Mark Prosser expected to be named next Winthrop head basketball coach, report says
Winthrop has found its new leader of its most public institution.
Mark Prosser is expected to be hired as the Eagles’ next head basketball coach, national basketball expert Jeff Goodman announced Thursday evening.
The university announced a board of trustees meeting for Friday at 11 a.m. The board will meet via executive session (not open to the public) for a “discussion of employment matters.” A contact at Winthrop told The Herald the expectation is that a new men’s basketball coaching hire will be approved and announced at the meeting.
Prosser, the 42-year-old son of the late, legendary head coach Skip Prosser, is a friend of the Eagles program. He was an assistant coach under now-gone Kelsey for six years before being hired at Western Carolina in March 2018. Most of his current coaching staff at WCU — Tony Rack, Brett Ferguson, Mitchell Hill — were assistant coaches with him at Winthrop before he moved to Cullowhee, North Carolina. (His video assistant, too, Matt Erps, was a walk-on at the Rock Hill school while Prosser was there.)
When the move becomes official, Prosser will be Winthrop’s sixth head coach since becoming a D1 program in 1987. He’ll succeed Steve Vacendak (1986-92), Dan Kenney (1993-98), Gregg Marshall (1998-2007), Randy Peele (2007-12) and Kelsey (2012-2021). With Prosser, all but now two of those coaches did not have D1 head coaching experience before taking the Winthrop mantle.
Winthrop will still expect to be a perennial power in the Big South Conference and mid-major basketball: The Eagles have won Big South Conference tournament titles two years in a row and have made 11 NCAA tournament appearances since 1999.
Mark Prosser’s resume
Prosser grew up in Wheeling, West Virginia — a town of about 30,000 people that lies along the Ohio River in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. He went on to play college basketball at Marist College in New York and began his coaching career immediately out of college.
He graduated in 2002, and that summer he served as an assistant coach at Wofford. After one season there, he joined the Bucknell University coaching staff and stayed there for five years — helping guide the program to Patriot League prominence and two NCAA Tournament wins — before returning to Wofford in 2008.
He then remained at Wofford and then took a job for one year at Brevard (Division II) until 2012, when Kelsey — who played and coached under Mark’s father, Skip — brought him on his staff at Winthrop. He had a remarkable run in Rock Hill: As associate head coach, Prosser helped his team to four Big South Conference title appearances and a conference tournament championship in 2017.
He left Winthrop to become the head coach at Western Carolina in March 2018. In three seasons at WCU, he accumulated a record of 37-53. That included the 2019-20 season, where his team went 19-12 — the first winning season for the program in six years.
This past season, his team went 11-16 and lost in the first round of the Southern Conference tournament.
When will we hear from Prosser?
On Friday at 11:30 a.m., a press conference with Winthrop’s new baskteball coach will take place inside the Richardson Ballroom located in the DiGiorgio Campus Center.
This story was originally published April 1, 2021 at 7:34 PM.
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