Behind the ‘Stache: A story of the ‘miffed’ coach who built (and left) SFA

With all its obnoxious, gut-vibrating qualities, a basketball buzzer can either be the most euphoric or wretched noise to fall upon the ears of the invested.

It marks an end, every time. The end of pregame warm-ups, end of a half, end of a game. End of an era.

On March 19th, 2013, that familiar droning sound was perhaps more offensive than usual. Nobody knew it yet, but on that California evening, the buzzer in Maples Pavillion was marking the closure of thirteen spectacular years of growth for the men's basketball program at Stephen F. Austin State University.

Its architect, head coach Danny Kaspar, had just completed a sensational season in the most heartbreaking fashion possible - losses to Northwestern State and Stanford (in the conference tournament final and NIT, respectively) by a combined three points.

It was the last time he would coach the Lumberjacks. Days later, Kaspar was headed to San Marcos and Texas State University.

"[It was] only a matter of time that a larger conference school would look his way," wrote Danny Merrell, voice of SFA's William R. Johnson Coliseum, in a blog post for his radio station. "The chance to build something in a better conference," echoed Buck Harvey in a 2014 piece for the San Antonio Express-News.

Danny Kaspar carries no such delusion. "I'm not sure we moved up," admits the famously mustached man. "When you're winning like Stephen F. Austin, I'm not sure you can call it that."

There was a little bit more money, sure. The Sun Belt Conference would seem to be at least a small upgrade over the Southland. But jumping from a top 100 program to a perennial bottom-feeder in another mid-major conference is hardly equal to the move his successor made in bolting for Oklahoma State last month.

For Danny Kaspar, Texas State was a chance at a new start - a project - with a university ready and willing to devote themselves to his version of basketball. At the age of 58, the winningest coach in SFA's DI history was aware that it could be the last opportunity to wash his hands of an institution not fully committed to his program.

So when the Lumberjacks made a last-second offer, "it was too late," he says. On April 4th, 2013, just sixteen days after SFA fell to Stanford, Danny Kaspar was introduced as the new coach of the Texas State Bobcats.



"I need you to understand something," Kaspar tells me. "Most of my friends said I was crazy for taking the SFA job back in 2000."

There were only 316 Division I basketball programs at the time and Stephen F. Austin ranked a lowly #307 in RPI. "Worst program in Texas and one of the ten worst in the country," he says.

SFA was bad by any metric. Like, really, really bad. Ned Fowler, the same man who had previously led Tulane basketball into scandal and subsequent program termination, took over a two-win Lumberjacks team in 1990 and was curiously fired six years later even after a relatively successful 17-11 campaign. His top assistant and replacement, Derek Allister, never saw a winning season and led the regression to the tune of a 6-21 record in 1999-2000. He too was fired.

By that point, fan attendance had dwindled to an average that only barely eclipsed a thousand per night - roughly one third of an average crowd just a decade earlier.

Even for a winning coach like Danny Kaspar, finding a way to generate victories at SFA seemed a daunting task. Just a couple years removed from an NAIA Final Four appearance with Incarnate Word, Kaspar arrived in Nacogdoches realizing he would need to build from the ground up.

It shouldn't be surprising that the results of the first year essentially matched the pessimistic expectations of fans. A 9-17 record, good enough for a 10th place finish in the Southland Conference, certainly appeared to be more of the same. For Kaspar, it was about more than winning games though; he was building a culture of hard-nosed defense and physical in-your-face basketball that he believed would translate into long-term prosperity.

"It's hard to recruit great offensive players when you're regarded as bad as we were," he explains to me. "And even then, if you rely on offense, there are going to be nights where it's just not there for you. But defense - that's not a skill. That's a team effort."

And a crazy thing happened: SFA started winning. 13 wins and 5th in the conference, then 21 and 2nd. Then a few more years stuck in the middle with 12, 17, 15 win seasons. Then 26 wins and a conference championship. Then another.

Then SFA's first ever trip to the NCAA Tournament.

Playing with the Big Boys -

The Lumberjacks entered the 2009 NCAA Tournament as a #14 seed and were defeated by #3 Syracuse in the first round. By Southland Conference standards, Danny Kaspar had finally made SFA a winner; but his undertaking was far from finished.

In the Fall of 2010, Kaspar landed commitments from Thomas Walkup, Jacob Parker and transfer Taylor Smith. "That was a great recruiting class for us, particularly early when we signed those three kids," Kaspar says of the trio that has since claimed each of the last four Southland Conference MVP awards.

Two years later, Kaspar's team seemed poised for prime time. They rolled through the non-conference season with a single match, a tightly contested game at Texas A&M, in the loss column. After upsetting Oklahoma, Tulsa, and losing just twice in conference play, SFA stormed into the Southland tournament in Katy with a 26-3 record. It had been a long, long time since Nacogdoches had seen a team like those 2012-13 Lumberjacks.

"Their basketball IQ," Kaspar reflects on the players of that final team. "That was the common denominator with those guys. Their toughness, their coachability..."

His voice trails off. Their coach, a former college basketball player himself, begins again with audible emotion in his voice: "I love them," he says. "Those guys were hard workers. They all put the team first."

But lofty dreams for that season, the culmination of a thirteen year project for Danny Kaspar, all came crashing down in the final seconds of the conference tournament to Northwestern State:

BUUUUUUUUUUUZZ!

No run through the Big Dance. A few days later:

BUUUUUUUUUUUZZ!

No more NIT. No more season. No more Danny Kaspar at SFA.



Now a few seasons into his rebuilding job at Texas State University, Danny Kaspar looks back on his time leading the Lumberjacks fondly.

"I'm a big believer in Robert Hill," he says of SFA's athletics director of the past eleven years. "I think he's a very fine AD. He's got a good staff. We had some good friends in Nacogdoches."

But thirteen seasons of historic recovery wasn't enough for some. Outside of a supportive athletics department, a growing fanbase, and local businesses who assisted monetarily, basketball seemed to play second-fiddle to the gridiron of Homer Bryce Stadium. Well, at least in the eyes of financial decision makers at SFA.

"When the football coach won the conference title in 2009 and 2010, they gave him a five-year deal," he says. "We won basketball titles in 2008 and 2009. So my question was, why does he get five and I get three?"

J.C. Harper, then the football coach at SFA, would actually be fired just months after Kaspar's move to San Marcos. "It's not that he didn't deserve the five years though," Kaspar says. "But why not us? I never got a satisfactory answer." Without an operations staffer and only a combined $150 thousand to pay three assistants, life for a basketball coach in Nacogdoches was certainly different than what exists today.

Yet, it isn't like the basketball resources at SFA were particularly meager compared to the rest of the Southland Conference. "I would say Lamar was better funded and maybe UTSA," Kaspar says. "Then us."

But that often wasn't saying a lot. Kaspar and his staff were forced to spend hours securing raffle prizes from local businesses and even more on the phone trying to sell tickets - just to send their athletes to school through the summer. "At the end, we were raising $30 thousand a year just off of raffle tickets," he says.

When Texas State came knocking, they promised something Kaspar had longed dreamed of: bona fide fiscal commitment to his sport.



When Danny Kaspar first interviewed at Texas State University, he was one of many. The Bobcats were certainly familiar with the SFA coach as they too had been a member of the Southland Conference until just a year prior.

When he was called back to San Marcos a few days later, Kaspar knew he was a finalist - one of two candidates asked to meet with the university president and athletics director for a second interview. Then finally, already on the campus of Texas State, Kaspar got a call from Robert Hill who had been authorized to offer the elusive five-year contract.

"Up until that point, I honestly questioned whether they cared if I went or stayed," Kaspar said. "And I'm glad the offer came because it made me feel like, okay to some degree they do appreciate what we've done here. It sure was late though."

SFA knew that a five-year contract was a big deal to their veteran coach. "I guess they wanted me to say, 'that's great, I'm coming home.'"

But that didn't happen.

"I was a little miffed," he admits. Knowing it might be the last time he would find himself in the situation to make a move, Kaspar responded the only way he felt he could: "I said, 'you know that's a very nice offer. Why wasn't it made earlier? I'm here and I owe it to Texas State and myself to talk to them again.'"

So the interview started. Texas State was offering $320 thousand to pay four assistants - yes, Kaspar would finally get an operations guy - a fully funded summer school program, massive renovations to the on-campus coliseum, an administration fully behind basketball, and the patience to build a long-term winner in the image of his SFA teams. For Kasper, it was a lot to consider.

"We had a pretty good team coming back at SFA," he says. "But that's only if Jacob Parker stays healthy." The to-be league MVP had long battled foot issues that had kept his playing and practice time limited through his first two seasons. "What if it gets worse?"

Could Kaspar really walk away from a potential championship team at the peak of his more than decade-long project? The relationships he had built with players, with Robert Hill, with the townspeople of Nacogdoches - could he give that up? Even with Texas State offering most everything he had dreamed of working with at SFA, "How do you leave guys like Jacob Parker, Thomas Walkup, Trey Pinkey, Desmond Haymon, Deshaunt Walker, and Nikola Gajic?" he asked.

The job offer came that night. Kaspar told Dr. Larry Teis, athletics director at Texas State, he needed to discuss it with his family. "It was a hard decision, Isaac," he says to me now. "But an easy one."

Danny Kaspar said yes.

Brad Underwood and VCU -

As Kaspar moved his family to San Marcos, secured commitments from a number of his former SFA recruits, and prepared for the tall task of making another losing program victorious, the Lumberjacks were moving on too.

Late in April of 2013, Stephen F. Austin named Brad Underwood, a former assistant at Kansas State and South Carolina, as their 11th head basketball coach. The financial commitment to SFA basketball that had long eluded Danny Kaspar seemed to appear almost overnight.

Operations guy? Check. Significant raises for assistant salaries? Check. Full funding for summer classes? Check. Oh, and Kaspar's championship-caliber players? Double check.

Underwood, a man who proved to be a legendary coach in his own right, inherited a sensational situation. "Culture of winning," he would say repeatedly during his meetings with the media. The tenacious defensive effort, values of hard work and successful experience, all started with tireless years from a different coach - now 250 miles away.

Unprecedented funding for a non-football program in Nacogdoches was the cherry on top. Indeed, the decision makers at Stephen F. Austin seemed to finally realize just how big basketball could be for their institution.

"You know," Kaspar says. "I'm a little bit hurt by how much the new guy got versus what we had there. I know that's how it often works, but we had won a lot of games before I left. We had brought in the right kind of kids. I wish we could have been afforded some of those same things."

Still, Kaspar has nothing but respect for the man who replaced him at SFA. "First rate," he says. "A hell of a coach."

Underwood got another break in the summer before his first season when Jacob Parker's chronic foot problems were discovered to actually be a treatable hip condition. The Lumberjacks, led by Parker, Haymon, and Walkup, tore through the Southland Conference with an undefeated record and returned to the NCAA Tournament for just the second time in program history.

Brilliant coaching only goes so far without a little luck. It took a ridiculous (awesome) four-point play to tie the game in the final seconds of regulation, but Stephen F. Austin cemented their place in college basketball history with an upset of Virginia Commonwealth University on the nation's biggest stage:



"I was so happy for those guys," says Kaspar. "I really mean that. But a few minutes later I was thinking, I could be there. I maybe could've been there."

No earthly being will ever know what might have been if Kaspar had come home to Nacogdoches after the phone call from Hill. Would SFA have ever funded basketball like today? It's possible. It's also possible that it took the departure of a beloved leader like Kaspar to bring impactful change.

"I'm not going to tell you I could've accomplished as much as Brad did," he says. "I like to think we would have. But who's to say?"

Building a new legacy -

Three years into his tenure at Texas State, Kaspar is finally beginning to see the fruits of his latest conquest. "This year we were 15-16 and that included overtime losses to Arkansas-Little Rock, Washington State, and very close losses to six other schools." Next year? "Our goal is conference championship or a very high seed."

Using the familiar defense-first approach that made SFA relevant, Kaspar is starting to recreate the remarkable reversal of fortune he brought to Nacogdoches. And even now, from time to time, the former Lumberjack takes a glance back at his home of thirteen years.

"My wife and I still try to get up there one time each year," he says. "So you know, when the Lumberjacks beat West Virignia this year, we were in our house hooping and hollering. When they lose on a last second tip in to Notre Dame, we were very upset."

Despite any lack of respect that Kaspar felt during each of his three-year agreements, taking the SFA job against the advice of his friends proved to be the key to his now solidified reputation as a program builder. His relationship with Hill, a man who he says had zero fault in his contract frustrations, remains positive to this day.

"SFA - the experience there - it was very good to me," he says sincerely.

Through the slow and painful process of constructing a basketball power, Kaspar was pretty good for SFA too. So was Underwood. Hopefully the same will be said of newly-appointed coach Kyle Keller, too.

But the SFA fans, that body of purple that seems to grow exponentially each season, should never forget from where they came. That journey from the punch-line of a bottom-tier conference to a mid-major powerhouse is almost unparalleled in the past sixteen years.

For the first thirteen of those years, a tall, mustached man - a fixture of Nacogdoches and the catalyst of many purple light shows from the Steen towers - led the charge.

"It was a wonderful experience," he says quietly. "I'll treasure the memories there for the rest of my life."

So will we; even as a new era of Stephen F. Austin basketball begins again.

BUUUUUUUUUUUZZ!