BOSTON—NJIT men's basketball coach Jim Engles is one of 20 national finalists for the 2013 Skip Prosser Man of the Year award, which is presented by the website CollegeInsider.com.
 
The Skip Prosser Award was established in 2008 to honor those who not only achieve success on the basketball court but who display moral integrity off of it as well.
 
Prosser, who died unexpectedly in 2007 at the age of 56, was best known as the coach of Wake Forest, where his teams averaged 21 wins per season from 2001 until his death in 2007. He also coached at Loyola (MD) and Xavier, posting a career record of 291-146 in 14 seasons as a head coach. He is the only coach in Division I history to take three different schools to the NCAA Tournament in his first years with the different schools.
 
"It's an honor just to be mentioned with the name Skip Prosser," said Loyola MD coach Jimmy Patsos, who won the 2012 award. "He went from Loyola to Wake Forest and never changed as a person. It would be a great honor for any one of these finalists to win an award with Skip's name on it.”
 
Jim Engles, who is in his fifth season as head coach of the Highlanders, was also a finalist for the Prosser award in 2011.
 
The NJIT coach has earned widespread respect for his work in building the Highlander program from the depths of a winless season the year before he took over to one that won the 2012-13 regular season championship of the Great West Conference.
 
In addition to the program's first conference title playing at the Division I level, this year's team has 16 wins, the most in a season since NJIT started Division I play in 2006-07.  
 
Engles took over a team that went 0-29 in 2007-08, its second year of Division I competition. His first team in 2008-09 won one game, but the groundwork was laid for dramatic improvement that saw the wins total jump to 10 in 2009-10 and then to 15 wins each of the next two seasons ahead of this year's breakthrough to conference championship and 16 wins, the most for the program since the 2002-03 team won 18 games playing in NCAA Division II.
 
In addition to Engles, the finalists for the award are (listed alphabetically): John Beilein (Michigan), Tony Bennett (Virginia), Rick Byrd (Belmont), Kermit Davis (Middle Tennessee), Billy Donlon (Wright State), Steve Fisher (San Diego State), John Gallagher (Hartford), Anthony Grant (Alabama), Ben Jacobson (Northern Iowa), Jim Larranaga (Miami), Ryan Marks (UT-Pan American), Bob McKillop (Davidson), Joe Mihalich (Niagara), Dave Paulsen (Bucknell), Brett Reed (Lehigh), Zach Spiker (Army), Bob Thomason (Pacific), John Thompson III (Georgetown), Bruce Weber (Kansas State).
 
The winner will be announced at the CollegeInsider.com awards banquet in Atlanta, site of the men's basketball championship.
 
CollegeInsider.com, founded in 1996 by Joe Dwyer and Angela Lento is one of the most widely-read and respected websites devoted to college basketball. Among its many activities, the web site lends its name to annual CollegeInsider.com postseason tournament (CIT). The men's champion of the Great West Conference, which includes NJIT, earns an automatic spot in the CIT field.

Link to CollegeInsider.com announcement of 2013 Skip Prosser Man of the Year finalists