NEWARK — Brad Underwood knows that Kansas has been the gold standard in the Big 12 Conference for more than a decade now, but the new Oklahoma State coach is on a mission to restore the Cowboys to glory.
Bill Self and the Jayhawks have earned at least a share of the Big 12 title for 12 straight years, but Underwood says the Cowboys should consistently challenge them for league supremacy.
“Absolutely, it should happen, it should happen,” he told me on Friday at the Brayden Carr Foundation Coaches Clinic at Prudential Center. “We have very passionate, educated fans and when you have Mr. [Henry] Iba, you have Eddie Sutton and you have an arena [Gallagher-Iba] which to this day is the loudest arena I’ve ever been in in my life as a player and as a coach, we’ll get back to that.
“And we do that then we become a relevant name again and that’s something that’s not just our goal, but I think it’s the place we belong.”
Underwood, 52, was hired in March after Oklahoma State fired Travis Ford, now the St. Louis coach. In three seasons at Stephen F. Austin, Underwood went 89-14, including a 53-1 mark in the Southland Conference, with three NCAA Tournament appearances.
Ford was fired after a season in which the Cowboys went 3-15 in Big 12 play and 12-20 overall.
Alhough he led Oklahoma State to five NCAA tournaments in his eight seasons, he never led the Cowboys to a top-two finish in conference play, and finished sixth or worse in the Big 12 seven times.
Now here comes Underwood looking to turn it around.
“Yeah, I don’t think there’s any question, there’s been some slippage there but I think along with Kansas it’s one of the premier basketball jobs not only in that conference but in the country so we’ve worked really hard at that,” Underwood said.
Underwood will lean heavily on sophomore point guard Jawun Evans, the Big 12 Freshman of the Year who averaged 12.9 points and 4.9 assists last season, and senior guard Phil Forte III, who has 1,307 career points.
“We’ve got a backcourt that excites me,” Underwood said. “We’ve got Jawun Evans and Phil Forte, who I think will be one of the Top 10 backcourts in the country. Then I think we’ve got a plethora of guys in the 6-4 to 6-8 area who are athletic, they’ve played. We’re a little thin up front but we won’t let that be a detriment. And we’ve got some experience. So if we can come together and jell and have the chemistry that I think we can, I think we can be a force.”
Underwood and assistant Mike Boynton, a Brooklyn native, used their time in the New York-New Jersey area to good use.
Underwood supported Rhode Island assistant Jimmy Carr and the Brayden Carr Foundation, a non- profit charitable organization established by Jimmy and Natalie Carr, parents of the late Brayden James Carr, who was 2 1/2 when he died in 2011.
The clinic also featured Wichita State coach Gregg Marshall, Manhattan coach Steve Masiello, Montverde (FL) Academy coach Kevin Boyle and legendary former Princeton coach Pete Carril.
“I’ve known Jimmy, we’re a tight fraternity,” Underwood said. “We get together on the road. We’ve became very good aquaintances here in the last couple years at URI when I was at Stephen F. because we both had major difficulties scheduling, so it seemed like we were talking every other day. And then this is such a great cause and to have that at the forefront just made a lot of sense to me to be a part of.”
Underwood and Boynton also used their time in New Jersey and New York to recruit, hitting schools like Hudson Catholic, St. Benedict’s Prep and Bishop Loughlin, which are all loaded with young talent.
“When I was at Kansas State, we recruited up here a great deal,” Underwood siad. “Mike Boynton is a Brooklyn native so this becomes an area that we’re going to recruit outside our region and an area that we feel very confident that being in the Big 12 we can bring kids to.”
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