Even after two consecutive trips to the NCAA Tournament, back-to-back 23-victory campaigns and rising excitement surrounding the basketball program, Portland State athletic director Torre Chisholm still has a couple of questions.
One of those was answered Monday, as Tyler Geving was announced as the Vikings’ new head coach at a press conference in the Stott Center, replacing Ken Bone after he accepted the head coaching position at Washington State one week earlier.
But it was a different question that Chisholm posed at the press conference that should have Portland State fans looking into the future: Is competing for an NCAA Tournament berth every season merely a fluke twice repeated or a new standard for Portland State basketball?
“I knew how important this job was for Portland State athletics,” Chisholm said. “The next coach is going to have the important role of determining whether the last few years of success were an aberration or the norm for what Portland State basketball is all about.”
Geving has coached for 15 years in preparation to be placed in a position to make that significant distinction for Portland State, working as an assistant or associate head coach at five stops prior to arriving in the South Park Blocks in 2005.
At Portland State, Geving worked as an assistant and associate head coach for four years, helping Bone orchestrate the two finest seasons in Vikings basketball history.
While the details are still being worked out, Chisholm said that he and Geving have agreed to a four-year contract that should be comparable to the rest of the coaches in the Big Sky and Bone’s initial deal at Portland State.
Geving inherits a talented team fresh off two consecutive Big Sky Championships and subsequent appearances in the March Madness festivities. Key returnees include four seniors to be, including guard Dominic Waters, forward Kyle Coston and centers Jamie Jones and Julius Thomas.
Speaking passionately about his relationship with Bone, even calling him his mentor at one point, Geving vowed that little would change in terms of philosophy and the pursuit to move the program forward under his leadership.
“There isn’t going to be a big difference,” Geving said. “But also with becoming a head coach I have to be Tyler Geving. I can’t be Ken Bone.”
While Geving mentioned that he would rather not be viewed as a “player’s coach” when assuming the head role at Portland State, he emphasized the importance of his strong rapport with the Vikings players, both current and future.
And those relationships might have factored into Geving receiving the job, as Chisholm met with the Portland State basketball team to pick the players’ brains about what characteristics they prefer in a head coach.
“As a team, we’re really excited,” Thomas said. “We like the style he brings.”
Thomas said that much of the criteria the players presented to Chisholm matched up perfectly with what the athletic director and search committee were seeking in a replacement for Bone.
Among the focal points—including Northwest recruiting ties, an up-tempo approach and a commitment to Portland State—Thomas mentioned that Geving’s reputation as a defensive-minded coach is especially welcomed in the Vikings locker room.
“Coach Geving is a defensive coach, and we’re really going to need that next year,” Thomas said. “I think that was one of our weaker points this last year. Our defense was very inconsistent. His style is to play hard and really push it, and that fits well with our team.”
Still joining Thomas in a Portland State uniform next season will be incoming highly touted recruits forward Max Jacobsen and guard Chris Harriel.
Despite suspicion of the recruits rescinding their commitments following Bone’s departure, as sometimes occurs when a head coach leaves a program, Geving said that he has confirmed with both Jacobsen and Harriel that they still plan to attend Portland State.
As far as Geving fleeing Portland State for a more alluring job after reeling off a couple successful seasons, along the lines of a handful of Vikings coaches of late, Chisholm said he hopes the 35-year-old first-time head coach breaks that trend.
“We started to realize that it was important to us to have a coach that really wanted to be the head coach at Portland State, not just to be a head coach,” Chisholm said. “This is the job he wants … of all the people we looked at, he was certainly someone we felt would give us more time.”