RIP, Skip Prosser

Man, this sucks. Wake Forest basketball coach Skip Prosser apparently dropped dead of a heart attack today while jogging. He was 56. Prosser was one of the good guys, universally respected as a competitor, teacher, and all-around person. Even during some of the chippier games against Duke during the Chris Paul era, no one really had anything bad to say about Prosser himself.

Skip Prosser was an instant success everywhere he went -- he was the first coach in NCAA history to take three different teams to the NCAA tournament in his first season. He had a fantastic tenure at Xavier, and maintained the success of the Demon Deacon program after Dave Odom left. In the years since Paul went pro, Wake has struggled a bit. But things were looking up. Wake fans were already gleeful with the 2008 recruiting season early commitments. For more on those signees, check here and here and here (all those links via DBR, and their message board thread, with some nice stories about Prosser, is here).

It's a real shame that Prosser's last season was such a disaster, given how much optimism he had for the future of the program. I know that when ACC fans saw that recruiting news, they knew Wake wasn't going to be down for long. Now one has to wonder if those recruits will stick with the Deacs. Much will surely depend on who the next coach is, and it's way too early to even begin speculating on that. But Skip Prosser made sure that he left the program in good shape, and it will be a great opportunity for someone else, thanks to all the effort he put in. Skip's son Mark Prosser is an assistant coach at Bucknell, and the Bison are scheduled to visit Wake Forest in December. I wonder if they'll cancel that game now (although it's a great game for both teams), but if they do play, I'm sure it will be a bittersweet moment, as it should have been an on-court matchup of father and son.

I heard Fran Fraschilla talking to John Siebel on ESPN Radio a bit ago about Prosser. Fraschilla was part of a group, including Prosser, who went to Kuwait this summer to hang out with some troops and play some basketball. He wrote about the experience here and here. Fraschilla said that Prosser was a teacher to everyone he met, and a good person on and off the court. A lot of people in college basketball, and fans of the game, are going to miss him.