By JIMMIE TRAMEL Sports Writer on Apr 5, 2013, at 3:50 PM Updated on 4/05 at 3:50 PM
ORU SPORTS
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Oral Roberts’ new conference just lost a heck of a coach.
Danny Kaspar, who led Stephen F. Austin to a regular season championship in the Southland Conference, was introduced Thursday as the new head coach at Texas State.
Kaspar isn’t someone whose name is going to get tossed out when the national media is discussing the nation’s best coaches. The usual suspects -- familiar faces from “power” conference schools -- are going to get that kind of treatment.
But Kaspar’s peers know the score and they know that, year-in and year-out, he's going to have one of the best defensive teams in the nation. ORU coach Scott Sutton referred to Kaspar as a great coach and you can read into Sutton’s words that he thinks Texas State made a smart hire.
“I laugh at some of these ADs that are hiring coaches,” Sutton said. “I think they are more concerned with winning the press conference and showing their alumni and fan base ‘hey, look who I got.’
“And then you’ve got a guy like Danny Kaspar, who, all he does is win games. He is not a guy that is a self-promoter and he is not a guy who is going to brag about what he has accomplished. But there are very few guys around the country who are better than Danny Kaspar. I will tell you that.”
The Sporting News once named Kaspar the national small-college coach of the year while he was stringing together nine consecutive 20-win seasons at Incarnate Word in San Antonio.
Then Kaspar moved to Stephen F. Austin, which had won a total of 10 games in two seasons prior to his arrival. Kaspar went went 246-193 in 13 seasons with the Lumberjacks, including five winning seasons in the last six years. Care to guess which NCAA Division I program won more games than any other in Texas during that six-year span?
“And to do it in a place like Stephen F. Austin, in that town (Nacogdoches, Texas) -- nothing against that town, but I would imagine that it’s very hard to recruit to,” Sutton said.
“And there are coaches like that -- a lot of coaches all over -- who, if given the opportunity, they would go and do great things at a high-major school. I was happy for Danny to be able to move. He deserves it. He has done it for 13 years. He has been consistent. He hasn’t been to a ton of NCAA Tournaments, but it’s hard to win those (conference tournaments to get into the NCAA Tournament). We have coached against a lot of great coaches over the last 14 years and I would put him up with just about anybody.”
