Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 7, 1991 TAG: 9104240010
SECTION: THE METRO TOURNAMENT PAGE: 8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Scott Blanchard / Sportswriter
DATELINE: NEW ORLEANS LENGTH: Long
As it turned out, his outspokenness helped land him on the bench as a coach instead of approaching the bench as a barrister,
Everhart, a former Virginia Tech basketball player and former VMI assistant coach who now is Perry Clark's top assistant at Tulane, three times was voted the Hokies' "Most Inspirational Player."
"Maybe that meant I was the loudest mouth," said Everhart, a pre-law student who graduated from Tech in 1985 with a degree in political science.
Never was he louder, perhaps, than during a game against Louisville one year. The Hokies' offense, Everhart said, was nil. But a seldom-used bench player had an idea.
"We had this play we called Fist," said Everhart, in Roanoke this week for the Metro Conference Tournament. "I yelled up the bench, `Coach [Charlie] Moir, we need to run Fist.' He didn't run it. Next play down I said, `Coach Moir, I'm telling you if we run Fist it will work.' Sure enough he called it - I think he called it just to get me off his back - and we got a layup."
So who needs law school? After he graduated, Everhart got a graduate assistant's job at Georgia Tech under Bobby Cremins. On the staff were his current boss, Clark, and current South Carolina coach George Felton.
The next year, VMI coach Joe Cantafio hired him; Everhart helped recruit Roanoke's Percy Covington. Everhart spent two years in Lexington before his former staffmate Clark got the job at Tulane - which was bringing back basketball after a self-imposed five-year ban. Everhart was off to New Orleans.
There, his recruiting ability has grown. Of course, it helps when the staff has to recruit an entire team in its first year.
"People down here say, `How did you sign 12 guys the first year? How did you get a team together?' " Everhart said, "Well it wasn't that difficult coming out of a military institution. You'd recruit 21 guys that year [at VMI] and you'd come up with one."
Cantafio gave him a boost, Everhart said.
"Everything you perceive as a negative about a military institution, he could make it a positive; he could sell fire ants to guys on a picnic," Everhart said.
Said Cantifio, "He's a hell of an assistant coach. He'll make a good head coach.
It didn't hurt Everhart to have studied for a year under Cremins, acknowledged as a top recruiter. With that background, Everhart hasn't signed only a few of Tulane's top players; he's signed all of them. Everhart said he was the primary recruiter of each Green Wave player except Joe Passi, a reserve center.
Not that Tulane's talent pool is the nation's best or that the Green Wave is much of a threat to win the Metro Conference. But Tulane's one-year improvement - four victories in 1989-90, 15 this season - is testimony in part to its players.
Center Anthony Reed was the Metro's freshman of the year last season; freshman guard Kim Lewis is the league's best rookie this year; and freshman forwards Carlin Hartman and Makeba Perry are good bets for the Metro's all-rookie team.
Everhart credits Tulane's academic reputation and the fact that he could guarantee chunks of playing time to the newcomers as factors that helped land those players.
"Ultimately, it comes down to the head coach being the type of person a young man wants to play for," Everhart said. "[But] there have been guys who've told me before we've closed it that they're coming [because of me],"
Of course, some haven't. Everhart said Tulane lost guard Joey Brown from Morgan City, La., to Georgetown and lost swingman Thomas Hill, a Texan, to Duke. And, the Green Wave almost lost one current player, G.J. Hunter, to another sport - football.
Everhart said Clark got a tip about Hunter, a Garland, Texas, native. Hunter, Everhart said, had football scholarship offers from Arizona State, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Southern California.
"He's getting ready to sign for football because he's a blue-chip football guy," Everhart said. "So we have him visit right away because he says he might want to play basketball. He visits, falls in love with it, and boom,"
Everhart said he believes a coach's responsibility is to make sure his players graduate and become productive citizens. He said he also doesn't believe in hedging - something that he first learned under Cremins, who Everhart said often told academically shaky recruits how difficult it would be for them matriculate at Georgia Tech.
"Bobby Cremins is blatantly honest. In fact, sometimes too blatantly honest," Everhart said, admitting that he doesn't make the "guaranteed playing time" pitch to recruits any more.
"The first thing I like to do with a kid is show then our depth chart," he said. "I don't want there to be any surprises, for a kid to come back down the road and say, `Hey, you didn't tell me about so-and-so.' That makes your whole relationship with the kid illegitimate."
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