Big Sky Conference

ELDER STATESMAN: Everett’s atypical journey culminates in influential senior year

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Harald Frey is from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Montana State’s true freshman point guard from Oslo, Norway is nearly nine years younger than the man who fills the lane next to him in transition, the man with two children of his own who is the leader of this season’s Bobcats.

Quinton Everett, who will be 28 years old in July, is far from home as well. While traveling 2,500 miles from Lakeland, Florida to Bozeman, Montana to play with teammates who were still in elementary school when Everett was old enough to vote is an adventure in itself, it’s nothing new for Montana State’s elder statesman.

Acclimating to foreign environments with teammates from around the globe has become the norm for Everett since the day he decided to redirect his life some four years ago. From central Florida to the heart of the Crow Indian Reservation to the energy capital of the nation in north-central Wyoming now to the Gallatin Valley, Everett has walked an atypical path to reach the final weeks of his college basketball career.

MSU forward Quinton Everett (24) & guard Harald Frey (5)

MSU forward Quinton Everett (24) & guard Harald Frey (5)

“You don’t think about him being that much older but at the same time, he’s doing a great job taking care of us young guys,” said Frey, a 19-year-old southpaw second on the Bobcats in scoring and minutes played. “You can easily see he is all about the team. He doesn’t care that you are nine years younger than him. If you are a teammate, you are a teammate and he holds you to that standard.”

The 6-foot-3 senior’s flexibility, both personally in accepting the role bestowed upon him by third-year head coach Brian Fish and in his versatility in the Bobcats’ rotation, has been a key factor for one of the Big Sky Conference’s hottest teams. Following Thursday night’s 78-69 victory over Idaho State in Pocatello, Montana State has won 10 of its last 12 to climb into a third-place tie in the league standings with one game to play.

Everett started the first 12 games of his senior season, scoring a career-high 21 points in an eight-point loss at Pac 12 Utah and reaching double figures five other times. But he tweaked his knee against South Dakota — at the time, Everett thought he tore his ACL and expected his career to be finished — missing MSU’s 106-103 loss to Central Michigan to cap its non-conference at 5-8.

Everett returned for MSU’s Big Sky opening weekend. The slashing, sometimes sporadic senior scored 14 points against Weber State and 17 points against Idaho State, both games coming off the bench. Fish knew he had found something. He could start sophomore defensive specialist Devonte Klines alongside Frey and super sophomore Tyler Hall, while bringing Everett off the bench. The adaptable senior could come into the game for Klines, Hall, junior Zach Green or sophomore post Sam Neumann, giving Montana State the ability to play the small lineups that have given the rest of the league fits over the last six weeks.

Quinton Everett block out“He brings a lot of versatility and he plays really, really hard,” said Eastern Washington head coach Jim Hayford, who’s Eagles let Everett drill three 3-pointers and score 15 points in a 91-90 Bobcat victory in Bozeman in overtime on January 28. “I know he’s a little older, more mature. He rebounds well from the guard position. He seems to really embrace wanting to defend people.

“I think that’s what every coach is looking for: consistent play from your starters and if you can get it from your sixth man, I think that’s made the difference in the rise of the Bobcats. They are playing as well as anyone right now.”

Everett has hit 35 3-pointers and is shooting 36.5 percent from beyond the arc for a Bobcat squad that’s not afraid to launch from deep. He is averaging 9.7 points and four rebounds per game, but it’s his game-changing defense and his ability to spark his teammates that have been crucial during MSU’s recent spurt.

“At some point, I think he needs to start getting recognition as the sixth man of the year in this league because he’s adapted and accepted a role that’s not easy to do,” Fish said. “He’s coming off the bench and having a huge effect in the game.”

The veteran looks the part of the tone-setter he tries to embody. His chiseled jaw and ominous sneer are highlighted by a collection of gold teeth. He wears a headband, claps his hands in the face of opponents and talks as much trash as any player in the Big Sky.

Quinton Everett 3 point shot gold“He does a little of everything,” said Hall, the Big Sky’s leading scorer at 23.2 points per game. “He can score, he plays defense and he’s a leader. He’s the old guy on the team and he has a lot of knowledge. Listening to him and looking up to him is easy because he has been around the game longer than a lot of us. He helps us with maturity and helps us understand that every game counts.”

Everett has scored in double figures 8 times in 16 Big Sky games this season, hitting multiple 3-pointers in each. But sometimes Everett draws Fish’s ire during the heat of battle because of his unpredictable swings.

Early on in MSU’s win over Montana last weekend, Everett had a quintessential series. He shot and missed an ill advised 3-pointer early in the shot clock, becoming visibly frustrated. He proceeded to strip Montana point guard Ahmaad Rorie, barrel to the rim and convert a 3-point play.

“I think sometimes when you play really hard, you put yourself in a position to fail. But I hate guys who take check swings. I haven’t seen a lot of check swing home runs,” Fish said. “Quinton takes a full swing every single time. Sometimes, there’s a play that doesn’t go our way. But when he plays like he plays as hard as he can, I love it.”

Everett grew up in Polk County east of Tampa Bay and west of Orlando in a city both diverse and poverty stricken. According to the 2010 census, almost 40 percent is of minority heritage and nearly half of Lakeland’s families live below the poverty line. An astounding 97 percent of Lakeland’s residents under 18 live in poverty.

Quinton Everett rises up for 2The future Bobcat, born July 7, 1989, grew up in the middle of a family with four brothers and five sisters. Everett’s real father, Jimmy Campbell, was not around for most of his childhood. His stepfather, Dale Robinson, married his mother Jackie and held a more prominent role.

“I learned at a young age there are two crowds and I wanted to stay out of the bad crowd,” Everett said. “My brothers tried to be the same way. We saw too many guys go down the wrong road or get caught up in the wrong crowd. Trying to do positive things like sports kept us out of the street.”

At Lakeland High School, Everett developed into a standout. When Everett was earning Polk County Player of the Year honors as a senior in 2009, guys like Hall and Frey 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. Everett questioned his basketball future.

After his time off, Everett coached 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 their first daughter, Trinity. 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.

Quinton Everett“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 last season. “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 Little Bighorn Community College in Crow Agency, Montana, the headquarters for the Crow tribe in southeastern Montana. When he first arrived in Crow Agency and in Hardin — where he lived with six teammates a 10-minute drive away— Everett wondered “What did I get myself into?”

Pete Conway, a former standout point guard at Montana State, is the head coach at LBCC. He and Everett’s new teammates, several of whom hailed from overseas, helped Everett adjust to life on the reservation.

“It was a huge culture shock. I’m Native American but still, to go to the Rez and live there, especially being from Florida, I can only imagine that culture shock,” said MSU junior walk-on Dallas Lussier, a Livingston native who spent two years at Little Big Horn, including one with Everett. “On top of that, he was dealing with snow for the first time.

“The thing about living on that reservation is it keeps you out of trouble because there’s nothing to do. Billings is like 40 miles away but you are also a broke college student so it’s not like you can make that drive every day. A lot of times, me and Q would sit at the gym for eight or nine hours a day just playing.”

Quinton Everett dribbles to the edgeOn the court, that work showed up as Everett averaged 18.8 points and 5.7 rebounds per game. Off the court, he tried to shut out the homesick feelings. As the year went on, Everett blended into the community and the locals began to look out for him. If he needed a ride to go to the grocery store, he had a few folks who would pick him up.

“When I first got there, I didn’t know what to think but I noticed right away that if you just keep to yourself, no one is trying to get you,” Everett said. “Where I come from, people are trying to take something from you. In (Crow Agency), people are taking things from themselves. But no one is trying to take something from you.”

Everett’s standout first season led him to Gillette College in the heart of oil, gas and coal country in central Wyoming. There, he played for a nationally-ranked Pronghorns team alongside former Bobcat Sarp Gobeloglu, the next in Everett’s list of teammates from overseas. Gobeloglu, who served as one of Everett’s closest friends on the team before quitting the Bobcats midway through the season, is from Turkey.

In his second junior college season, Everett averaged 14.2 points, 3.9 rebounds and 2.4 assists. After the year, Conway helped Everett get recruited by his alma mater. Everett still calls Conway “one of the biggest influences” in his life.

Quinton Everett dunk“His competitiveness is the same, he’s super chippy, he will go out and play really hard defense, dive on lose balls, bring energy to the team and that’s the same but in junior college, he had a lot more freedom,” Lussier said. “And the biggest difference is he’s becoming an old man (laughs) so he has to change up his game. He used to try to dunk on everyone at Little Bighorn. Now he’s more of a finesse veteran.”

Last March, Keona gave birth to the couple’s second daughter, Jenasis. Everett has always turned to his faith and read the Bible during times of uncertainty, something continues to this day. His religious beliefs are reflected in his daughter’s names and also helped him get through the loss of his birth father during his second year of junior college.

“I loved my pops,” Everett said. “Even if we had our differences, it still made me feel some sort of way when he died just like it would make anyone feel some sort of way when they lose a parent. When he died, I realized we didn’t have that good of a relationship and I didn’t want that with my girls.”

Everett will graduate in the summer with a degree in sociology. If a basketball career overseas doesn’t materialize — he says he would bring his family along if it did — he wants to get into social work and continue coaching.

Quinten Everett layupLast weekend, Everett’s mother, one of his brothers, Keona and his daughters watched as more than 6,500 people stood in applause to honor the man the ‘Cats call “Q”. Everett helped lead the Bobcats to their first win over the rival Grizzlies since 2010 in front of the first sellout at Brick Breeden Fieldhouse since 2003. Following the game, Everett gave a heartfelt speech as MSU’s lone senior, thanking each and every one of his teammates and coaches, including Conway who was in attendance as those closest to him stood by his side and beamed with pride.

Now Montana State’s attention turns to the postseason. The Bobcats can clinch the Big Sky’s No. 3 seed with a win in their regular-season finale at Weber State on Saturday night. Either way, the focus is on winning three and maybe four games in the Big Sky Tournament in Reno next week, something the Bobcats’ leader thinks is a distinct possibility.

“I know we can make a run,” Everett said. “We have the talent. We have the resiliency. We have all the parts, we just have to put them together.”

Photos by Brooks Nuanez. All Rights Reserved.

About Colter Nuanez

Colter Nuanez is the co-founder and senior writer for Skyline Sports. After spending six years in the newspaper industry with stops at the Missoulian, the Ellensburg Daily Record and the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, the former Washington Newspaper Association Sportswriter of the Year and University of Montana Journalism School graduate ('09) has cultivated a deep passion for sports journalism during his 13-year career covering the Big Sky Conference. In August of 2014, Colter and brother Brooks merged their passions of writing and art to found Skyline Sports.

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