Wake Forest will meet Xavier today

The first time L.D. Williams ever met Skip Prosser was at a Wake Forest football game against N.C. State at BB&T Field, then known as Groves Stadium. Williams was a sophomore at Forbush High School in nearby East Bend, who was making an unofficial visit.

"He was trying to think of nicknames he could give me instead of Larry Demetrius," Williams said yesterday. "The one he came up with that day was Long Dunking. I thought it was hilarious.

"And from that point on, I felt I was going to have a pretty good relationship with Coach Prosser."

Of the hundreds who played for Skip Prosser during his 35-year coaching career, only four will be on the court today when Wake Forest plays Xavier at Joel Coliseum at 5:30. The four -- Williams, Ish Smith, David Weaver and Chas McFarland -- are seniors for Wake Forest, so next year when the teams play again in Cincinnati, there will be none.

To keep the memory of Prosser alive, Wake Forest and Xavier have instituted the Skip Prosser Classic that will run for 10 straight years with five of the games scheduled for Winston-Salem and five for Cincinnati.

Prosser was head coach at Xavier from the 1994-95 season through the 2000-01 season, and head coach at Wake Forest from the 2001-02 season until his death on July 26, 2007, of a heart attack.

Junior Gary Clark and sophomores Al-Farouq Aminu, Tony Woods and Ty Walker committed to play at Wake Forest before Prosser's death, but current coach Dino Gaudio still took time on Friday to explain the reason for the event.

"I got choked up. I did," Gaudio said. "I told them ‘None of us would be here if not for Skip. Even the young ones.' Because I wouldn't be here.

"I was telling them that and I couldn't finish."

Gaudio was an assistant to Prosser at Wheeling Central High School, Xavier and Wake Forest, 27 years in all. Assistant Jeff Battle coached for Prosser at Loyola (Md.), Xavier and Wake Forest. Assistant Dave Wojcik played for Prosser at Wheeling Central and coached for him at Loyola and Xavier. Walt Corbean, the Deacons' director of basketball operations, was a walk-on at Xavier when Prosser as an assistant there to Coach Pete Gillen.

The Xavier coaches have their own Skip Prosser stories. Head coach Chris Mack played for Prosser at Xavier when Gillen was head coach and was an assistant to him for three years at Wake Forest before leaving to join the staff at Xavier before the 2004-05 season.

Pat Kelsey, the Musketeers' associate head coach, spent eight years at Wake Forest under both Prosser and Gaudio before accepting his current position before this season.

"You hate to go into the game and you're playing people who are incredibly close to you," Gaudio said. "I coached Chris. I worked with Pat for so many years. It's an emotional game, obviously, with Skip's name on it.

"I think the fans will enjoy it, watching the basketball game. But it's tremendously stressful for the two staffs, being that it's the Skip Prosser game and the two staffs are incredibly close. It's a difficult, emotional game."

The Deacons are 10-2 coming off Thursday's 74-68 overtime victory over Richmond. Xavier is 8-4, having lost to Marquette (71-61) and Baylor (69-64) at the Old Spice Classic and at Kansas State (71-56) and at Butler (69-68).

The Musketeers' main offensive weapon is Jordan Crawford, a 6-4 sophomore averaging 18.3 points and 4.7 rebounds while shooting 45 percent from the floor and 41 percent from 3-point range.

Jason Love, a 6-9 senior, leads Xavier with 9.7 rebounds a game to go with 10.4 points a game and Terrell Holloway, a 6-0 sophomore, leads the Musketeers with 3.8 assists a game to go with 10.5 points a game.

If the teams look similar, it's for a good reason.

"They obviously know well what we do," Gaudio said. "It's amazing.

"We go over their top five sets. We run them and they run them."

Williams said he was walking with Weaver by the Wake Forest track on July 26 when Prosser, having arrived only that morning on an early flight from Orlando, was getting in his routine jog. Afterward Prosser went into his office in the adjacent Miller Center, slumped over on the couch in his office, and was never revived.

"The last thing I said to Coach Prosser was ‘All right Coach, maybe you need to get off that track,'" Williams recalled. "And I remember him saying, ‘L.D., when you're 50 you hope you're in as good as shape as I am.'"

For the record, Prosser was 56.

dcollins@wsjournal.com
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