Mark Prosser looks out the window of his Bucknell University office, which is buried in the back of the Kenneth Langone Athletic and Recreation Center, and sees ... a cemetery on a dreary, lifeless December day.

But, unprovoked, Prosser says, "I'm just glad I've got a window."

That is Prosser's style. The fifth-year Bucknell assistant coach rarely is seen without his wry smile and upbeat attitude.

It has gotten him through some of life's toughest lessons.

He remembers his family moving to Cincinnati when his dad, Skip, got a coaching job at Xavier. He also recalls moving back to West Virginia with his mother and brother about 18 months later because his parents were getting a divorce.

"At least I was going back to the same house, the same friends," Mark recalls of when he was 7 years old.

That positive outlook was tested again this summer when he got a cell phone call that his father had died of a heart attack.

Mark had spent the previous few days in late July with his dad while both were on the recruiting trails. Skip Prosser, 56, was the head coach at Wake Forest at the time of his passing.

Father and son also spent time together during the 2006-07 season when Bucknell and Wake Forest played the first game of a three-year contract at Bucknell's Sojka Pavilion on Nov. 14.

Coming up on five months since his dad's passing, Mark Prosser is having to revisit July 26, the day he'd just as soon forget. Bucknell visits Wake Forest on Sunday afternoon. He's not sure how he'll feel when he walks into Joel Coliseum.

"I know they have something special there for (my dad). They had a real nice ceremony for him before the first game this season," Mark says. "I've thought about it a lot lately. It's hard not to. I just don't know what it will be like."

Mark Prosser wasn't supposed to be a basketball coach. When his dad was making inroads as an assistant at Xavier, baseball was Mark's passion. But Mark quickly rose up the growth chart and basketball became the top priority.

His parents divorced, Mark recalls spending weeks in the summer with his father. Almost every waking hour was spent in a gym. The Prossers spent their quality father-son time working at Skip's basketball camps.

"I used to say that I was going to call it child cruelty," Mark jokes. "He used to really work me, keep me busy."

Skip also worked with his youngest of two sons, helping him develop into a Division I talent. Mark earned a scholarship to Marist, then made the transition to coaching shortly after a knee injury cut his playing career short. It was a career decision Skip Prosser did everything to dissuade his son from.

"He used to tell me every day to never get into coaching," Mark says.

Mark's gig at Bucknell is his second stop on the coaching carousel. He wants to be a head coach some day -- high school or college, he's not sure.

"That's what has been hard is that I was used to leaving practice or a game and calling him," Mark says. "We'd talk about how to defend (an opposing player), recruiting, whatever."

Mark's other disappointment is that he couldn't get his father to take a break from basketball. Mark enjoys watching the Pittsburgh Steelers -- his parents grew up in the Pittsburgh area -- and spending time with girlfriend Emily Criscioni, whom he met while at Marist.

But Skip Prosser, Mark said, always had basketball on his mind.

"I'd always try to talk to him about other things," the younger Prosser says. "But it would always come back to basketball."

Mark was with Bucknell head coach Pat Flannery recruiting in Orlando when he got the call from a Wake Forest athletic secretary telling him something was wrong. Flannery missed a game last season after his father died.

Skip Prosser was found slumped on a couch in his office minutes after he finished a workout. He recently had been told by a doctor that he needed to exercise more.

"I didn't know what was going on, I didn't think it was happening," Mark recalls of the grim news. "I kept thinking that I'd call his cell, he'd answer and we'd talk about the rumors that were out there."

It wasn't a rumor. Mark and Dino Gaudio, then an assistant at Wake Forest who was at the same Orlando gym, soon were on a plane to Winston-Salem, N.C.

Mark Prosser said he's had an enormous amount of support from friends, fellow coaches and players past and present since the tragedy. He said his relationship with Criscioni took a big step forward -- in his mind -- when she left friends she was visiting in Manhattan on July 26 and nearly beat him to the Wake Forest campus to be his support system.

Criscioni had just recently relocated from Manhattan to Lewisburg to advance her relationship with Mark.

"I believed, somehow, some way, there was a reason why she was here," Mark says. "I don't know what I would have done without her then."

Mark Prosser leaves with his Bucknell family early this afternoon for Sunday's game with Wake Forest. He knows it will be different when he looks down at the opposing bench and sees Gaudio in his father's place, standing and barking at the Demon Deacons players.

It will remind Mark of what it was like last year when Wake Forest came to Bucknell.

"It was great spending time with him before the game and talking to my dad right after," Mark recalls. "But for two hours, it was horrible.

"I couldn't wait for it to end."

There is little doubt that Mark Prosser would rather endure that kind of pain for two hours Sunday and two more hours next season in Winston-Salem.

It would mean that it was just a rumor, and that he wouldn't have to have his positive outlook so severely tested.

n Sports editor Tom Housenick covers college basketball for The Daily Item. E-mail comments to thousenick@dailyitem.com.