COAL MINER'S MENTALITY


People are a product of their environment. For Northeastern head coach Ron Everhart, growing up in Fairmont, WV provided the perfect atmosphere to pursue a career in athletics.

Everhart shared the playing field with the likes of Rich Rodriguez (current West Virginia head football coach) and Nick Saban (LSU head football coach). The legendary Morgan Wootten was his high school coach and as a twenty-year old he watched his cousin Mary Lou Retton strike gold at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.

But one individual made a lasting impression on Everhart, which nearly led to the former Southland Conference coach of the year to join his coaching staff this past summer.

“I never gave any consideration to taking an assistant coaching position,” said Everhart. “Often coaches move up by leaving their head job for an assistant’s position at a high profile school, but it wasn’t something that interested me at all. But when Bobby (Huggins) called me, I was intrigued.”

On July 20, Dan Peters left Bob Huggins’ staff at the University of Cincinnati to join Thad Matta at Ohio State. The vacancy at UC was more than just a little intriguing to Everhart.

“We all have people in our lives that you respect so much that you listen to them regardless of what they are talking about,” says Everhart. “Huggs is one of those people for me. Having known him for so many years, the possibility of joining his staff was very intriguing.”

The Huggins-Everhart friendship goes back to Everhart’s high school days. The self-proclaimed gym-rat would frequently hitchhike to the West Virginia campus to see the Mountaineer basketball team. The passion, intensity and work ethic that Huggins brought to the floor, as a player, invigorated Everhart who has always considered himself to be a lunch-pail guy.

“Huggs grew up in an environment much like that of Fairmont (West Virginia),” says Everhart. “As kids both of us watched the guys with hard hats and lunch pails head off to the coal mine every day. That hard-working approach was instilled in both of us from a very early age. He’s got that coal miner’s mentality, which a lot of people don’t understand.”

And Everhart noticed something else, very early on, about Huggins. He was and still is as genuine as they come.

“I remember one night I hitched a ride to the game and then found myself stranded,” says Everhart. “Bobby saw me hanging around and told me to take his key and go stay in his dorm room. ‘Don’t worry about it, we’ll get you back home tomorrow,’ he said. That’s what most people miss about Bobby. They don’t understand what a really good person he is.”

Following his high school days at DeMatha and a collegiate career at Virginia Tech, Everhart broke into the coaching ranks as a graduate assistant under Bobby Cremins at Georgia Tech in 1985. The following season he began a two-year stint as a full time assistant at Virginia Military Academy before moving on to Tulane with, another Morgan Wootten disciple, Perry Clark.

Everhart spent the next six seasons helping to build the Green Wave into a perennial Top 25 team. He also established himself as one of the up-and-coming recruiters in the country, bringing in three straight Metro Conference freshman of the year winners.

Up north, Huggins had already turned the program around at Akron and was on the verge of reigniting interest in the tradition-rich University of Cincinnati program.

And while their paths didn’t cross professionally, Everhart continued to seek advice, helping to integrate that coal miner’s mentality into his way of coaching.

“The one that stands out for me is the work ethic,” Everhart says of Huggins. “You often hear people say that this coach or that coach is a tireless worker, but Huggs is the epitome of that statement. When you watch a Cincinnati practice, the first thing you notice is how much he gets out of his players. Nobody gets more of out his players than Bobby.”

Making the most of what you have worked out just fine for Everhart. In 1994 he got his first head coaching assignment at McNeese State, a program that had been struggling in recent years. But in just his second season, the Cowboys posted a winning record, the program’s first in six seasons.

The following season produced a share of the Southland Conference regular season championship, a feat that would be repeated in his final year at McNeese. That 2000-2001 campaign saw the Cowboys win fifteen straight SLC games (won 19-of-20 overall during one stretch) and get an invite to the NIT.

In the spring of 2001, Everhart was given the task of resurrecting Northeastern, another program that had fallen on hard times recently. While the process has gone unnoticed with the success of Vermont and Boston University dominating the upper echelon of the America East, what is noticeable are the similarities in style and approach to that of Cincinnati.

“Defensively we are a lot like Cincinnati,” says Everhart. “Offensively we stress running and shooting, but we are not as well-versed in the halfcourt like Bobby’s teams. Off the court, our approach mirrors that of Cincinnati in a lot of ways. I have always understood the importance of not just developing better basketball players, but developing young men into men.”

Everhart has always been impressed by the relationships that Huggins has developed with his players, which continue long after their playing days at UC are over. It’s something that he firmly believes is bypassed by the media masses in favor of less-flattering bylines.

“The way he is portrayed is ridiculous,” says Everhart. “There are a lot of guys that wear two hats, one when the camera is on and one when the camera is off, but not Bobby. He is the same guy all the time. He’s a no-nonsense guy who ultimately only cares about what his players and his close friends think. I think a lot of people just don’t understand that coal miner’s mentality.”

Ironically it’s that same mentality and that same value system that has Everhart still at Northeastern and not on Huggins staff at Cincinnati.

“I was very close to going to Cincinnati,” says Everhart. “Ultimately it came down to my commitment to my players and to Northeastern. All the things I have learned from Bobby are what kept me here.”

Northeastern doesn’t figure to win the America East title, but one would be surprise if they aren’t in the mix. With one of the nation’s best-kept secrets in Jose Juan Barea (2003 CollegeInsider.com Mid-Major All American) leading the way, Everhart boasts one of the deepest and most veteran backcourts in the league.

There are some question marks in the frontcourt, but Ron Everhart coached teams always compete hard and leave it on the floor. Just like Bob Huggins coached teams.