A punch to the gut.
That's what I felt when my wife sent me a text message Friday morning, telling me that Kurt Budke had been killed.
Just to be honest, I hate reading tragic news. I want to be informed, so I read it, but I would much rather read uplifting, inspirational stories.
The Penn State saga is tragic. The kidnapping of Washington Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos was saddening, but at least it had a heroic ending.
Sadly, there was no heroic ending for Budke, a former Louisiana Tech women's basketball coach who was one of four people killed in a plane crash in Arkansas Thursday night. Budke was the women's basketball coach at Oklahoma State, and his long-tenured assistant, Miranda Serna, also was killed as they were returning to Stillwater, Okla., from a recruiting trip.
Budke was entering his seventh season in Stillwater, where there aren't many words to describe the job he did in turning around a putrid program and making it competitive in the Big 12, which is quite possibly the best women's basketball conference in the country.
The Cowgirls were winless in Big 12 play in 2005-06, Budke's first season on the job. Two years later, Oklahoma State reached the Sweet 16, and the Cowgirls have advanced to postseason play each of the past five years, including three NCAA tourney appearances.
I remember Budke less for his time at Oklahoma State and more for his rocky tenure at Louisiana Tech, where he was given the unenviable task to trying to replace the legendary Leon Barmore, who built the Lady Techsters into one of the premier programs in the country.
To be blunt, Budke was saddled with an impossible situation.
He was asked to replace a legend in Barmore, but more than that, he was brought in after the heir apparent, Kim Mulkey, had a nasty battle with Tech's administration that saw her decline to replace Barmore -- the job she'd waited around in Ruston for nearly 20 years to get -- and instead go build a national championship program at Baylor…(Full Story)
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