K-State faithful might covet alum Underwood, but he's focused on his 'Jacks
KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- You can take a man out of EMAW Country. But you can't take the EMAW Country out of the man.
"I follow them, no question," Brad Underwood says, the "them" in question being his alma mater, Kansas State.
"Every single night they play, I want them to win. I'm an EMAW guy. ... I was part of that for a six-year run (as an assistant coach from 2006-12), so, I mean, I want them to win. I bleed purple, there's no doubt about that.
"They've got a coach (Bruce Weber) who's done a great job. (He's) had a couple of NCAA Tournaments. So I want them to win every single night and pull for them."
Besides, Underwood has his own dragons to slay these days -- and the dragons have, for the most part, been getting their spiky tails kicked. Over two seasons as the head man at Stephen F. Austin, the Kansas native and former Frank Martin assistant sports a 52-7 record, victories in 28 of the first 29 regular-season games he's coached in the Southland Conference, and an NCAA Tournament victory (over VCU in last March's big dance) under his belt.
Lately, it seems as if every time his alma mater hits a bad patch (or multiple bad patches, in the case of this winter), someone on social media or on a message board mentions Underwood's name, and longingly. The Lumberjacks' coach has become, in some K-State circles, what a backup quarterback is in most NFL cities: Unseen and increasingly popular, absence making hearts grow ever fonder.
"I can't control any of it," Underwood tells FOXSportsKansasCity.com. "That stuff is great for whomever, but for myself, I want (K-State) to win every time they go play and I pull for them.
"I don't know; I'm a simple person, I have to keep my life that way. If you ask anybody around here, they'll tell you that, so it's just ... I love K-State with a tremendous amount of pride, because the six years we were there, I feel like we had that things back to where it belongs and should have been and we left, my head was held high, I was a proud Wildcat.
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"I'm probably pretty popular in McPherson, because my mom still lives there. Naw, you know, I don't pay much attention to (that). ... It's so difficult to get wrapped up in anything other than my own team."
It's a labor of love, his team, a mid-major muscle car with curves in all the right places. The 'Jacks rank among the top 30 nationally in assists per game (16.8, 10th), field-goal percentage (47.3, 28th), two-point percentage (54.8, 12th) and, in the mother of NCAA tourney metrics, offensive-rebound percentage (36.4, 14th) -- all despite having only two players on the roster taller than 6-foot-6 and none taller than 6-9.
"We're unique," Underwood says. "And I'm going to use this, for lack of a better term: We're 'old-school' offensively."
They can spread you out or score quickly off the break. They deny the post and overplay passing lanes, ranking third nationally in opponent turnovers per play (22.6 percent) and 12th in fewest opponent field-goal attempts per game (48.1). It's a gumbo of all the influences, all the coaches in his ear over the decades, from Martin to Jack Hartman and Bob Kivisto, his old coach at Independence (Kan.) Community College.
"They've made me a better coach, in terms of certain things that I do," says Underwood, a K-State letterman in 1984-85 and '85-86. "But I am who I am, and I'm not either (Bob Huggins or Frank Martin) in terms of (style). I think you have to be your own person, and it would just be tricking everybody if you go out and act like somebody else just because they have success. That's not the way that I am.
"And we have a blast. We have a lot of fun ... and when we play, I want our guys loose, I want our guys confident, and yet have a maturity about it when we go out on the court, we're going to work hard, and we need to work hard, and I'm going to demand a lot from them in practice. So I think that, every single day, if I can be consistent as a coach and demand the same things from them ... it allows me not to worry about the score on the scoreboard. Because most of the time, it's about what's right and doing what's right and getting kids to listen and getting kids to buy in as a team and communicating with them."
Some lessons learned hit harder than others. The Jacks' resume includes a near-miss Nov. 18 against No. 11 Northern Iowa -- a 79-77 overtime setback in Nacogdoches, Texas, that Panthers coach Ben Jacobson still regards as one of the tone-setters for what turned into a stellar season in Cedar Falls.
"We didn't know how to win that game yet," Underwood says.
They know now. SFA (20-4, 10-1 Southland) had won 19 straight before last Saturday's setback at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, with a non-league resume that includes victories at Memphis (Ratings Percentage Index rank: 93) and against Long Beach State (RPI: 97). It's one of the main reasons Underwood -- whose first Division I coaching gig came at the age of 49, and it's the one he's got now -- remains one of the hotter names in mid-major coaching circles, why he was linked to openings last year at Southern Mississippi and Marshall before electing to remain at SFA.
"That's something I don't go out and seek," Underwood says. "I don't know. I've never been that way.
"It's my old Midwestern values -- I think good things happen to those who work hard. So I've tried really hard, all my life, to work hard."
Work hard, the rest of the resume starts to speak for itself. Even from a distance, Underwood's speaks louder by the week.
You can follow Sean Keeler on Twitter at @SeanKeeler or email him at seanmkeeler@gmail.com.
