Coaching at West Virginia has always been one of Ron Everhart’s dreams. On Monday, that dream came true as he was announced as the newest member of head coach Bob Huggins’ coaching staff.
“After talking to Coach Huggins and just even considering having the opportunity to work for him and being in a Hall of Fame coaching environment like he presents and having the ability to do that at home where I grew up, that was option No. 1-A,” Everhart said. “I’m very proud to be given that opportunity right now.”
He was fired from his last head coaching job after spending six seasons at Duquesne, where finished with a 99-89 record. In his third year with the Dukes, he led the team – which had only won three games the year before he was hired – to 21 wins and an appearance in the NIT. It was Duquesne’s first postseason appearance since it earned a bid to the 1994 NIT.
Everhart has been a head coach since 1994, spending seven seasons at McNeese State and five at Northeastern before ending up at Duquesne.
“We are really excited to bring Ronnie home,” Huggins said in a statement. “I have always admired the way Ronnie has coached his teams from McNeese State to Northeastern to Duquesne, and the quality of players he has always been able to attract. Ron and I go back some 40 years when I was a player here.”
The move to West Virginia gives Everhart, a Fairmont native, a chance to come back home and work with Huggins, an opportunity he said he would’ve had a hard time passing up even if he was still a head coach somewhere.
“It’s something that I’ve wanted to do for a very long time and I’m not too sure that, if I was a head coach somewhere, that I wouldn’t have given up that opportunity to take this one,” Everhart said. “That’s how much it means to me.”
Everhart will replace former assistant Jerrod Calhoun on WVU’s staff after Calhoun left to take the head coaching position at Fairmont State in April.
It will be Everhart’s first assistant job since he was at Tulane from 1988-1994.
And as for his plans to become a head coach again in the future, Everhart said that’s not something he’s looking to do as of now.
“I’m very excited to be right where I am and it’s something I’ve always wanted to do and have looked forward to,” he said. “I’ve been a head coach for 18 years and I had a good run, and right now, I just want to help a guy who has really helped me and a guy who I respect and admire. I don’t really have any plans or desire to really even consider anything like that.”
His relationship with Huggins goes back to when Everhart would hitch hike his way up to Morgantown to work out with Huggins while he was a player at WVU, and he even slept in Huggins’ dorm room once when he got snowed in.
The two almost reunited at one point during their coaching careers when Everhart considered leaving his head coaching position at Northeastern to be an assistant under Huggins.
“The thing that’s always impressed me with Coach Huggs is the fact that he cares about his kids so much,” Everhart said. “Everybody always comes back and there’s just a good family environment that he’s always created and he’s always had around every program that he’s been affiliated with. Not to mention the fact that he’s a Hall of Fame coach and he’s just been tremendously successful wherever he’s been.
“As good a coach as he’s always been, he’s an even better person. The ability to work with him was a dream come true for me."
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