The Five Stages of emotion to losing an important Assistant Basketball Coach and Recruiter:
Denial - “No way he’d leave a place as special as Illinois.”
Anger - “What!? WHHAAATTT? You mean he’s REALLY thinking of leaving a place as special as Illinois?”
Bargaining - “Maybe we can throw a bunch of money at him and he’ll want to stay!”
Depression - “So it’s official, huh? He’s gone? That just sucks big time! Man, what a downer. All is lost...”
Acceptance - “We’ll be fine without him. We don’t need him. He’s making a mistake to leave a place as special as Illinois.”
Joining a program like Kentucky that is legacy roundball royalty is sort of taking the easy way out. Duke. Gonzaga. Michigan State... Blah, blah, blah. It’s like Alabama or Clemson or Ohio State in football. Easy road to success. Always bag the top players. Always grab the national media attention. Always tilting the table in your favor every single year and thereafter and making things that much tougher for everybody else. Where winning is seen as a boring divine right of obligation and not winning a championship is seen as abject failure and unworthiness.
Blessed is the man or woman who takes on the challenge of building up a program that does not feast on the spoils of entitlement and generational wealth. Blessed is a man like Coach Underwood who took on a struggling program with the goal of re-elevating it to an elite level. Who sets the bar at the highest level and challenges those around him to raise a proud State’s profile and successfully compete with anyone regardless of the challenges faced and how they may have stacked the deck against you.