports fan, Prosser was a follower of thePittsburgh Steelers since childhood and would often find sports bars to watch their games while on the road.[3] He was atThree Rivers Stadium to witness theImmaculate Reception.[10] He also sawRoberto Clemente's 3,000th and final hit, and the last game ever played at Three Rivers Stadium.[10] He oncehitchhiked across the country.[2]
Prosser earned a reputation in college basketball for a keen intellect and sense of humor.[3] He enjoyed reading the books ofRobert Ludlum,[3] along with biographies and books on history, philosophy, and politics.[2] The athletic director at Loyola, Joe Boylan, said that Prosser was a "renaissance man coaching basketball."[3] Former Xavier player Dwayne Wilson said, "He always liked to read history books, so he was always quoting something—whether it be Winston Churchill or another great author—he was always quoting somebody on something."[15]
Prosser stated, in an interview that aired just after his death, that his favorite quote was fromRalph Waldo Emerson: "He was atranscendentalist in America in the 1830s who said 'Our chief want in life is someone who will make us do what we can.' I thought that was a powerful statement that we need to be around people who challenge us to be as good as we can be."[16]
Since 2009, Prosser's legacy has been celebrated inWinston-Salem, North Carolina, with the annual READ Challenge as part of the Skip Prosser Literacy Program. The READ Challenge, a collaboration between Wake Forest Athletics and the Wake Forest Department of Education with support from the Winston-Salem-based literary nonprofit Bookmarks, encourages and supports reading among fourth-grade students in Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools. In the fall of 2019, 1,441 fourth graders from 29 elementary schools participated in the READ Challenge. 903 fourth-graders read 1500 or more minutes before winter break, the highest participation total since 2014.[17]
On July 26, 2007, Prosser collapsed in his office around noon[3] afterjogging[11][18] at theKentner Stadium track adjacent to his office in the Manchester Athletic Center on Wake Forest's campus. A staff member found him unresponsive around 12:45 pm; medical personnel performedCPR and used adefibrillator in efforts to revive Prosser.[7] He was rushed toWake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 1:41 pm[3] from an apparent "sudden massiveheart attack". He was 56 years old.[7][19]
The announcement of Prosser's death was delayed until later in the day because his wife was traveling to Cincinnati and had not yet been reached.[7] Players were gathered and taken to an off-campus location without their cell phones to guard them from reports of Prosser's death.[7]
Prosser ate lunch the previous day with his predecessor as Wake Forest coach, thenUniversity of South Carolina coachDave Odom.[7] Prosser then ate dinner with his son Mark, who was also in Florida recruiting, before flying to North Carolina Thursday morning.[20]
Twofuneral Masses were held for Prosser. The first was on July 31, 2007, at Holy Family Catholic Church inClemmons, North Carolina, near the Wake Forest campus. (Due to seating limitations, this service was televised by closed circuit television toWait Chapel on campus).[21] The secondMass was held on August 4, 2007, at theCintas Center on the campus of Xavier University in Cincinnati.[22] Prosser was then buried at theSpring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati.[23]
| Season | Team | Overall | Conference | Standing | Postseason | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Loyola Greyhounds(Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference)(1993–1994) | |||||||||
| 1993–94 | Loyola | 17–13 | 6–8 | 5th | NCAA Division I first round | ||||
| Loyola: | 17–13 (.567) | 6–8 (.429) | |||||||
| Xavier Musketeers(Midwestern Collegiate Conference)(1994–1995) | |||||||||
| 1994–95 | Xavier | 23–5 | 14–0 | 1st | NCAA Division I first round | ||||
| Xavier: | 23–5 (.821) | 14–0 (1.000) | |||||||
| Xavier Musketeers(Atlantic 10 Conference)(1995–2001) | |||||||||
| 1995–96 | Xavier | 13–15 | 8–8 | 3rd(West) | |||||
| 1996–97 | Xavier | 23–6 | 13–3 | 1st(West) | NCAA Division I second round | ||||
| 1997–98 | Xavier | 22–8 | 11–5 | T–1st(West) | NCAA Division I first round | ||||
| 1998–99 | Xavier | 25–11 | 12–4 | 2nd(West) | NIT Third Place | ||||
| 1999–00 | Xavier | 21–12 | 9–7 | 3rd(West) | NIT second round | ||||
| 2000–01 | Xavier | 21–8 | 12–4 | T–2nd | NCAA Division I first round | ||||
| Xavier: | 148–65 (.695) | 79–31 (.718) | |||||||
| Wake Forest Demon Deacons(Atlantic Coast Conference)(2001–2007) | |||||||||
| 2001–02 | Wake Forest | 21–13 | 9–7 | T–3rd | NCAA Division I second round | ||||
| 2002–03 | Wake Forest | 25–6 | 13–3 | 1st | NCAA Division I second round | ||||
| 2003–04 | Wake Forest | 21–10 | 9–7 | T–3rd | NCAA Division I Sweet 16 | ||||
| 2004–05 | Wake Forest | 27–6 | 13–3 | 2nd | NCAA Division I second round | ||||
| 2005–06 | Wake Forest | 17–17 | 3–13 | 12th | NIT first round | ||||
| 2006–07 | Wake Forest | 15–16 | 5–11 | T–10th | |||||
| Wake Forest: | 126–68 (.649) | 52–44 (.542) | |||||||
| Total: | 291–146 (.666) | ||||||||
National champion Postseason invitational champion | |||||||||
Wake Forest University basketball coach Skip Prosser dies atWikinews
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
