WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- Only a couple of weeks ago, Skip Prosser lamented another casualty of the electronic culture.

Wary of self-appointed, emboldened, empowered Everymen with a digital camera, an Internet connection and an insatiable desire to mislead, the Wake Forest basketball coach said he no longer went to restaurants to watch sports or do anything else.

It wasn't the beverages or the food that he missed. Heck, the wait staff at his favorite Cincinnati haunt knew to get a turkey sandwich and soup when he walked in the door.

Instead, it was about the associations and the connections with people who may or may not have known of his fancy job and wouldn't necessarily have been impressed. It was about being Skip, a handle given by his mother at birth.

That trait explained much of the important stuff that there was to know about a coach who died Thursday at the age of 56.

Prosser was found slumped on his office couch and unresponsive by director of basketball operations Mike Muse shortly after returning from his noon jog, athletic director Ron Wellman said. Medical personnel performed CPR and used a defibrillator on Prosser, who was taken to Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center and pronounced dead at 1:41 p.m.

Wellman said he was unaware of any previous health issues for Prosser, calling his death "a devastating loss" during a news conference Thursday night.

"Because of his strength, we'll be able to go on and we'll be just fine eventually," Wellman said. "We're not right now. We're all suffering right now."

Dr. William Applegate, the dean of the university medical school, said the events were "typical of a sudden massive heart attack."

Prosser had been in Florida earlier this week for an AAU national tournament and had lunch Wednesday with South Carolina coach Dave Odom, his predecessor at Wake Forest.

Whether he was in Wheeling, W.Va., or Cincinnati or Pittsburgh or Kuwait or the campus of Wake Forest, a willingness to adapt and embrace challenge marked the guy known only to his birth certificate as George Edward Prosser. His hometown was Pittsburgh, a union bastion made of nothing pretentious. Prosser often said he was destined to coach at Wake because its colors were black and gold.

Unlike many in this high-profile profession, he didn't initially aspire to it. When he ended his undistinguished playing career at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, he wound up in West Virginia dreaming of being a history teacher.

The school district assigned him to coach basketball, and it wasn't even at the high school varsity level at first. Prosser grew to like the gig, and he bonded with the players as students back before such concepts were lost in a polluted sea of summer coaches and sneaker pimps and hangers-on.

It got serious at Xavier University, where he helped build a powerhouse. He took his first head coaching job at Loyola (Md.) which had won one game in 1992-93. Prosser welcomed it and quoted a movie inspired by a William Faulkner novel: "It's time to say goodbye to what you know and hello to what you don't."

The Greyhounds won their conference title that year and made it to the NCAA tournament. When Pete Gillen left Xavier for Providence. Prosser returned to the school.

In 2001, Wake called. Friends thought he wouldn't move. Gillen counseled him not to, implying a small private school in a conference with behemoths was no place to make a career.

Prosser respectfully disagreed. He was a big-city guy, and he never forgot about the places he had left. He even kept a home in Cincinnati after leaving for Wake, a fact that made some around here nervous. They really got antsy when the University of Pittsburgh called in 2003. He agonized a lot.

Pitt had the nicest, newest arena in the country and the hometown appeal. But Prosser had recruited a kid named Chris Paul, a local whose presence and magnetism had made Wake Forest cool before he had even played a college game.

After a week of deliberations, Prosser emerged unshaven late one afternoon and, partly because of the avalanche of student pleas to stay, announced he would remain.

Prosser cultivated a student support group that at its height included one in every four undergraduates. Joel Coliseum, which once resembled a polite symphony hall, became a jammin' juke joint. The students wear tie-dyed T-shirts and lose inhibitions for two hours at a time, 15 nights a year. Win or lose, the Deacs follow the post-game handshake by walking to the student section and thanking the throng for its support.

Over his final two seasons, neither of which produced an NCAA bid, Prosser continued to conduct his radio call-in show not from a pizza restaurant in a strip mall. The local franchise was owned by a longtime Wake supporter, a fact that trumped the menu.

His final coaching act was not televised live. He spent late May in a war zone on a coaching mission known as "Operation Hardwood," a USO-sponsored tournament for active-duty military.

He recalled his Vietnam-era youth, when his draft number was about as low and benign as possible. He said he was humbled and honored to play some sort of role in the current effort.

The day of the tournament final, the players told him his coaching garb that day would be fatigues. He tried to beg out, saying he wasn't worthy. They insisted.

And then they won the championship.

The Associated Press contributed to this story