Quinton Everett will be the first to tell you he loves kids.
The Montana State junior loves coaching kids. He loves his two-year-old daughter, Trinity and cannot wait to welcome his second child into the world sometime in the next few weeks.
With the atypical path Everett has walked, with a start in Lakeland, Florida and stops in Crow Agency, Montana, Gillette, Wyoming and now Bozeman, Everett has found a new group of kids to bestow wisdom upon: his Bobcat teammates.
[restrict paid=”true”]The last few weeks, Everett had rounded into shape and provided a crucial third option for a Montana State squad fighting to ascend the Big Sky Conference standings. Everett has become an X-factor, a rebounding guard with the ability to play lockdown defense for the Bobcats, all the while trying to be an example for a collection of players who are nearly a decade younger than he is.
Everett will turn 27 years old on July 7. MSU freshman phenom Tyler Hall is still shy of his 19th birthday and fellow slashing wing Zach Green just turned 20 in September. Everett is even five years older than senior captains Marcus Colbert and Danny Robison.
“It’s nice playing with kids like this, young, and they are pretty much going through all the things I went through once,” Everett said. “The things they do, the things I can teach them, I can talk them through it to help them not go through what I’ve gone through, make the mistakes I made.”
Everett, a 6-foot-3, 195-pounder with quickness and strength, suffered a broken bone in his shooting (right) hand before his first Division I season. Despite having surgery, he returned for MSU’s opening tournament in Hawaii. Right before conference play began, Everett suffered a head injury and did not make MSU’s league-opening road trip.
MSU head coach Brian Fish said Everett has been at full strength for the last three weeks, a stretch that has seen three Bobcat wins in five games. Everett is averaging 9.8 points and 7.5 rebounds over MSU’s last five, providing a key third scoring option behind Hall and Colbert and helping bolster Montana State’s interior for a team that plays almost exclusively four-guard lineups.
“He’s settled in and found his niche at the Division I level,” Fish said. “Unfortunately, every time we got him going a little bit, he dealt with a little injury or something that held him up. Between a broken hand or a concussion, this is the longest stretch he’s gone where he’s been on the floor and I think he’s found his niche.”
Everett’s career-high 15 rebounds in a career-high 32 minutes proved to be crucial as MSU bounced back from a loss at Portland State for a 79-76 win at Sacramento State last Saturday. Since last week, Everett has been engaged in a rebounding battle with Green as the duo tries to bolster MSU’s front line. Everett currently owns a 20-8 advantage.
Whether it’s rebounding or locking down perimeter players while flashing his sometimes intimidating snarl, Everett shows his age on the court. And that’s a good thing, according to his teammates.
“On the court, (his age) definitely shows,” said MSU freshman Sam Neumann. “He goes out there knowing he is going to be the oldest guy on the court with something to prove. If everybody took the approach he does, we would be a lot better as a team.”
When Everett was earning Polk County Player of the Year honors as a high school senior at Lakeland (Florida) High School in 2009, guys like Hall and Neumann were still in middle school. Everett averaged 16.1 points and 4.3 rebounds his final prep season but his struggles with math kept him from earning a shot to play collegiately.
Everett spent 2010 earning the credit he needed to become a qualifier. He was all set to take his skills to Howard College in Big Spring, Texas. But his initial physical revealed a heart murmur. Doctors said he would need to take between six months and a year off and would have to be careful playing basketball at a high level ever again.
“I’ve never really felt the heart murmur but it was disappointing because once I got that credit and to get the chance to go to school and play ball and to hear that I had to sit out, it was like, ‘Damn’,” Everett said. “But it was a minor setback. I was able to focus on a lot more things and look at life. I don’t take things for granted now.”
After his time off, Everett found himself working and coaching at a local Lakeland recreational center. He was the coach of a team of 11 and 12-year-olds for two years.
In 2013, Everett’s longtime girlfriend, Keona Wallace, gave birth to Trinity. The birth of his daughter coupled with the encouragement of his young players and their parents sparked a thought in Everett to try to return to competitive basketball.
“The kids I was coaching and the parents, they were saying I needed to get back in school because I had talent and I needed to utilize it,” Everett said. “The kids I was coaching and the parents and my daughter made my decision for me to go back to school.”
Everett’s journey led him to the heart of the Crow Indian Reservation. Everett made his way from near the Florida gulf coast to Crow Agency, the headquarters for the Crow tribe and the home of Little Bighorn Community College.
At LBCC, Everett played for former Montana State standout point guard Pete Conway. On the court, he averaged 18.8 points and 5.7 rebounds per game. Off the court, he tried to manage the culture shock and shut out the homesick feelings of being 2,220 miles from his home just outside of Tampa Bay.
“When I first got there, I was like, ‘What did I get myself into?’” Everett said. “But as the year went on, the people there are really, really nice and they looked out for me. If I needed a ride to go get food, they would come and pick me up. Even people that didn’t know me, they would pick me up and take me places. That was the first time I was away from home so I was home sick at times. But Coach Pete Conway helped me through it all.”
Conway also helped Everett to earn a spot on the Gillette Pronghorns, a junior college powerhouse in rural Wyoming. Everett notched six 20-point games and averaged 14.2 points per outing for one of the top JCs in the country last season. Because of Conway’s connection to Montana State, Everett’s experience at Gillette led him to Montana State. Through his struggles, injuries and lonely moments, Wallace has been just a phone call away to support Everett.
“I’m used to not being at home,” Everett said. “The only hard thing is being away from my daughter. I’ve been going through that for a while so I’m pretty used to that now. This whole thing has been pretty tough but (Wallace) has been very supportive. She supports everything I do so that makes it a lot easier to me, knowing she supports me, even if she’s all the way back to Florida and I’m all the way here.
“I’ve had moments of doubt a lot. I’ve had talks with (Wallace) and she really supports me. When I feel down on myself about having a bad game, she will pretty much pick me up and tell me to keep my head and get through it.”
Wallace and Everett are expecting their second child as early as next week. Everett said he might try to fly home to Florida for a few days following MSU’s game against rival Montana in Missoula on February 20.
In the meantime, Everett will continue to adjust to Bozeman, a place he says he thoroughly enjoys aside from the cold weather. Now that he is getting into “game shape”, Everett said he feels the game slowing down as his contributions grow. Off the court, he is pursuing a degree in sociology.
Everett hopes to keep playing basketball as long as he can, but is realistic to what his hoops future might hold. One thing is for sure: regardless of what happens after his final season at MSU next year, he will stay involved with the game as long as he can.
“I just love kids so that’s what I want to do: help kids,” Everett said.
The kids continue to be his inspiration, whether it’s a picture of Everett’s daughter sent by Wallace or the thought of his Florida youth with burgeoning talent now competing at the high school level or Hall taking an opponent off the dribble and drilling a jump shot in the lane. Without the kids and without the journey, Everett would not have this opportunity, one he refuses to take for granted.
“This chance means a lot to me because I know the things I’ve been through and had to do to get here,” Everett said. “I cherish it a lot more than some guys might cherish it. I know I can have it taken away from me. Basketball is not always promised, going back to school is not always promised. There is a lot of guys who are going through things who wish they were where I am so I try to cherish every moment I have.”
[/restrict]Photos by Brooks Nuanez. All Rights Reserved.
