Photos courtesy of Virginia Tech

Ron Everhart spent four seasons as a reserve guard for Virginia Tech.

Photos courtesy of Virginia Tech

Ron Everhart with cousin and Olympic gold medalist Mary Lou Retton.

Associated Press

Duquesne head coach Ron Everhart, who played at Virginia Tech, brings his Dukes into Blacksburg for Wednesday's NIT game against the Hokies.

When Ron Everhart returned to Cassell Coliseum to coach a game in 2001, he got chills as he went through the tunnel, just like he used to when he played for Virginia Tech.

Those chills will no doubt be back tonight when Everhart steers Duquesne against the host Hokies in the first round of the NIT.

"Having a chance to play in the postseason is exciting enough, but having an opportunity to go back to where you played in college, I guess for me, it's probably about as good as it gets," said Everhart, in his third season as Duquesne's coach.

He last coached against Tech in November 2001, when he was in his first season at Northeastern. He found it tough to do, because he and his family are such Hokie fans.

He will have that challenge again tonight.

"You always want to win, but when you look around and you see the Cassell and it was a big part of your life, ... that always makes it a little more difficult," Everhart, 47, said. "You also know how special it would be to win there."

Everhart, who keeps his framed Tech jersey on his office wall, was a reserve off-guard for Charlie Moir's Hokies from 1980-85.

He had a back injury his first year and wound up getting a medical redshirt. The following four seasons, he was part of three NIT teams and an NCAA tournament team.

"I wouldn't trade it for the world," Everhart said of his time at Tech. "It was like a big family there. ... A lot of our success came from the fact that we were really together."

One of Everhart's actual family members is 1984 Olympic gold medalist Mary Lou Retton. Everhart never set up any of his teammates with his gymnast cousin, though.

"We tried, but he wouldn't hear of it," said former teammate Page Moir, now Roanoke College's coach. "She never made it down to Blacksburg."

Everhart was voted the team's most inspirational player his final three seasons. He spent his redshirt freshman season behind future NBA draft pick Jeff Schneider and his final three seasons backing up Tech great Dell Curry.

Everhart is quoted in the media guide for the 1984-85 season as saying, "I ... want to push Dell really hard and make him as good a player as he possibly can be."

Mission accomplished?

"I don't know if it had anything to do with me pushing him, but he was an awful good player," Everhart said with a laugh. "It was fun playing with him."

The Hokies reached the NIT semifinals at Madison Square Garden in 1984, losing to Michigan.

Tech made the NCAA tournament in 1985, when the squad included juniors Dell Curry, Keith Colbert and Bobby Beecher and seniors Perry Young and Al Young. Everhart got his only career start in that NCAA loss to Temple, because Charlie Moir didn't start two players for disciplinary reasons.

"Ron was a very good player. Unfortunately, he played behind Curry and Jeff Schneider," Charlie Moir said. "He was a very knowledgeable basketball player. ... He could see things and point things out."

Everhart recalled a 1984 Metro Conference tournament game over Louisville in which he suggested to assistant Frankie Allen that the Hokies start pressing the Cardinals.

Allen informed him that Charlie Moir had just called for that.

Tech started pressing, and rallied for a win. Teammate Phil Williams, who had overheard Everhart's suggestion, predicted after the game that Everhart would become a coach.

Everhart often talked about becoming a coach, said Page Moir.

"Ronnie prepared himself to go into coaching as well as anybody could," Page Moir said. "You could see he was going to be a great coach because he was such a great competitor."

Everhart got his first head-coaching job at McNeese State in 1994. After coaching McNeese into the 2001 NIT, he was hired at Northeastern.

Two years later, Tech fired Ricky Stokes. Dave O'Brien, then Northeastern's athletic director, didn't give Tech counterpart Jim Weaver permission to speak to Everhart so he could work out an extension with him.

"The timing was just tough at that point," Everhart said. "You always would love to have the opportunity to coach where you played."

Seth Greenberg wound up getting the Tech job. Everhart has known Greenberg since they both worked at the Five-Star Camp, back when Everhart was a Hokie and Greenberg was a college assistant.

"Virginia Tech made a great decision," Everhart said.

In 2006, Everhart took over a Duquesne program that was coming off a 3-24 season. His first year at the Pittsburgh school took a horrific turn when five of his players were shot outside a campus dance in September 2006.

Seven months later, 32 people were killed in the shootings at Tech.

"My heart was just broken when I saw all that. That was tough, coming on the heels of having endured it on our campus," Everhart said.

This week, Duquesne reaped its first postseason berth in 15 years. The lone shooting victim still on the team is All-Atlantic 10 pick Aaron Jackson.

"When you have to endure that type of adversity [from the shootings] and all the other challenges that go along with ... not having positive success in the program, it is rewarding," Everhart said of the NIT bid.

And when he learned Duquesne's first-round foe would be Tech, Everhart thought, "That's as exciting as hell."