Soon, too soon, the college basketball season will be over.

For members of a team, that means no more games or practices, no more travel or meetings as a group. No more game-day excitement. No more emotional reactions to victory and defeat. No more post-game comedowns from the adrenaline rush of competition.

Players will resume their lives as student-athletes, go their separate ways without the swirl of attention, preparation, and performance that consumed them for months. Suddenly, there will be quiet time, time to reflect.

For members of the Wake Forest basketball squad, that also means time to feel anew a sense of loss.

“I suspect we’re looking at some delayed grieving,” said Tim Auman, the Wake Forest University chaplain. “Having the distraction of the season is helpful in the short term. In the long term, though, people need more time to de-stimulate themselves to continue the grieving process.”

The rest of us came to terms with Skip Prosser’s abrupt death last July 26, and moved on.

Perhaps we were touched when Maryland, Georgia and North Carolina offered a moment of silence prior to playing Wake Forest, a notable gesture of respect for the Demon Deacons’ late coach. Surely we joined inwardly in the heartfelt ovation from the gathered fans prior to each Wake home game, as the overhead scoreboard at Joel Coliseum flashed a super-sized image of a smiling Prosser.

But we can only empathize with members of the Demon Deacon program. They must cope and reckon with their grief.

At the center of the outpouring of emotion that engulfed intimate Wake Forest University, and touched the basketball world beyond, was a group of stunned young men, many of whom had never previously experienced the death of someone close to them. As mentor, Prosser was akin to a family member.

“They were wanting to be given time and space to experience their own thoughts and feelings,” said Auman, who provided counseling. Several players reacted to Prosser’s death by saying they wanted to leave Wake Forest. “'I just can’t be here, I can’t be here. Coach isn’t here,’” Dino Gaudio recalled being told. “After the initial shock, we all shared that feeling.”

Auman was impressed by the eagerness with which athletics director Ron Wellman and head coach Gaudio, a former Prosser assistant, created a safe environment for players and staff to share their sense of loss.

“Clearly, there are stages of grief, and what you want students and coaches to do is honor those things in each other,” Auman said. “Regardless of what happens in the season, what Dino and his staff have done to support the team and each other is exemplary.”

Wake’s season became a feel-good story. As sports preaches, adversity brought unexpected strength. A team picked to finish near the bottom of the conference enters Thursday’s ACC Tournament game against Florida State with a 17-12 record and an impressive seven wins against seven different ACC clubs. Wake tied FSU and Georgia Tech for seventh place during the regular season. Last year, in better times, the Demon Deacons were 15-16 and tied for 10th place in the ACC at 5-11.

“I think what we went through really bonded and helped us have a better team chemistry,” said Gaudio. “I really believe chemistry takes teams to a different level.”

Sophomore L.D. Williams, the team’s emotional leader, said players honored Prosser not only with patches on their jerseys, but with effort on the court. That was particularly manifest in major improvement in most defensive categories, in which the Deacs were last in the league in 2007. This season, they rank in the top half of the league in areas such as scoring defense, field goal percentage defense, steals, and blocked shots.

“We made a pact, whatever you want to call it, to ourselves that we were going to play as hard as we can for coach Prosser,” Williams said. “It was always hard to lose as it is, but knowing that he’s watching us, coaching us from heaven, makes the losses even harder.”

But Auman warned that even success can be confusing when a person is struggling with grief. “There’s a sense that perhaps I’m enjoying it too much, and perhaps I shouldn’t enjoy it too much because I lost somebody that’s important,” he observed.

Auman said adults have remained vigilant for drug or alcohol abuse among the players, or for other signs of loneliness, isolation, self-pity, depression, anger or distraction. “I suspect everyone has had their moments,” the chaplain said.

Mike Muse’s worst moments came within the month following Prosser’s death.

Prosser hired Muse out of the high school ranks in Winston-Salem prior to the 2006-07 season. Muse, a basketball coach and an education teacher at Reynolds and North Forsyth high schools, had taught CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) for 17 years. Once he had saved a person who nearly drowned in a swimming pool; once he failed to revive a woman who suffered a heart attack in a restaurant.

So it was appropriate, and perhaps fortuitous, that Muse was on hand when Prosser was discovered, unresponsive, on his office couch on a warm yet chilling July afternoon. Muse attempted CPR, but to no avail.

Doctors later told the assistant coach he had done all he could. Knowing that eventually put Muse, 46, at ease and squelched his second-guessing of his efforts.

“It’s one of those things where you do it, you don’t look back,” he said.

Yet looking back is unavoidable.

“When you put on game tape from last year, Skip’s on the sideline, Skip’s doing halftime interviews,” Gaudio said. “I know for me personally, I fought back tears every time they put his picture on the Jumbotron up there” at Joel.

The first half dozen games of the season, Gaudio admitted he could not even bear to look aloft when his friend’s likeness was displayed. He reported the Wake locker room was awash in tears following its opener, a home victory against Fairfield. Gaudio remained so emotional, he “just melted down” after receiving a congratulatory phone call from one of Prosser’s sons following the Deacs’ upset win over Duke on Feb. 17.

Gaudio said neither he nor his staff have paused in more than a year. Prosser’s death took place on the eve of what is ordinarily a down month in college basketball, with no camps, no recruiting, no practices. Instead, there was so much to do, so much pain, no thought was given to straying from Winston-Salem. Gaudio and his wife, Maureen, barely marked their 25th wedding anniversary, which fell on the day of Prosser’s funeral.

“We really haven’t had time to catch our breath and to gather ourselves a little bit,” Gaudio said.

That time will come all too soon.