March 30, 2006
Ron Everhart introduced as Duquesne University Head Men's Basketball Coach
March 30, 2006, 3:00 p.m. (EST)
Main playing floor of the Palumbo Center
Athletic Director, Greg Amodio: Opening Remarks
This is obviously a very exciting day for all of us and a very special day for Duquesne men's basketball. Before I move on with any additional remarks, I would like to thank a few people that have been very helpful throughout the search process.
First, any athletic administrators and coaches that I have spoken to all over the country who have provided valuable insight regarding the candidates. Next, the members of the Duquesne athletic staff for their hard work and support. And finally, Charles Dougherty for his leadership and faith in me throughout my short tenure thus far at Duquesne.
From the early stages of the search, one name continued to surface on a consistent basis as the right man for this job. I received numerous calls from the likes of Rick Pitino, head coach at Louisville, and Kevin White, the Athletic Director and Notre Dame, describing the drive and passion demonstrated by the head coach at Northeastern University. They each told me about a coach who had a tireless work ethic and had a highly-regarded track record for re-establishing programs.
As I continued to search, it became evident that I had found the individual who could lead Duquesne men's basketball back to new heights. He possessed all the attributes outlined by his supporters and more important, a true desire to be the next men's basketball coach at Duquesne University.
Today we are here to make a special announcement to demonstrate the renewed commitment of the Duquesne administration and campus community to being competitive at the highest level of the Atlantic 10 Conference. At this time, I would like to welcome Dr. Charles Dougherty, the President of Duquesne University to introduce the new men's basketball coach of the Duquesne Dukes.
President, Dr. Charles Dougherty: Introduction
Good afternoon. I want to start by thanking Greg. He conducted a thorough, professional, national search. We knew what we were looking for at the outset. Greg was careful to prep third parties and other candidates. We got the person we wanted and the first person we asked. So, thank you Greg for an exceptionally good job. Thank you for also throwing the media off of the trail.
When I first met Ron, three things impressed me. One, his commitment to maintain high academic standards. You can't have a coach at Duquesne University without that commitment. We want players to be students while they are here, we want them to graduate, and he has that commitment to build on that Duquesne tradition.
Second important thing, high ethical standards. We don't want to be just compliant with the rules; we want to be exemplary in terms of the program we run. A clean program, a competitive program, a program that cares about our players, cares about our fans, is honest and doest the thing right. The commitment that Ron has here is indisputable and so is his track record.
Finally, and important for us, Ron has a passion for winning, and that is something that we had to have in our new coach, someone who can get the job done, someone who can win for us, and someone who can return our program to its winning ways. Our fans deserve that, our players want it, and the whole Duquesne community has been looking forward to it.
In exchange, I told Ron three other things. One, we are committed to A-10 basketball, make no mistake about that, we don't even consider an alternative, we are committed to A-10 basketball. Secondly, we are committed to winning in the A-10, not just being in the A-10. And finally, we are committed to give Ron Everhart what he needs to win in the A-10, and that's a commitment for our administration, and I know I speak on behalf of the student body to say that is their commitment too, and we want to fill this house on game days and make this a place where our opponents hate to play with the enthusiasm we bring in supporting our new coach.
So ladies and gentleman, I'm convinced the fit is perfect, the prospects are outstanding. We have a coach, that in our terms, will do more for our mind, our heart, and our spirit and who will return us to winning ways in the A-10. Ladies and gentleman, Ron Everhart.
Duquesne Men's Basketball Coach, Ron Everhart:
Maybe aside from the day my children were born, this is probably the happiest day of my life. It is not often a coach gets the opportunity to work at a university whose religious structures and values are those that I and my family try to live our lives by. A guy gets the job that he loves to do and he gets to do that in a place where he was born and raised. Today, I'm that very fortunate person.
I want to thank very much President Dougherty, Greg Amodio, and Duquesne University for giving me this opportunity. I am very proud and humbled by the chance to do this job and I can assure everyone in the Duquesne University community that there will be no failure here due to a lack of effort. We will accomplish the goals that President Dougherty just talked about and we will do it with enthusiasm and tremendous effort.
There are a lot of folks that I wanted to thank. And of course, as I was flying over this morning, more and more of those people popped up. But obviously, I want to thank Duquesne University, these two gentlemen here. I want to thank my wife. She is obviously a very special person, for all of her love and support, for her strong will. She is a great mother and a terrific attorney and allowed me to pursue my goals and dreams as a basketball coach. I also want to thank my two children, my twins Ronnie and Gianna. They do without their dad a lot and they are very special kids.
I want to thank my mom and dad. From the standpoint of raising a man, or four young men, four boys within a six year time frame, all of whom got college basketball scholarships. As a parent now, I didn't appreciate it then, but I appreciate all the sacrifices that they made, and I certainly wouldn't be standing here today, with what I consider the greatest opportunity of my professional career, without them.
I would like to thank J.O. Stright for his friendship and support. His positive impact on Pittsburgh youth and Pittsburgh basketball are legendary. I've worked in Louisiana and Boston and anytime someone mentions Pittsburgh basketball, they mention him. I would like to thank all of my former players, without their hard work and dedication, their sweat and their blood every single day, I certainly would not be able to be here. All of the guys that coached me, they've made tremendous impact on my life, coach Wootten at DeMatha High School especially.
Mr. Vaccaro, a guy who has been a long-time supporter, great man and a guy I want to thank even though he is not here today. I also want to thank the media for being kind. There were two gentlemen who called quite often. I didn't return those calls but I will say to John and Phil, if we can recruit players here at Duquesne who have your work ethic, we will be very good here at Duquesne University.
As a young kid, I followed Duquesne basketball often. I remember names like Mickey Davis, Norm Nixon, B.B. Flemory, and I remember championships and NCAA tournaments. Growing up in a Catholic family, in Fairmont, West Virginia, Duquesne was the shinning star and a program that we followed very closely as a family. So, it obviously gives me tremendous pride to stand here today and be ready to lead this basketball program.
Obviously, it is my hope that we can approach this every day in a championship manner. To be able to create a championship here and restore the type of basketball reputation that Duquesne University had in those days. As I used to sit by the radiator at my house with my transistor radio and listen, you guys [pointing to current team] don't understand because it wasn't like this back then, you couldn't turn on the TV and see everyone play all the time. It really does give me chills to stand here before you and have this opportunity.
Our basketball program here is going to be built on some very simple concepts, hard work, no shortcuts. We will recruit young men into this program that represent this University in the way it deserves to be represented. We will have the types of young men that are academically accountable, socially accountable and responsible. We will have a tremendous work ethic. Our staff will work in a championship fashion everyday, our players will work in a championship fashion everyday that we come to practice and everyday that the lights go one and we go out to play.
It is my vision for this basketball program to develop a sense of pride in that name that we wear across our chests. By hard work, by toughness, and by effort, we will walk off that floor - win or lose - and I want our opponents to say "those guys really played hard, we don't want any part of those guys any more." I think we can achieve that, in short order.
Obviously if any basketball program, especially one who plays in a great league like the Atlantic 10, with so many great opponents, you can look around and see the names [pointing to banners in the Palumbo Center], recruiting becomes very important. Recruiting is one of those things in college basketball, or any type of college sport, that is almost like taking a shower everyday. You have to do it or you end up stinking. We feel like, from a basketball staff perspective, that is going to be something that is a vital part of any program.
Everyday, we are going to approach recruiting in a championship fashion. We are going to try to be involved with the best possible fit for Duquesne University that we can possibly be involved with, which does not always mean the best basketball players, but the type of individual that embodies what this program is going to be all about. We want to really focus on our local guys in the Pittsburgh area. I think that is vital and I think that no good basketball program is without a player of importance to that program that doesn't come from the local area, and that will be vital for us.
We will also focus on developing a farm system, something that we have always been able to do successfully through prep schools, junior colleges, and so forth to make sure at the end of the day we have the right men representing our University. And we also want to focus very heavily on player development. One of the mottos that we will have everyday is, when we walk off this practice floor is, "how much better have we gotten as a team and how much have we improved as an individual." And have we done the things that are important to do those things and accomplish those two goals.
Style of play standpoint, everyone says that I've coached at McNeese State University and Northeastern University, and every year, we've led our league in scoring. So everyone we talk to in recruiting says I want to play in that style and want to be in an up-tempo situation. But when guys get there, they say `man, we have to run early in the morning, we have to do all of this conditioning, we have to do all this strength training,' that's part of the game plan. But from a style perspective, we want to be intelligently aggressive, we always want to be on the attack, we want to use our offense to create an up-tempo situation and create advantages and be able to score.
Defensively, we want to be on the attack at all times, play 94 feet. We want our defense to create chaos and create more offense. So obviously, we look to score through every means possible. We want to use a disciplined and aggressive approach, which means we have to be the most physically fit, most well conditioned, most mentally tough, basketball team in this league. That will be of major importance in this basketball program.
We will always be a team that is together, every day when we leave this court, we are going to salute these banners to honor the guys that came to Duquesne before us and made this program great. We are going to try to emulate their efforts every single day to make our program just as great, because that is our goal. We always end our practices with a small prayer to create team togetherness and team unity and bond between our guys that have to compete against each other every day. It will be one that we take very seriously to create the type of bond necessary to achieve a championship.
I again, want to thank Duquesne University for this opportunity. It's one that I take very seriously and we will try everything in our power and do everything in our power on a day-to-day basis to bring a championship to Duquesne University and the Atlantic 10. Any questions:
Questions from media
In response to first question: Staff wise, I would like to bring all of the assistant coaches, or coaches working on our staff here to Duquesne, from Northeastern.
In response to second question: We have to create a mindset, and obviously I've been fortunate enough to be in two other situations fairly similar to this, and I think that the most important thing that we have to do right now is create a mindset, among those guys right there [pointing to returning players in the stands], and the guys who are going to become a part of this team come September when we go through registration and enroll in school. I think that the big part of that is understanding work habits, understanding how hard it is to be good and win, and how important it is to improve every day, and that this is the most important time of the year that we have to improve and get better and create that. This is where it has to happen, between now and the time when we start practice in October.
How do you go about changing the perception, and bring folks into the Duquesne community and support the basketball program and come and watch games?
One thing that I would like to do is, I would like to get out in the community often. I want to be accessible to the media. Personally, I enjoy going to the rotaries and the Lions, talking to guys about our basketball program. I get just as excited as the players do about what we are trying to do every day. Like I said, I love this. I enjoy being on the practice floor, seeing guys get better. I enjoy things like having a kid, Tierre Brown, at McNeese for example, who had no Division I scholarship offers and he is playing five years in the NBA. Those are the types of things I like to talk about. I like to talk about our guys, where they come from and what they do, how hard they work, how they do great in school and how go to class every day and they take education seriously. Those are the things I would do and anyone who asks me, we are going to talk about Duquesne basketball and what we are doing to get better and how we are going about it, what the recruiting process is like, how we evaluate guys, and prepare for games, whatever is of interest to anybody. If we get one more person interested to coming here and watching us play, that is what I propose to do and I would love to do that and I hope to do that as much as possible.
My sense is that Pittsburgh basketball is one the verge of being as good as it's ever been. I feel like the young talent in the area is tremendous. Without mentioning names, because I'm not allowed to, I am very excited. I can't remember in the past fifteen years high profile guys like there are right now coming out of this area. That is very exciting to me.
Is this the biggest challenge you've had in your career, as far as turning around a program?
Obviously, I probably don't know enough about that. You guys labeled this a monumental task in one of the articles I read. Obviously, we are a Division I basketball program and we are going to handle ourselves like a Division I basketball program and do what Division I basketball players do, work as hard as we can to improve. I think with the parity in college basketball right now, we're not that far away. We have to do things the right way, and outwork people, in recruiting. The guys that are here need to take pride in what they are doing, and we need to develop a group of guys that do well together. I think if we can manage those concepts, and manage them well, who knows what will happen.
