Wake Forest basketball coach Skip Prosser passed away early Thursday morning. FoxSports.com reported that Coach Prosser collapsed while jogging.

Prosser was about to enter his 7th season at the helm of the Demon Deacons. In his time at the school he’d coached NBA stars Josh Howard and Chris Paul, and won the ACC Coach of the Year in 2003. He led Wake Forest to a conference championship that same year. Before taking the job at Wake, Prosser guided Xavier to multiple NCAA tournament berths.

Wake had been in the midst of a down stretch, but things were looking up: Prosser had secured verbal commitments from two of the Top 15 players in the ‘08 high school class: Georgia wing Al-Farouq Aminu and North Carolina 7-footer Ty Walker.

As a matter of fact, we had just spoken to Prosser recently about recruiting. In an interview that was going to appear in an upcoming issue of Dime as part of our “The Pitch” feature, Prosser said:

“As a coach, I see myself as a teacher. I’m still a schoolteacher, and someone that tries to stress the right values. I have great relationships with my former players. I give them freedom on offense, but I’m demanding as well – I think the best teachers are the ones who are the most intolerant, who push you to be great, and I think our graduation rate is a testament to that fact that we care about you off the floor as well.”

“We go by what we call the ‘ABCs of Wake Forest basketball,’” Skip continued. “That’s Academics, Basketball and Character. Like I said, the academics are second-to-none. In basketball we have a winning tradition. And I think our program has great character; we understand that basketball careers are finite, so what you do after basketball is important. Simplistically, it’s those ABCs that sets us apart.”

The basketball world will miss Skip, and our thoughts and prayers go out to his friends and family.