Portal:Basketball/Selected biography/November, 2007

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Skip Prosser (November 3, 1950 - July 26, 2007) was an American college basketball coach who was head basketball coach at Wake Forest University at the time of his death. He was the only coach in NCAA history to take three separate schools to the NCAA Tournament in his first year coaching the teams. In 21 years as a collegiate coach, he made 18 postseason appearances.

Previously, he coached Xavier University for seven seasons, where he achieved great success. He spent his first year of coaching at the collegiate level at Loyola College in Maryland, where he took the Greyhounds to the team's only modern-day NCAA Tournament appearance.

Prosser was the Atlantic Coast Conference Coach of the Year in 2003. His teams have at times been participants in the NCAA Tournament in March, although Wake Forest did not participate in the 2006 or 2007 seasons.

Prosser was born and raised in the Pittsburgh suburb of Carnegie, Pennsylvania and graduated from Carnegie High School, where he played football and basketball. He played basketball and rugby at the United States Merchant Marine Academy, where he earned a degree in nautical science in 1972.

Prosser coached at Linsly Military Institute in Wheeling, WV, where he achieved a 38-9 record. He then was hired as a history teacher at Wheeling 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 and a record of 104-48. Prosser would say later in his career that he would be happy if he were still teaching and coaching at Central Catholic High. One of the players on his championship team was Doug Wojcik, now head coach at the University of Tulsa. Prosser earned his master's degree in secondary education from West Virginia University while he taught at Wheeling Central.