Northeastern’s Challenging Task
Dave O’Brien has a challenge in front of him. The Northeastern athletic director now has to find a head coach after Ron Everhart left to take the head coaching job at Duquesne.
Everhart has become known as someone who can bring programs back to life, having done that at McNeese State and now on Huntington Ave. Northeastern had fallen on hard times in the 1990s, and Everhart brought the program to levels of success it hasn’t had since the glory days of the 1980s, which include three straight winning seasons and an NIT bid in 2005. They just missed another one this year, as they went 12-6 in the Colonial Athletic Association and 19-11 overall, and had the second-best RPI of the teams left out of the NIT.
That’s exactly what Duquesne needs, as the program hasn’t had a winning season since 1994 – their only one in 20 years – and has consistently been buried in the Atlantic 10. This season, they went 3-23 and missed the Atlantic 10 Tournament, which took only the top 12 of 14 teams.
There is no natural leader to replace Everhart at Northeastern. Candidates will likely include many top assistants in the area, with possibilities including Bill Coen (Boston College) Steve DeMeo (Providence) and Tom Moore (Connecticut). A head coach whose name could come up is Brown’s Glen Miller, who played at the school and is a finalist for the Hartford job.
Part of the challenge is that the job should be highly coveted but isn’t a slam dunk. It should be highly coveted because it’s in Boston and the Huskies are in the CAA, which has had a tremendous postseason. But on the other hand, fan support is lacking and the pay could be an issue unless the school antes up. The Huskies consistently had small crowds this past season at Matthews Arena, largely because Boston is a pro sports town.
Duquesne is said to be offering Everhart in the vicinity of $350,000, double that of his Northeastern salary, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Hofstra really moved the bar up on Tuesday, when Tom Pecora signed a five-year extension with the school with a salary believed to be in the vicinity of $500,000 annually. The New York area is comparable to Boston in terms of cost of living.
O’Brien will need to find someone who can recruit well outside the area and can find players who fall under the radar. The Boston area doesn’t have a great deal of Division I basketball talent, and while the recent success of the Colonial (including Northeastern’s 12-6 CAA record this year) will help with recruiting, it brings about challenges since the bar has been raised for everyone in the conference. This also comes at a time when most of the conference’s top coaches are staying put instead of moving on to other jobs. Drexel’s Bruiser Flint is reportedly a candidate for the Temple job.
Everhart’s successor will inherit a team that loses star guard Jose Juan Barea, fellow starter Aaron Davis and reserves Janon Cole and Jeff Farmer, but the cupboard won’t be bare entirely as they will have the nation’s leading shot-blocker in Shawn James and junior starters Bennet Davis and Bobby Kelly returning.
Other Coaching Notes
- Raise your hand if you thought Indiana’s hire of Kelvin Sampson came out of nowhere. That’s right, my hand is up in the air. It’s a gutsy call by athletic director Rick Greenspan, not only going outside the Indiana tree but also bringing in a coach who may bring NCAA sanctions with him in the immediate. Sampson has a fine track record, but that may not matter to some in the fan base for both reasons.
- Frank Martin will be one of Bob Huggins’ assistants at Kansas State, according to multiple sources. Martin was an assistant at Cincinnati the past two years, the first under Huggins, and is one of the top recruiters in the country. Huggins should quickly raise the talent level at the school immensely, as he reportedly has a great rapport with top high school juniors O.J. Mayo, Bill Walker and Keenan Ellis (teammates at Cincinnati (OH) North College Hill HS), and a source said that senior center Jason Bennett from Arlington Country Day in Florida has committed to Huggins as well. Scout.com reported that Bennett is supposed to visit the school, and it might be a formality from there.
- Isn’t it interesting how the lure of a job can change someone? When Jeff Ruland was introduced as Iona’s head coach in June of 1998, he immediately proclaimed, “I have no aspirations to coach anywhere else. I’m committed to Iona College.” Now, Ruland is reported to be “very interested” in the Seton Hall job, although a source indicated that the leader appears to be Manhattan’s Bobby Gonzalez.
