Stansbury climbs success ladder with help from late parents
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STARKVILLE, Miss. -- When it came time for the final strand of Georgia Dome net to be cut last March after Mississippi State had captured the Southeastern Conference Tournament, Rick Stansbury knew exactly who was going up the ladder.
And it wasn't him.
![[Image: img5803179.jpg]](http://images.sportsline.com/u/photos/basketball/college/img5803179.jpg)
The late Robert Stansbury cutting down the net after the SEC tourney title last year is something his son will never forget.(Provided to SportsLine)
Instead he pushed his father, Robert, the farmer and factory worker who raised Stansbury and his brothers in Kentucky, whose body was now riddled with cancer, already living three months longer than the doctors had predicted.
"I guess as a young coach that moment is what you dream of, what you work for," said Stansbury. "To win a championship and cut down the net. But I never thought for a minute of doing it. I wanted my dad to do it.
"I'll never be happier than I was seeing my dad go up that ladder and have the opportunity to cut the final strand with the fans cheering."
Last week, Robert finally succumbed to cancer. Saturday he was buried in Kentucky and by Sunday morning Stansbury was back in Mississippi coaching the Bulldogs, a preseason top 15 team, at their first practice.
Too often in college basketball we talk about personnel losses, not personal ones. But family and background and hometown roots are part of the game, too. That's no matter how big and intense the sport gets, how rich and powerful the coaches become.
Stansbury, 42, is pushing toward the top of his profession. He hasn't forgotten where he came from though.
"What little success I've had in life, it all comes from my parents, and I will never forget that," said Stansbury, who has a four-year record of 79-50 at Mississippi. "They instilled things in me as a kid that has helped me along the way."
Stansbury lost his mother, Norma, in 1998 after she fell ill during a cruise with her sisters. It was Stansbury's first preseason as a head coach and he had to split time between Starkville and a hospital in Florida for the last month of her life. She passed away the night of his first collegiate game.
"She made it 20 minutes into the game, gave me that first lead," he said.
Family is a big deal to Stansbury, who grew up on a 300-acre farm in little Wolf Creek, Ky. There the family raised cattle, crops and tobacco. To make ends meet, Robert worked for 30 years at the Ford assembly plant in Shelbyville, Ky., a 90-minute drive from the farm.
"He'd get up at 3 a.m. and drive to work," Stansbury said. "He'd get home in the middle of the afternoon and farm until dark, then get some sleep."
But only if one of his boys didn't have a basketball game.
"He never missed a basketball game in my career, middle school, high school or college (Campbellsville)," Stansbury said. "It's amazing. He and my mother would attend the game then he would drive back, drop her off and just head up to Shelbyville."
It's not a surprise Stansbury is one of the hardest-working people in a hard-working profession. It's also not so much of a surprise he has taken Mississippi State to the top of the SEC and poised to make some significant national noise this season. Or that the program seems to be picking up speed, what with three more highly regarded recruits orally committed.
Mississippi State never has been this consistently good. There was some modest success in the 1960s. The 1996 Final Four, of course, where Stansbury was the chief assistant. But the coach wants to reach a new level.
"Our goal is to win a national championship at Mississippi State," he said. "We almost did it in 1996. It can be done here."
That sounds like the son of two determined and driven small-town parents.
"My dad was one of those people who always saw the good in people, who also saw good in bad," Stansbury said. "No matter how tough things got, he remained positive."
Robert Stansbury was from a different generation, virtually a different world than the kids on the Bulldogs these days. But once the doctors diagnosed his cancer in June of 2001, he spent even more time than usual in Starkville with his son and the team. The kids loved him, his personality and his vibrancy for life despite having a terminal disease.
"He was a big part of why we were successful last year," coach Stansbury said.
It is experiences like that that allow Stansbury to put a positive spin on this.
"I have nothing but great memories of my dad," he said. "I am very fortunate. A lot of people are not fortunate enough to have a dad all their life."
Because the State program was humming along pretty well, because the Bulldogs already had wrapped up recruiting, Stansbury was allowed the luxury of spending most of the past month at University Hospital in Louisville at his father's side.
"I have good kids here and my coaches handled everything here," he said. "I spent three of the last four weeks in Louisville."
So now the Bulldogs will look to defending that SEC Tournament title and continue the upward trend of this program. The memory of Robert Stansbury holding that championship net as the Georgia Dome crowd roared, firmly in everyone's mind, especially his youngest son.
"When he came down the ladder I just gave him a hug and said, 'Thank you for everything. This is all because of you.'"
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