STARKVILLE — Rick Stansbury’s office in the Mize Pavilion isn’t littered with championship trophies or game balls. Instead, Stansbury’s sanctum inside the Mississippi State University basketball program’s new practice facility is filled with pictures of what he says is important.
Hundreds of pictures of Stansbury’s wife, Meo (Mellen), and their sons, Noah, Issac, and Luke, fill the walls of an office that overlooks the Starkville campus. The pictures serve as a reminder of the importance Stansbury places on a family that has traveled with him since he accepted the job as MSU’s men’s basketball coach in 1998.
There’s simply not another option for him and everything around him to function.
“Otherwise the kids wouldn’t recognize him when he walked in the door and I wouldn’t have a husband,” Meo Stansbury said. “None of this would work for anybody, including, of course, him.”
While doing a telephone interview with The Dispatch, Meo Stansbury packed for her and the children for their trip to New Orleans for the 2012 Southeastern Conference tournament. MSU (21-10) will play the University of Georgia at 9 tonight (SEC Network) in its first game of the tournament.
For 37 years, including a four-year career at Campbellsville (Ky.) College, it was about basketball for Rick Stansbury. During his time as an assistant men’s basketball coach at Austin Peay State University and then at MSU under then-head coach Richard Williams, Stansbury would sleep in his office. He refers that to his as “overkill” days approaching the job. He did his job that way because he wasn’t married for many of those years. He altered his habits when he married Meo early in his career as an assistant coach at MSU.
“It was a thought for me from day one that if it ever set up this way, I wanted my family around me,” Stansbury said. “My challenge is keeping that balance in my life in this demanding time frame.”
Stansbury, who has 293 victories in 14 years as a head coach, said having his boys around the locker room has made him more aware of things and a better director of the program.
“They’ve broken the tension, and since they’re still young, I have to choose my words differently in locker room when I see their eyes looking at me,” Stansbury said. “All of those things are good. I see coaches talk about family all the time, and I don’t have to. All I need to do is point and they’re right there with us.”
Stansbury said he learned his core values from his parents, who never missed one of his elementary school, high school, or college games.
“I grew up on a farm, and not a lot of people know that, but that instilled in me the work ethic that when things get tough, you work harder and it’ll be OK,” Stansbury said.
After working as a coach in Starkville for 22 years, Stansbury, 52, said he’s not sure how much longer he will coach, but he won’t try to hang on to a job.
“I won’t be like Joe Paterno. I promise you that,” Stansbury said. “However, a lot of people can say you can stay at a place too long, and I’ve never thought that way.”
Stansbury entered his 14th season at MSU as the school’s all-time winningest coach with 272 victories. The Bulldogs have averaged nearly 21 wins per season and have participated in postseason tournament play 10 times (six NCAA tournaments, four National Invitation Tournaments). MSU also made five consecutive postseason tournament appearances (2001-05) for the first time in school history, including a streak of four straight NCAA tournament berths from 2002-05.
Prior to the switch to one division for this season, MSU was the only team in the past 10 years to win five divisional titles.
In April 2010, Stansbury received an offer to become the next men’s basketball coach at Clemson University. According to a source close to the negotiations, Stansbury was offered $2 million per year, but he decided to stay at MSU after taking two days to weigh the options.
“It’s nice maybe to have been wanted,” Stansbury said on April 12, 2010. “It’s nice to have heard people talk about some things, but, at the end of the day, there was no way I could walk away from Mississippi State, our fans — they’re the most loyal fans in the world — our players, and future players.”
Stansbury said this week the decision to stay in Starkville had “absolutely nothing to do with basketball.”
“Most decisions are made about basketball and everything around it, but we sat and talked about family, community, and what we had invested for 22 years in everything here,” Stansbury said. “We have dear friends in this community, and I hope and think it will stay the same if I’m coaching or not coaching. I don’t know many coaching families that have invested themselves into people here as Meo and I have.”
Meo, a 1992 graduate of MSU, admittedly wasn’t much help in the discussion about the opportunity at Clemson until the family returned from South Carolina.
“You start entertaining an offer and you get caught up in it, but what happens is you don’t sit back and collect yourself, so it becomes a two-day tidal wave,” Meo said. “At the end of those two days there’s a job offer in your lap and now after two days you’re changing your life forever. Finally, Rick spoke up and said, ‘No we can’t leave (because) our family is now here, our sons’ teachers that they adore are here. Think about everyone we would leave behind.”
Meo said she and Rick haven’t and probably won’t talk about how long he will coach college basketball. The one request she has is he remains as healthy as possible after coaching through two ruptured discs in his back and a knee surgery.
“It’s about a 362 day-a-year job, and we have to make sure we incorporate everything about this never forgiving job that my husband loves,” Meo said. “It’s not a burden if you love being a part of something, and we all love being a part of this program at this university. He loves doing this, and we love seeing him be as happy as he can.”
In the two years since deciding to stay at MSU, Stansbury has received heavy criticism following a 17-win season that saw multiple off-the-court incidents, including a fight in Hawaii between Renardo Sidney and former MSU player Elgin Bailey.
Stansbury insists while the recruiting process has changed in the past two decades, the ideals he learned as an assistant still remain a focus when finding the scholarship players who will wear the MSU jersey.
“Fifteen years ago, you had to recruit the community to get the kid,” Stansbury said. “It was in that church, parents, and grandparents, and that’s not the same as today. The core value of kids starts in the home, but I’m not going to change my core values.”
Those core values bring Stansbury home Sundays so he can attend church with his family. When bad news has affected the MSU program, whether it be the fight in Hawaii or the most recent five-game losing streak, Stansbury has learned to block out that talk.
“As a young guy, you read the paper a little bit, but I’ve never been a guy that has influenced my decisions and my emotions on other people’s thoughts,” Rick Stansbury said. “I’m confident knowing that what I’m doing is something I can believe in. I’m going to make the decisions, and when you start listening to everyone in the stands, eventually you’ll be sitting with them.”
When asked what will talk about when he speaks with MSU Director of Athletics Scott Stricklin at their end-of-season evaluation and look at the future, Stansbury said he will remain quiet because the evidence is on paper.
“I don’t have to tell (Scott) anything because it speaks for itself what we’ve done for 14 years,” Stansbury said. “In this league over that time only Kentucky and Florida have won more games than us. We’re highly competitive with the big boys of this league every single year.”
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