“I'm not making great headway,” Prosser says.

        He's reading it because he thinks he should. “I was getting to be 50 and it was the end of the millennium. Ulysses was supposed to be the best book of the last millennium. I want to read something like that before I cash in my chips.”

        I always ask Prosser what he's reading, because he's always reading something, usually Irish history. There's still a lot of high school history teacher in him. Ten years from now, if Prosser has his way, he'll be in Ireland, hunched over a Guinness and a good book.

        “East Coast” of Ireland, he says. “Closer to the (European) continent. I'll be back here in the wintertime to watch my assistants coach, though. I'll crank up the Winnebago and follow them around.”

        A great thing about Xavier is its philosophy has allowed for a coach like Prosser, who

        wins enough to please the basketball crowd and is sufficiently well-rounded to keep the tweedy types from questioning the emphasis XU places on basketball.

        Prosser is as competitive as any coach and puts in as many hours. But he still has time for a little Joyce.

        It's interesting, then, that Prosser now works in a gym that has tilted XU's balance toward basketball. Cintas Center may look like a cross between “L.A. Law” and Boston Garden. It may be a multi-use building. But basketball is why it exists. It's a beautiful, brick and mortar statement that says: Basketball is very important here.

        “A state-of-the-art recruiting tool,” Prosser calls it.

        Years ago, Prosser was trying to convince a skinny recruit from Chicago to sign with Xavier. On a rainy, hot and humid spring day, Prosser took the kid to the Cincinnati Gardens, the Musketeers' former home.

        There was a rodeo going on. The Gardens smelled like the bottom of a ditch. “The aroma melted your face,” Prosser recalls. He pointed to a pile of dirt in the middle of the floor. “That's where our bench is,” he said. Cowboys were dressing in the home locker room.

        Aaron Williams signed anyway.

        Prosser tells this story as we stroll through the new home locker room at Cintas Center. Workmen are installing a video game system in the players' lounge, which is separated from the dressing area by a wall of frosted glass.

        “This is more than just a gym,” Prosser says.

        You wonder if the place will change Xavier's definition of basketball success, its perspective on what matters. Xavier has been an understated place, as comfortable with its graduation rates as its tournament appearances. Will that change with a state-of-the-art gym?

        The Little Team That Could played in an arena that hosted rodeos. Basketball was an accessory to Xavier's “mission.” Achievement in March was gravy. That was then. Now, it's dark wood, leather chairs and frosted glass in the locker room.

        To whom much is given, much is expected. Where will winning lots of games rank at Xavier now? Will a coach still have time for Joyce?

        Paul Daugherty welcomes comments at 768-8454.

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