Ex-Louisville basketball standout Everick Sullivan leaves college coaching for Eastside

TAYLORS — Everick Sullivan has found a home. He just doesn’t have a place to live.

Sullivan was introduced Monday as the new high school boys basketball coach at Eastside. He is a former Hillcrest and Louisville standout player who spent the past eight years as the coach at Lenoir-Rhyne University.

“If anybody has a few rooms,” Sullivan said to supporters gathered at Eastside’s media center, "that would be great."

Sullivan resigned from Lenoir-Rhyne, effective March 31, and put his house in Hickory, North Carolina, up for sale before knowing what the next destination was for his family — fiancée Michelle and eighth-grade daughter Ellery.

“You think selling your house is going to take a while,” he said. “It should. It didn't. Another family was moving, they needed a place and — boom — we were out.”

Sullivan, who is from Simpsonville, is taking over for Tom Chamness, who spent 22 years as Eastside’s coach and retired following an 18-6 season in Class AAAA and 319 total victories. From 2011 to 2015, the Eagles were 65-12 overall, 35-5 in region games and made the state championship for the first time in nearly 30 years.

“The expectation here is to win,” Sullivan said. “And to win at a high level.”

He was a three-year starter for Louisville (1988-92) under legendary coach Denny Crum, scoring 1,583 career points. He is among the program’s all-time leaders in scoring (15th), assists (ninth), 3-point percentage (10th) and dunks (10th).

Sullivan’s first coaching stops were at Wabash Valley (Illinois), Vincennes (Indiana), Eastern Kentucky and Georgia State. 

At Lenoir-Rhyne, he went 101-112 overall, 73-87 in the South Atlantic Conference. The Bears made the NCAA Division II tournament in 2019 and were ranked as high as No. 17 in the country that season. In 2022-23, they beat Louisville, Sullivan's alma mater, in a game that is considered one of the biggest upsets in Division II history. Last season, the Bears went 15-14 and 10-10, winning four of the last five games in the regular season.

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Sullivan announced March 7 that he was stepping down at Lenoir-Rhyne.

“It was kind of a mutual deal to go in a different direction,” he said. “Sometimes after you’ve been at a place for a while, there’s an itch. That’s OK. It wasn’t a bad breakup. It was a good situation. My thought process was to go back home or do something else.”

How about both?

“Coaching high school has always been a thought,” Sullivan said. “Ask my family. I’ve always talked about coming back home and re-establishing my roots. This was an opportunity that I couldn’t pass up with Eastside’s academic excellence and athletic tradition.”

Todd Shanesy is a former award-winning writer who now covers high school athletics for the Greenville News, Spartanburg Herald-Journal and Anderson Independent Mail in the USA TODAY Network. Contact him by email at todd.shanesy@shj.com. Follow him on X, formerly called Twitter, at @ToddShanesySHJ.