FUTURE COWBOYS MUM
The status of Oklahoma State’s 2017 recruiting class is uncertain after the departure of basketball coach Brad Underwood.
The status of three signees and one commit remains unknown after Brad Underwood’s unexpected departure from Oklahoma State.
Point guard Zack Dawson along with power forwards
Latravian Glover and Souleymane Diakite signed letters of intent in November. OSU would have to grant releases from their scholarships for any of the three to go elsewhere without sitting out a season. Such releases are common after a coaching change.
Amauri Hardy committed to the Cowboys in December and cannot sign until April.
A source with knowledge of the situation said two of the players have backed away from the Cowboys, but none of the players have made their intentions known publicly. Dawson, Glover and Hardy still have pictures or profile descriptions on their Twitter pages that link them to OSU as of midafternoon Sunday. Diakite had no such indication, but he also hasn’t posted any new tweets since January.
At a minimum, it’s likely OSU will wait to grant any releases until after a new coach is hired. That was the procedure a year ago when
Travis Ford was fired. The school waited until it hired Underwood, who ultimately convinced all signees and commits to come to OSU and kept the class intact.
Recruiting services currently rank the class among the top 25 nationally.
Could Dickey be a candidate?
An interesting name in OSU’s coaching search could be James Dickey.
A source close to the situation said the former Cowboy assistant has talked with OSU athletic director Mike Holder, but then, that wouldn’t be a total surprise. And the conversation could’ve been about many things. Dickey, after all, is highly regarded by Holder. When Underwood was hired a year ago, Holder said that he wouldn’t lobby for any of the remaining assistants to be retained by the new head coach. But … “He will hear good things about Coach Dickey from me,” Holder said of an assistant who spent six seasons as an assistant under Eddie
Sutton and Sean Sutton, then returned for a second stint under Ford. “I think he’ll hear the same thing from the players.
“Trust me, James Dickey is beloved everywhere in our department.”
Even though Underwood ultimately didn’t retain Dickey, he remained in Stillwater.
Dickey has twice been a Division-I head coach, first at Texas Tech in the 1990s, then at Houston earlier this decade.
Assistants on the move?
Underwood has not announced any hires for his new coaching staff at Illinois.
As of Sunday afternoon, all of the assistants hired by Underwood at OSU were still listed on the team’s website where Underwood’s name had been removed. Whether Underwood makes a move to hire Lamont Evans, Mike Boynton or Danny Henderson remains to be seen, but at least one former Illinois player has made it known he’s interested.
Kiwane Garris told the Champaign-Urbana (Ill.) News-Gazette that he would love to return to his alma mater to coach.
“I think it is missing ex-Illini players,” Garris said of the Illinois coaching staff. “Plus, I can help navigate around the Chicago area and down here in Georgia.”
Garris, who is from Chicago, played at Illinois from 1993-97, spent a few years playing pro ball and is currently coaching high school basketball in Georgia.
Laurels for Underwood not universal
While Underwood’s hiring at Illinois was widely hailed and lauded, former Illini great Eddie Johnson wasn’t all that fired up.
“Brilliant?” he wrote of the hire on Twitter. “Let it happen first, and let’s see how he recruits in (the Chicago Public League).
“Grandiose descriptions mean 0.”
Johnson played at Illinois from 1977-81, then was a second-round draft pick by the Kansas City Kings. He spent 17 seasons in the NBA. He is now in broadcasting, currently the color analyst for the Phoenix Suns.
Underwoods have Illinois ties
Underwood was widely seen as a Midwest, Big 12 guy during his time at OSU. But he does have strong ties to the state of Illinois. He spent 10 years as an assistant at Western Illinois, and during his time in Macomb, all three of his children were born.
During the last day or so, Underwood repeatedly told media in Illinois the story of the first jersey that his son,
Tyler, ever had. It was a Brian Cook Illinois jersey.
Quotable
“You watch a team of his play for just five minutes and you understand the tenacity that they have, the speed at which they play, the intensity (and) the toughness that they show. Envisioning that team on our floor got me really excited. The things that he’s done both at his time at (Stephen F. Austin) and now at Oklahoma State, it just pops off the page. You look at the improvement his teams have made during his tenure, and it’s nothing short of remarkable.” — Illinois athletic director
Josh Whitman to reporters in
Champaign.