By SCOTT FOWLER
Charlotte Observer

Friday, July 27, 2007

All rights reserved

There are many ways to remember Wake Forest coach Skip Prosser, who died suddenly Thursday at age 56, but I will choose this one.

It was Dec. 20, 2003 in Chapel Hill -- time for one of those rare pre-Christmas ACC games. Wake Forest at North Carolina. Chris Paul against Raymond Felton. Prosser against Roy Williams. Flash against dash.

Even now, I remember it as the finest basketball game I've ever seen in person. Wake Forest won, 119-114, in triple overtime, as one extraordinary play cascaded over another. Prosser, at the end, said it was the best game he had ever been a part of in 30 years of coaching.

And he coached it masterfully -- sipping his three cups of water on the sideline, coaxing a great game out of center Eric Williams and never letting his foot off the gas pedal. It was breathtaking.

Prosser understood and embraced drama, both on that day and throughout his life. He was both well-liked and well-read.

How many ACC coaches are on a first-name basis with William Shakespeare? Prosser knew the Bard's work so well that he sometimes referred to him as "Billy."

I'm sure there's a fabulous library in heaven, and it's about to have another customer. Prosser was once a high-school history teacher and never lost his zest for the subject.

"A Renaissance man," ACC Commissioner John Swofford called him Thursday night.

And could the man ever talk! Prosser's news conferences required a dictionary on cultural literacy. He wasn't showing off -- he just refused to dumb it down. In a single Prosser news conference I once attended after a Wake-N.C. State game, he referenced Elmer Gantry, Chip Hilton, Bruce Willis, Muhammad Ali, the Steel Curtain and the Dalai Lama.

Don't know who some of those guys are?

Google them. Prosser would approve. He always said he was in the education business, not the entertainment business.

Another time, when Josh Howard came off the court after talking to Prosser at a Wake practice, a bewildered Howard asked a Deacon assistant: "Who is Genghis Khan?"

Prosser got Wake Forest to No. 1 for a while during the 2004-05 regular season. He guided Wake to the school's first outright ACC championship in 41 years in 2003 and was named ACC coach of the year. Prior to his six years at Wake, he was head coach at both Xavier and Loyola of Maryland.

Prosser never got to a Final Four and even his best teams didn't do that well in the NCAA tournament. Since Paul left for the NBA, the Deacons took a dramatic fall in the past two seasons.

But it was understood that Prosser would bounce back. He was a smart recruiter who had great in-state success. He played the up-tempo style that everyone loves.

When Wake Forest signed Prosser to a contract extension through 2013, the coach and his school anticipated Prosser ending his career at Wake Forest. Sadly, that has happened, all too soon.

But don't let the details of the last day of Prosser's life linger in your mind too long. Remember him instead at courtside -- golden tie flying, hands clapping, in the thick of the fight.

Prosser would smile sometimes during a game, allowing the wonder of it all to seep into him. He did several times during that 119-114 thriller.

You could tell he loved his work. You could tell he was made for it, that he would be doing it for the rest of his life.