By Zach Berman
The Washington Post
After winning the Big South tournament championship to earn an NCAA tournament bid on Saturday, Brad Greenberg spent the next 48 hours returning messages. The call list mirrored the journey of the Radford coach’s basketball career.
He called former Montana and Michigan State coach Jud Heathcote, who coached against Greenberg during Greenberg’s one year playing for Washington State (Greenberg finished his college playing career at American).
He called Saint Joseph’s Athletic Director Don DiJulia, who was an assistant coach at American while Greenberg was there and worked at Saint Joseph’s when Greenberg was on Jim Lynam’s staff at the Philadelphia school.
He called Temple Coach Fran Dunphy, whom Greenberg befriended during his one season as the general manager of the Philadelphia 76ers in 1996-97. Greenberg earned the job after running the personnel department for the Portland Trail Blazers during the early 1990s.
“Some knew what I was doing, some that didn’t know who turned on the TV in the last week,” Greenberg said of his messages.
They all caught on to the newfound attention surrounding Radford University, a school with an undergraduate enrollment of 8,155 tucked into the New River Valley of Southwest Virginia. The Highlanders’ men’s basketball team has gone from 8-22 in 2006-07 to “SportsCenter” highlights two years later.
“I hope this helps people not see Radford as a complete party school anymore,” said junior forward-center Joey Lynch-Flohr, a Fairfax (Va.) High graduate.
Lynch-Flohr witnessed how success on the basketball court in March can alter the perception of a school. Half a mile down the street from Lynch-Flohr’s home is Patriot Center, which housed the George Mason team that lived every underdog’s dream when it reached the Final Four in 2006.
Radford is a long way from George Mason, but its ascension from the Big South cellar to the NCAA tournament in two years has created a buzz unlike anything Lynch-Flohr witnessed in his three years at school.
Lynch-Flohr said the excitement began to build with the 2007 hiring of Greenberg, whose lofty resume makes him an unlikely fit at a small-conference program.
“No one has had a more interesting journey than my brother getting to the NCAA tournament,” said Virginia Tech Coach Seth Greenberg, Brad’s brother.
For all of Brad Greenberg’s journeys through the basketball landscape, he never had been a head coach before landing at Radford. In 2001, Brad joined Seth as South Florida’s director of basketball operations for Seth’s final two seasons as the Bulls’ head coach. Brad then served as an assistant for Seth at Virginia Tech from 2003 to 2007.
Brad, who is divorced, lived with his two children in Blacksburg, Va., and did not want to uproot his family. But he longed to run his own program, which was the reason he returned to college basketball after 13 years in the NBA. Radford is about 20 minutes from Virginia Tech.
“It was the best possible scenario,” Brad Greenberg said.
After Byron Samuels stepped down as the Highlanders’ coach in 2007, Lynch-Flohr, who had just completed his freshman season, remembered scanning the Internet for updates on coaching rumors. He read that Greenberg was the general manager who drafted Allen Iverson, and wondered how Greenberg would manage the roster already in place.
He seems to have succeeded on that front. Four of Radford’s starters in Saturday’s win over VMI played for Radford before Greenberg arrived. The fifth player ó 6-foot-11 Belarus import Artsiom Parakhouski ó put the Highlanders over the top.
Parakhouski averaged 16.3 points and 11.2 rebounds and was named Big South player of the year in his first season at Radford after spending two seasons at a junior college in Idaho. Greenberg said Parakhouski is on the NBA’s radar. He makes Radford a rare small-conference program with a legitimate interior force.
“I heard he was a good player, but when we get a 6-11 from over in Belarus who’s at a JUCO, you ask, `Why is he coming to Radford?’ ” Lynch-Flohr said. “There’s got to be a catch.”
In his first scrimmage when visiting Radford, Parakhouski dunked over the team’s starting center. Lynch-Flohr, already a distinguished big man who earned first-team all-conference this season, realized this could be the piece that could get his classmates excited about the basketball team.