Gold Rush: Prosser Postseason 2003
5/19/2003 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
May 19, 2003
It has been a busy couple of months for Skip Prosser. He finished coaching Wake Forest to an ACC regular-season championship and another NCAA tournament bid, and weeks later, Pittsburgh asked him to become its coach. After days of deliberation, Prosser decided to stay at Wake Forest, and he is excited about the team he has returning in 2003-04. Gold Rush's Jay Reddick talked to Prosser in early May.
Gold Rush: How big a role did the outpouring of support from the Wake Forest community play in your decision to sign a new contract to stay here?
Prosser: It meant a great deal. I was stunned by it. I thought the students were excellent. The amount of e-mails I received, and letters, before and since, has been overwhelming. The most telling thing was our players. The things that they said really struck home. The whole thing was stunning and very meaningful.
Gold Rush: And now, you're going to be here for a while.
Prosser: Yes, and we're excited about the future. We have a chance. We have some very good young players, and I'm really pleased that they're outstanding people. They're the kind of kids you want to coach and be around. And they're talented, too. They have the potential to be excellent players, so we're looking forward to a lot of good years, to continuing what we've begun.
Gold Rush: Getting to this past season, the group that took the floor was one of the youngest teams in the conference.
Prosser: And I was very concerned. It crossed my mind - we had two seniors coming back, and Carolina had just suffered through 8-20 with two seniors like Kris Lang and Jason Capel back - and I was thinking, heaven forbid, Josh (Howard) and Steve (Lepore) may have to have that ignominious label put on them. We talked about that to the kids. We were very concerned. You add in that both of those guys were hurt...
My friends in the business said, you better make sure everybody knows this is a rebuilding year and to be patient. I never felt comfortable using the word "rebuilding." We had two seniors, and to tell those guys and everybody else we'd be good in a year or so, well, they wouldn't be here in a year, so let's try to be as good as we can be this year. There were no guarantees, we made no promises, but we weren't going to make any excuses either.
In the course of a season, game by game, you worry about the next challenge, the next game. You don't really look at the whole season. But if you look retrospectively, what those kids accomplished - to have a school record for ACC wins, one win away from a school record for wins, to be the first ACC school to lead the nation in rebounding, 11th-best in terms of field-goal percentage defense, to be picked sixth and win that league by two games - I was really, really proud of our players.
Having said that, I still feel badly that we didn't play better in the ACC Tournament. We played a very desperate N.C. State team that shot the ball extremely well. We came back, but we weren't able to break through. We had a lot of games like that all year, and we weren't able to win that one.
Then going to the national tournament, in the Auburn game, we didn't play well. Looking back, we didn't have to play a great game to beat Auburn, but if we play a good game, we beat Auburn. I'm not sure why it happened like that. We had a lot of young guys, and maybe they were a bit in awe of the NCAA tournament. A million theories have run through my head as to why it happened, but obviously it did happen. Auburn's a good team, obviously - they lost by one point to Syracuse in Albany, so it wasn't like we lost to St. Leo's -- but having said that, it's still disappointing, and it gives you a reason to be really excited about next season.
Gold Rush: The team came together very well, very early.
Prosser: I think Josh Howard set the tone for that. He was without question the best player in the ACC, but he never acted like it in front of the team. He was uncomfortable at the beginning of the season having his picture as the only one on the front of the media guide. He thought Steve should be there. He was a guy who couldn't escape the limelight, who deserved the limelight, but didn't always feel comfortable in the limelight.
Gold Rush: But for the good of the team, he accepted that role.
Prosser: He had to. He was cognizant of the fact that he had to, and he did a great job with it.
Gold Rush: Steve's leadership was often behind the scenes, but he was able to play a bit at the end of the year.
Prosser: I think Steve was really driven by the fact that he had come to Wake Forest to win. He had come to play in the national tournament, which he didn't see as a possibility at Northwestern. He verbalized that to his teammates, and we did as coaches, Part of the motivation for this team was, get Steve to the NCAA tournament, and I was happy for him.
Gold Rush: Looking back, was there a turning point to the season?
Prosser: I think the Wisconsin game was really a watershed game in terms of, we're not supposed to win, Wisconsin had only lost one game all year at home. It was the ACC/Big Ten Challenge, and it was 4-4, so our game would decide it. No road team had won in the Challenge until our game. So there were a lot of things against us. But our players came out of that game thinking, hey, we can be good. We beat an NCAA-level team in their own gym. We tried to tell our guys we could be good, but that game validated it.
Gold Rush: Next year's roster looks like an interesting mix of veterans and newcomers. How do you feel about it?
Prosser: You're cautious about the incoming kids. People tend to forget that it's a huge adjustment. You're a high school senior becoming a college freshman at Wake Forest, it's a big adjustment academically and socially. Then you throw in the rigors of ACC basketball, it's tough. We have to be careful not to canonize these guys before they get their first holy communion. I think they're good players, they're winners -- the record of the four high school kids was 96-17, so they're used to winning, which we like - they're really good people. Wake Forest people will embrace them. But they have a lot to go through before they suit up and play for Wake.
Our eight returning players are very motivated. It'll be a big summer, because competition for playing time will be very intense. The cream will rise to the top, and that will be very interesting to see.
Gold Rush: You go from having two seniors to none. How does that change things?
Prosser: Jamaal (Levy) and Vytas (Danelius) and Taron (Downey) are now our veterans, the junior veterans. Vytas did a good job going from a complementary player to someone who is more counted upon each game. Even though Jamaal had some good games for us, but for us to live up to our potential, he has to be a consistently good player. He guards well, he rebounds well, but for us to be very, very good, he has to be a great wing, a consistent scorer, shoot the ball better, and he'll be an X-factor guy for us.
Gold Rush: The freshmen becoming sophomores is always a big jump.
Prosser: Justin Gray has really good potential. He's a basketball guy who loves to be in the gym, and he can get better and better.
The forwards, Chris (Ellis) and Eric (Williams), those guys are really important, how they develop over the summer and the fall. Eric needs to lose a little more weight and become quicker around the basket. Big E has to become not-so-big E. Chris just needs to continue to play. They are really important players for us.
Gold Rush: Getting away from the team for a minute, what are your thoughts on ACC expansion?
Prosser: I don't claim to be any expert on the traditions of the ACC, so my viewpoint would be somewhat skewed.
One thing I have learned is, this is a great basketball conference. You would hope that whatever change they make, it remains a great basketball conference. I don't know if it's a great football conference. It might be, but I don't know that. I think perhaps the thinking is, if we can make this a great football conference and a great basketball conference, it will be the best conference in the country. If we can do that, and maintain the academic reputation of the league, the fact that the league by and large is compliance-driven, I think that would be a coup. Maybe that's the thinking in the higher-ups.
One of the great things about the league is that it crowns a true champion. The round-robin is the way we play, and basketball purists really appreciate that. Should that be more important than making it the best football conference in the country? I don't know the answer to that.
Gold Rush: You mentioned that this was a really important summer for this team. What did you tell them in postseason?
Prosser: They have almost two months away from us. They don't come back until July 6, for the second session of summer school. We did that because we wanted them all here together. We think it will be good for team building and cohesion. How it turns out, I don't know. We have to get stronger, continue to run, work on individual improvement.
But I can't wait for practice to start. We'll have a lot of different lineups, flexibility and versatility, our quickness is really improved. I'm anxious to start practice.