Brad Underwood’s Win-Loss Record Is Unassailable, Compares to Brad Stevens

Yes, Brad Underwood did it in the Southland Conference.
Yes, the Southland Conference has teams that were recently Division II.
Yes, he took over a team that went 27-5 the year before he got there.

I know all the caveats. But Brad Underwood still went 89-14 in his three seasons at Stephen F. Austin and improved his team’s KenPom ranking every year there.

Consider: SFA’s KenPom ranking in 2013 when they went 27-5 was No. 62. Here was their final KenPom over the next three seasons.

2014: 57
2015: 40
2016: 26

This is opponent-adjusted and tempo-adjusted. No bonus points for beating up on the Little Sisters of the Poor (which is about one step away from what Underwood’s ‘Jacks were playing).

And if you’re going to come after his conference and the fact that he was an assistant for 25 years (which I did on Tuesday), you better at least also acknowledge that he could not have been better as the SFA head man.

89-14 overall. 53-1 in conference play. Three dances. Two wins. Heady stuff.

Here’s NCAA.com with a deep dive into college hoops history.

With his most recent NCAA Tournament run at SFA, Underwood improved his career record to 89-14, tied with Brad Stevens (Butler, 2008-10) for the most wins by a head coach in his first three seasons at an NCAA school. What’s more, Underwood’s .864 winning percentage is tied with Adolph Rupp (Kentucky, 1931-33) for the fourth best by a head coach after his first three seasons in Division I basketball.

Of active coaches who have coached 100 games, Underwood pretty easily has the best winning percentage (yes, yes I know it’s SFA compared to Gonzaga, UNC and the rest).

Active coaches ranked by win % (min. 100 games).

Underwood: 86%
Few: 81%
Roy W.: 79%
Calipari: 78%
Coach K: 77%
Self: 76%

— Pistols Firing (@pistolsguys) March 22, 2016

There’s more though. Underwood went 70-24 in three seasons of junior college basketball in the early 2000s. He won two conference titles in three years before heading up to Kansas State to be an assistant for Huggy Bear. That’s six years as a head coach and five conference titles.

Big 12? No. But not nothing either.

And the thing that underpins all of this is that he beat teams in March with SFA players that Travis Ford couldn’t beat in January with OSU players.

The Underwood profile in March

2014: Beat VCU | smoked by UCLA
2015: Narrowly lost to Utah
2016: Beat WVU | narrowly lost to Notre Dame

His record was 2-3 in three years, and his teams were at least seven seeds below the teams they played in all five games. He’s won more NCAA Tournament games than Travis Ford had been to when he was named coach in 2008.

So we can knock him for plenty of things but the most important (winning basketball games) is certainly not one of them.