For 10 years, Eric Reveno made the decisions, took ultimate responsibility and was the face of the Portland Pilots basketball team. After he was fired in March, three days after his 50th birthday, he had chances to continue as a head coach, but elected to not pursue them.
He had other plans, namely, serving as an assistant coach, and ultimately at Georgia Tech and with coach Josh Pastner in particular.
“To be honest, I wanted to put myself in a situation to work with good people, be able to work to build a champion and keep learning,” he said. “I felt that was better as an assistant as opposed to getting a really challenging head coaching job and throwing myself back into the fire. Those are the things I was looking for. I felt like this was a great fit.”
Reveno’s boss will need someone to lean on. Pastner will be leading a team that has lost 76 percent of its scoring and 66 percent of its rebounding to graduation. In the ACC, seven teams went to the NCAA tournament last season, six went to the sweet 16 and four are coached by hall of famers. He’ll be learning the ins and outs of a new school and a new region. Having someone who has experience running his own team – and also assisted a coach who was inducted into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame – figures to be invaluable.
“Eric can help me the most because he’s sat in my chair before, and he was very successful in the chair that I sit in,” Pastner said.
Reveno sees some of his potential value to the Yellow Jackets in this way: He can help Pastner make decisions that aren’t clear-cut – whether to recruit a particular prospect, player discipline or in-game choices like substituting.
“Those are constant,” he said. “So just helping with those.”
Stanford man
The man whom Reveno served for seven of his nine years as an assistant at Stanford, his alma mater, likes the move.
“This’ll be good for him to step back, step away and kind of re-pot himself a little bit,” said Mike Montgomery, who took Stanford to its only Final Four with Reveno on his staff.
Revenoplayed three seasons for Montgomery and as a senior in 1989 helped the Cardinal to their first NCAA berth since 1942. Montgomery called him a “coach’s delight” who was intense, physical and “wasn’t going to let us lose.” After graduation, he played four years in Japan and then returned to Stanford to earn his MBA.
Revenowas torn between going into business or following his passion into coaching. Montgomery’s offer in 1997 to join his staff put the matter to bed. In Reveno’s nine seasons as a Stanford assistant, he gained a reputation as a superior big man coach and helped the Cardinal own a .768 winning percentage, win four Pac-10 championships and reach the NCAA tournament eight times. Reveno worked with seven Stanford big men who reached the NBA.
(Reveno’s MBA degree was worth at least this much – he met his future wife, Amanda, while in school. The Revenos have two children, Katie, 14, and Andrew, 10.)
While at Stanford, Montgomery said, also became a resource for the athletic department with his acumen for administration, computers and organization.
“Everybody came to him, really, in the whole department because he was so capable of getting things done,” Montgomery said.
10 years in Portland
Reveno left Stanford in 2006 for his first head-coaching job, at Portland. The Pilots won 60 games in a three-year span in the first half of his 10-year run, including back-to-back 20-win seasons. They were just the second and third 20-win seasons at Portland since 1955-56. However, he was unable to maintain the success – Reveno said he missed on a few recruits, weighing basketball too heavily against overall fit, and it backfired. He was fired with a career record of 140-178.
Reveno was among the first coaches to interview with Pastner. Reveno happened to be in Atlanta when Pastner was introduced to news media April 8, as he was visiting Hawks assistant coach Ben Sullivan, a former player and staff member for Reveno, and other friends with the Hawks, including coach Mike Budenholzer. Pastner and Reveno were friends, but not close.
“I lobbed in a call,” Reveno said. “I said, ‘I’m here; let’s talk.’”
Pastner continued the conversation with Reveno over the next two weeks, calling back with more questions.
“I thought I had the job, and there was, like, four more calls,” Reveno said. “’What do you think about this?’ ‘What do you think about that?’ … I’d hang up the phone and my wife would say, ‘What’d he say?’ ‘Well, he just had more questions.’ And then the next day. Then the next day he’d call.”
In the meantime, Pastner was doing background work. One call was to Montgomery.
“Josh called me and I just said, ‘Josh, it’s a no-brainer,’” Montgomery said. “’Your school has a great academic reputation and wants student-athletes and yet has to compete in one of the toughest leagues in the country.’ So I thought it’d be a perfect situation for him.”
Reveno aspires to return to head coaching. Montgomery and Pastner both think it will happen. But, for now, he’ll be Pastner’s sounding board, the tutor for Tech big men Ben Lammers and Sylvester Ogbonda and a foundational piece of the next chapter of Tech’s basketball history.
“I was excited to become an assistant coach,” Reveno said. “I feel like I was a very good assistant coach (at Stanford). I think now I’m ecstatic to be a great assistant coach, because I think my experience as a head coach gives me a perspective that I can use to be really an asset.”
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