One can hardly imagine the potential awkwardness that may have ensued when athletic director Torre Chisholm phoned former head coach Ken Bone for a reference about one of the applicants to the head coaching vacancy.
The candidate, Tyler Geving, had just been offered an assistant coaching position working under Bone at Washington State, but Chisholm was interested in seeing what Bone had to say about one of his former pupils in terms of his potential to be a head coach.
“As it turns out, [Bone] was also developing a natural successor and a great coach in coach Geving,” Chisholm said as he introduced the newest head coach to the media and supporters at a press conference Monday.
When Geving took the stage following Chisholm’s words, he bore a noticeable resemblance to the departed Bone.
Both men are approachable, humble and share many of the same career aspirations—to be a Division I basketball coach—and philosophies of the game.
Charismatic, polished and flamboyant he may not be. But neither was Bone.
When Geving got choked up recollecting his first coaching position—a student assistant position at Central Washington in 1994—the ghost of Bone’s emotional personality echoed through those in attendance.
The hiring, which seemed like a lock the moment that the Bone family bolted for Pullman, Wash., was the right thing to do for Chisholm, but not because it was the easy decision or because Geving may have come at a more inexpensive price than other candidates.
It was right because Chisholm knows how essential it is that Portland State maintains the momentum created by the winning ways of the basketball teams.
And Geving was the right man for that position.
Bone, who would be wise to decline a matchup with his former team next season, was extremely excited for Geving when the two spoke after all the shuffling had been completed.
“He told me that I deserved it, that he was happy for me and that I was going to do great,” Geving said of his weekend conversation with his former boss.
While it’s certainly easy to criticize the hasty hiring, lack of national search or absence of the big-name caché that was so thick when Jerry Glanville arrived on campus, the fact remains that Geving was the right man for this job.
Current and former players acknowledged it. Athletic department staff and Portland State faculty nodded their heads in approval. But the greatest validation came from the former coach who knows all too well the challenges of coaching in the Rose City.
Despite the fact that he is just another in a long line of assistants turned head coaches at Portland State—Laura Schott, Tobin Echo-Hawk, Ronnie Harrison to name a few—Geving will continue to recruit high-caliber athletes to the South Park Blocks. And despite the obvious limitations that the job has, Geving should bring continued success and championships back to the Stott Center.
Even Bone knows it.