The Pomp And Joe Show
Longtime college basketball coach Ron Everhart joins to begin tourney day!
19 Mar 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What makes NCAA tournament day special for basketball fans?
All right, we have a treat here. Mr. Ron Everhart has entered the building. It's Pomp and Joe. We're live at Rivers Casino getting ready for – is it arguable, Bob, or not? What? This is the best day in sports, is it not? I think it's arguable. I know this place is sold out. Who has the argument? What's the argument? The Super Bowl Sunday? No. This is way better.
For a day or two, yeah, because you have all these games crashed into one. I'm a big hockey fan, the first day of playoffs. They have games all day into the late night. I like that. I think that's interesting to me. You're the first person I've ever heard who has compared the first day of the hockey playoffs to the first day of this.
I like this month because you have a lot of stuff that's cranking up. Baseball season's about to start. This is going on. Hockey's winding down. You also have some majors in golf coming up. I think it's a great time of the year. Ron, good to see you. It's great to see you guys. Ron, now I'm depressed. I'm not depressed. I said I like it. It's the first day of the NCAA tournament, Ron.
Listen, I'm going to tell you guys, this is the best day of the year for me. It might be the best day of my life. I'm sitting with two sports legends on NCAA Thursday at Rivers Casino. How does it get any better than that? It doesn't. I ran into him in the bathroom. I had no idea he was in there. I was walking out, and this guy's working on his golf swing.
I was in the mirror working on my golf swing. I said, oh, Ron, how are you? I'm often doing that, too. How are you, Ron? I'm doing good, guys. Really appreciate you guys having me. What an honor and a pleasure for me. It's really, really cool. The pleasure is all ours. We're going to break down games. We're going to talk about your own memories. My God, I'm trying to get over.
He was in this situation. You just told us a story that I'm going to be thinking about now for the rest of my life. You were on the verge of getting into the NCAA tournament. What year was it for you as a coach?
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Chapter 2: How did Miami (Ohio) prove themselves in the tournament?
I think it was either 95 or 96. I can't remember specifically the year. But I remember it was against Stephen F. Austin. And it was the worst ending that a coach could ever... think about having. And listen, I just saw your coaching ending on a... Yeah, we had a tough one. That was a tough one. And maybe as tough as I've ever seen, but I did experience one that I thought was as tough. Yeah.
And we were playing Stephen F. Austin. It's a hard-fought game. It's back and forth. We get an offensive rebound and score, and we're up by one. They call a timeout. There's one second left on the clock. Now, this was back before the tenths of seconds were on the clock. So it was 1.0 seconds. One second. And...
In my infinite wisdom, I decide to go put a guy on the ball to pressure the basketball because about a year ago was when Duke made the full court pass to Leitner. He caught, turned, and beat Kentucky. So I'm thinking, you know, God, we can't let that happen. Let's make sure we have pressure on the ball.
So the kid that I put on the ball gets a little bit overanxious because I brought him off the bench to do it. He was one of our longer, better athletes. He's jumping up and down and kind of trips and stumbles over himself and falls into the guy taking the ball out of bounds. Automatic technical foul. They walk down, make two free throws.
Now they're up one with one second without ever inbounding the ball. And there was no one putting pressure on your inbounder at that point after seeing that like that.
oh my god yeah it taught me a wow I didn't even know that was a technical foul yeah yeah it is I wish I wish it was like hockey where you could just board check the guy yeah I can't unsee that I can't unthink that now you were right though last night Ron you're off to a hot start there you go in the tournament one of the teams that you really liked and I know Austin Beck told our guy back in the home office likes him too
is Miami, and, man, were they impressive, huh? Were they impressive, huh? Great to see that because they took a lot of criticism. But, I mean, they did everything they could to try to get in a better conference, non-conference schedule, and nobody wanted to play them. You know, Bob, honestly, God, that's exactly right.
And what happens is when you're a good mid-major team, and I'm sort of a – I've been a mid-major head coach for 19 years, and I've been at McNeese State, I've been at Northeastern University in Boston, and I've been at Duquesne. And every year, or at every school that I've been, it's kind of been a rebuilding project.
But when that project became to where you were good and you were winning, no one wants to play you, especially at home. In fact, I thought one of our biggest disadvantages when I was at Duquesne was that our administration made us play Xavier and Dayton at the arena.
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Chapter 3: What challenges do mid-major teams face in scheduling?
I think if the NCAA could find a way to control the transfer portal, that would eliminate a lot of the evils that the NIL issues – are causing college basketball right now, and college football for that matter.
So do you need, in the meantime, can you, I know there's some examples out there, but if you're Pitt, for example, and you're going against these behemoths in your conference as far as revenue goes, how do you overcome that? Well, I think you get creative, and I think Mark Byington has done that at Vanderbilt. Yeah. I think to some degree the new coach at Florida State has been able to do that.
And I think what happens is like you turn it on, you watch the game, you say, wow, that kid's a freshman? Wow, he's made an impact. And I think what's happening is the attitude that we can't recruit freshmen anymore and we have to stay in the portal and we have to get old and stay old, I think that myth's going away.
And I think a kid like Darius Acuff at Arkansas, for example, has changed some mindsets in that area. So I think what happens is... Needless to say, you don't have to give the same high dollar NIL to a young freshman coming out of high school or prep school or whatever. And of course, if that same young man with the same numbers is coming out of wherever they come out of, uh,
Like Deshaun Good, player of the year at Horizon that came out of Robert Morris this year. That kid's NIL is going to be off the charts. That's what happened over last year. Right. The whole team left. Yeah, the kid went to Iowa and became a millionaire instantly. You know, I mean, that's the reality of college athletics right now.
But I think if you get a little bit creative and you take some guys that, you know, if you have a great evaluator and a great system in the portal, that always helps. If you have the ability to... continue to go out and recruit the high school players and stay involved with the high school players.
I was fortunate enough this year to do seven games with Darren Zaslow with Fox 53 for the Whippeal Game of the Week. And it was just phenomenal. And it was great for me. But what it did for me was it made me realize right away how many really good basketball players play in the Whippeal that are completely unrecruited. I was shocked Jake Foster at Upper St. Clair, Enzo Khalil, Central.
Khalil, he can play. Both Turkla and Fry at TJ. Every one of Ralph Blundo's kids at Newcastle can play. Oh, my gosh. What a team. I mean, I was just so impressed by the coaching and the players. And I guess maybe being in college for so long, I never realized – how many really good high school basketball players are in this area. And it really isn't that much different than football.
I mean, you've got really athletic kids that know how to play. But it's amazing to me nobody comes in here and recruits these kids. And you think that's because everybody's so focused on transfer portal and veteran guys. Yeah, I think the narrative in college basketball has become let's get old and stay old. Let's not go away from the portal.
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