Bob Lutz: Brad Underwood making the grass greener at Stephen F. Austin

Some people stop dreaming as they get older. They figure they’re stuck with the cards they were dealt and that it’s useless to go on yearning for something that’s likely never going to happen.

Brad Underwood is a yearner, a dreamer, a man who always knew there was an opportunity just around the corner.

“I really believe good things happen to those who work hard,” Underwood said. “I truly believed my opportunity would come. It’s just that it happened when I was 49 years old.”

That was two years ago, when Underwood, a McPherson native and former Kansas State basketball player and assistant coach, was plucked from Frank Martin’s staff at South Carolina to become the coach at Stephen F. Austin in Nacogdoches, Texas, a town in which Waylon Jennings and Merle Haggard would feel at home.

SFA won 27 games the year before Underwood arrived, earning veteran coach Danny Kaspar, who had been with the Lumberjacks for 13 seasons, a job at Texas State.

“To take a job just to have a title, that never interested me,” Underwood said. “Stephen F. Austin has been very successful for some time, really dating back to their women’s program under Gary Blair and Sue Gunter. There’s a culture of basketball in east Texas that was very intriguing to me.”

Rather than wait for a bigger school in a bigger conference to come calling, Underwood set about trying to find out as much as he could about Stephen F. Austin. An observant type, he paid close attention to what was being said during his interview.

“I walk into the hotel suite and I see that the athletic director is there,” Underwood said. “But also the president of the university and the head of the board of regents are there. I’m thinking, ‘Hey, this is pretty important to these people.’ That’s truly a big part of what sold me. And when I got on campus, I see the flower beds are immaculate, the fences are hung well, the signs are freshly painted and there’s no trash laying around on a Saturday morning.”

Underwood decided Stephen F. Austin was the right place at the right time. And there has been no second-guessing, especially by those who hired him.

As his second season winds down, the Lumberjacks are 20-3 and 10-0 in the Southland Conference. That’s after going 32-3 in Underwood’s first year, winning all 18 Southland games and knocking off VCU in overtime as a 12-seed in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. Underwood knew he had made the right decision when a four-point play by the Lumberjacks sent the VCU game into OT.

Underwood is no overnight coaching sensation.

He started his career in 1988 as coach at Dodge City Community College, where he spent four years before becoming an assistant for 10 years at Western Illinois. Then it was back to the juco ranks for four seasons as coach at Daytona Beach Community College in Florida.

Underwood, who played for Jack Hartman at Kansas State in the mid-1980s, returned to his alma mater to join Bob Huggins’ staff in 2006. He stayed on when Martin took over for Huggins a year later and moved with Martin to South Carolina, where he spent the 2012-13 season.

Beyond a couple of Kansas State boosters reportedly asking athletic director John Currie to consider Underwood for the coaching job after Martin’s departure in 2012, he never was in the mix. Currie announced the Weber hiring four days after Martin left.

Weber is encountering turbulence in his third season at Kansas State. The Wildcats are 12-13 (5-7 in the Big 12) and their best player, sophomore guard Marcus Foster, has been in and out of Weber’s doghouse.

Meanwhile, Underwood is having huge success again. Stephen F. Austin had its 34-game home winning streak snapped by Northern Iowa in November – 79-77 in overtime – but has won nine more since. The Lumberjacks are 10-0 in the Southland.

Don’t think K-State basketball fans don’t notice. And while I think it’s too early for Weber to be on a hot seat, the heat coming from Nacogdoches is intense.

Underwood wouldn’t touch the issue, though.

“I was very fortunate to be able to be at Kansas State when a coaching change happened and to be able to help put that program where, in my opinion, it belongs,” Underwood said. “And that’s in the NCAA Tournament and on the national stage. I have nothing but the utmost respect and pride for what we accomplished there.

“Those were special years. I’m from McPherson and my wife is from Salina. I played there for, in my eyes, one of the greatest coaches of all-time. I’ve said many times that the best basketball venue I’ve ever been in was Ahearn Field House. I have great, great pride and love for my alma mater.”

Underwood now hangs his hat in Nacogdoches. The Lumberjacks are one of the nation’s highest-scoring teams at nearly 77 points. They force turnovers with half-court, man-to-man pressure defense.

“There’s an unbelievable basketball following here,” Underwood said. “I never ran from the success they had here before I arrived. It was something that I relished and I was excited to take over that culture and that kind of success. They did lose three all-league guys from the year before, so I wasn’t quite sure what we had coming back.”

Turns out, there was no cause for concern.

Stephen F. Austin is one of those teams none of the big boys want to play in March.

“At the end of the day, this is what I am,” Underwood said. “I’m a coach. I enjoy going to practice every day and teaching.”

And he never stopped dreaming.

This story was originally published February 13, 2015 at 2:59 PM with the headline "Bob Lutz: Brad Underwood making the grass greener at Stephen F. Austin."