WKU Basketball: The Biggest Tease in WKU Sports History
With Tuesday night’s announcement that Rick Stansbury has granted five-star center Mitchell Robinson a release from the program, the strangest saga in WKU basketball history came to a long, drawn out close.
Before we delve into the entire saga, let me first state that I, like many, believe that WKU basketball will be fine moving forward without Robinson. Stansbury still will have the most talented team since WKU’s Sweet 16 run in 2008, and now they’ll have one less distraction on their quest to return WKU to basketball glory.
When Stansbury was hired in the wake of the abrupt departure of Ray Harper, WKU fans thought he could be the coach that finally returns WKU to their rightful place among the top mid-major programs in the country. He quickly made waves a few short months later when he convinced former Texas A&M commit, Mitchell Robinson, to change his commitment to WKU in June of 2016.
Tops’ fans were just as shocked as the rest of the college basketball universe.
We quickly learned Robinson’s backstory of being discovered by Stansbury and linked the commitment into Stansbury’s long track record of attracting elite talent to non blue-blood locales. Having Robinson’s “godfather” Shammond Williams on staff only reinforced that Robinson coming to WKU wasn’t a fluke.
When the news broke, the WKU fan base quickly heard from other fan bases that he’d quickly decommit and asked how much was Stansbury paying him? We eagerly waited for signing day in November before the other shoe dropped.
As summer turned to fall, the legend of Robinson grew; He continued to blow up on the recruiting scene and other fans, namely UK and LSU ones, continually remarked that he would be theirs when the time was right.
But, November came and, though Robinson waited until the last minute, he signed his National Letter of Intent to play with WKU. This meant he was locked in and couldn’t break his commitment without sitting out a year.
The Hilltopper faithful let out a sigh of relief and quickly started planning for WKU’s return to relevance. Robinson was the crown jewel of a Top 10 class that included Top 50 recruit Josh Anderson and Kentucky Mr. Basketball Taveion Hollingsworth. The future was bright on the Hill.
Those happy feelings turned back into panic just a few weeks later as Robinson sent out a damming tweet that read:
After careful consideration, I have decided to DECOMMIT from the University of Western Kentucky and explore my options this only happens once
The sky was falling briefly that day as Robinson continued to like contradicting tweets and even took “WKU commit” off of his twitter profile.
That drama was quickly squashed by Rick Stansbury as took charge of the situation. Robinson’s father was quoted that “Mitchell’s account was hacked,” and we moved on anew, but the seed of doubt was planted and in hindsight, this was just a sign of things to come.
Robinson’s senior season played out perfectly on the court. He led football school Chalmette High School to the Louisiana state semi-finals and even came to Bowling Green to play against Ballard (Louisville) in a special showcase game.
Robinson then was named to the prestigious McDonald’s All American game and the Jordan Brand Classic, where he showed out and kept saying good things about WKU while being interviewed. Everything was trending in the right direction and WKU fans were putting a 15–17 season behind them as spring turned to summer.
As recently as June 21st, Robinson, at the USA Basketball U18 trials was quoted by Courier Journal reporter, Fletcher Page, saying these words about WKU:
“I think we’re going to do some special things at Western Kentucky,” Robinson said. “We’ve got a lot of nice people coming in, with recruits and transfers. It’s a good thing for us. What we’ve put together, we could go really far in the NCAA. It should last a long time.”
Robinson says he is, “ready to get in classes and start working with the team,” at Western Kentucky, but expresses gratitude for the chance to travel to Egypt for the World Championships in July. If that happens, he says he’ll go for a gold medal and then show up in Bowling Green on July 13, where he’ll prepare for the Hilltoppers’ seven-day foreign tour trip to Costa Rica in August.
All signs were that Robinson was good to go and would be in Bowling Green shortly.
Then everything changed.
Robinson’s adviser and “godfather” Shammond Williams resigned from the program. Most fans knew the NLI was binding but many openly wondered if Williams could lead to Robinson going elsewhere. Those fears were confirmed as Robinson didn’t report to campus and rumors swirled.
Stansbury succeed in convincing Robinson again to honor his commitment and he showed up in Bowling Green on Sunday, July 9th.
Once again, WKU fans thought they were in the clear, especially with him on campus and practicing for the upcoming Costa Rica trip. That was before Friday’s news broke that Robinson had abruptly left campus and wasn’t speaking to anyone on the staff.
Then on Tuesday, the 14-month saga finally came to a close with the announcement of his release.
This whole ordeal was equal parts exhausting and exciting. The only comparable story in my entire WKU fanhood was the Terrance Boyd saga back in 2009. Robinson not only represented an elite player but the return to the rightful place that most WKU fans think the program belongs, among college basketball’s upper tier programs.
We know that WKU has 23 NCAA tournament appearances, more than Florida, Gonzaga and several others “major” programs and Robinson was the centerpiece that was going to take the Tops back there. His signing showed that WKU basketball could dream big again and actually deliver results, even if they were just recruiting wins.
But unfortunately, reality and behind-the-scenes maneuvering from outside influences turned those results into a proverbial scene from Charlie Brown getting the football pulled away at the last second by Lucy.
Us in-state Toppers fans had to constantly hear from UK and UofL fans ask why Robinson would go to “little old Western” & ask if $tansbury was cheating? We tried to explain that Stansbury had a long term relationship with Robinson and that he was an elite recruiter even at Mississippi State.
We also claimed that Robinson was an innovator that didn’t care about the prestige of playing at a P5 school. In this case, we were wrong and that makes this whole saga even more disappointing. For 14 months we got our hopes up, through ups and downs it looked like WKU was going to get that elusive five-star player that we never thought possible. Sometimes we’re told if something is too good to be true it probably is, and Friday & Tuesday, that old adage became reality.
But, life goes on. WKU basketball can, and potentially will, achieve big things in Stansbury’s tenure. But this saga will have a lasting psychological impact moving forward.
If Stansbury reels in another Top 100 recruit, we’ll all be highly skeptical and rumors will fly. The Robinson ordeal will be talked about on the Hill for generations to come. We’ll track what Robinson accomplishes over his playing career and see if he lives up to the hype that made him a Top 10 recruit.
Whatever becomes of him, we’ll always ask
what could have been?
