Match those six East coaches against these names: John Pelphrey, Anthony Grant, Trent Johnson, Jeff Lebo, Rick Stansbury, and Andy Kennedy. If I gave you one of those old-fashioned match-up tests, where you had to draw a line to connect each coach to the school, how many people could correctly match these coaches to their respective teams? Anthony Grant is in his his first season at Alabama, has a Billy Donovan pedigree and may be a future coaching star, while Trent Johnson, who has taken two teams to the Sweet 16, is in his second at LSU. Every other coach listed above has been at his respective school long enough to escape the deep shadow of mediocrity.
Only Stansbury has.
And even Stansbury at Mississippi State hasn't been that successful. In fact, in the midst of his 12 seasons in Starkville, he's never taken the Bulldogs to the Sweet 16 and has only advanced past the first round of the NCAA Tournament four times.
His career record in the SEC? Try 100-82.
Hardly the stuff of legends.
Yet compared to the rest of the SEC West, Stansbury is legendary.