Former Spider athletes named head coaches
UR Now: Alumni
This spring, when Columbia, Iona, and Radford universities announced their choices for men’s basketball head coach, the selections were all former Spider basketball athletes who played under the leadership of Richmond Head Coach Chris Mooney.
Kevin Hovde, now head coach at Columbia, started with the Spiders as a walk-on in 2006. Dan Geriot, Iona's new coach, was a star recruit for Richmond that same year. Zach Chu, Radford’s choice to lead its program, joined the UR team the year after Hovde and Geriot graduated.
“It’s an honor to have three former players get head coaching jobs in the same cycle,” Mooney said. “I hope that the style we play and the way we coach and form a family off the court influenced them to run their own program."
Columbia Head Coach Kevin Hovde (Class of 2010)
Kevin Hovde is the the 24th head coach of Columbia University’s men’s basketball team.
Growing up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Kevin Hovde was recruited by Ivy League, Patriot League, and academically prestigious Division III schools. He ultimately chose Richmond because he appreciated how the academic community valued athletics. “It was a no-brainer to play for a great program in the Atlantic 10 and have a head coach like Chris Mooney. We were part of his first recruiting class, Dan Geriot and I,” Hovde said.
During his first year, Hovde, a 6-foot-6 tall political science major, joined the team as a walk-on guard/forward. During preseason practice of his senior year, he was redshirted due to a broken ankle. Hovde was on the team when Richmond won the Atlantic 10 and made it to the Sweet 16.
“Kevin is the consummate program player and winner,” said Carlin Hartman, former assistant coach at Richmond, currently the associate head coach at the University of Florida. “I saw a very hardworking player who went from learning the nuances of coaching to coordinating offense.”
After his last year on the team as a graduate student in 2011, Hovde followed Hartman to Columbia as director of basketball operations. For the next four years, he would be the team’s assistant coach before moving on to help coach at the University of San Francisco. He had a brief return to Richmond and a stint at the University of Florida, where he and Hartman were hired the same year, before accepting the role as the 24th head coach of Columbia’s men’s basketball team.
“I love helping young men develop on and off the court,” Hovde said. “I believe my program and coaching style, combined with the academic rigor of Columbia, will help them become the best versions of themselves."
Also from the Philadelphia area, Dan Geriot wasn’t just a contemporary of Kevin Hovde, they were best friends. The two have known each other since middle school and played on rival basketball teams since they were 15.
At Richmond, Geriot, a 6-foot-9 center, tore his ACL and ended up redshirting like Hovde for one year. When he returned to the game, Geriot, a double major in political science and history, helped the Spiders advance to two NCAA Tournaments, including the Sweet 16 with Hovde. Over the course of his career, he averaged 10.4 points, 4.1 rebounds, and 266 assists, finishing with 1,389 points and ranking 25th on Richmond's all-time scoring list.
Iona University Head Coach Dan Geriot (Class of 2011)
After 10 years coaching in the NBA, Dan Geriot was selected to be the head coach for Iona's basketball team.
“Richmond made us all strong adults and really good men,” Geriot said. “Students and professors showed up for games. We had real bonds and people who truly cared.”
Geriot saw Chris Mooney as a mentor and an idol. “Dan had good instincts as a leader. He was confident in that role and didn’t shy away from it,” Mooney said. “I could see he wanted to make a career out of it.”
Geriot played professionally in Belgium for Verviers during the 2011-12 season before transitioning to coaching.
His first coaching gig was with Princeton, where Mooney played college basketball. Two years later, he accepted a position as an assistant coach at Campbell University before transitioning to various roles on coaching staffs for 10 seasons with the NBA, including with the Cleveland Cavaliers. With the Cavs, Geriot started out as a video coordinator and worked his way up to head coach of the G League team, before becoming the assistant coach and director of player development. He helped the Cavs get to the 2016 NBA Championship.
Most recently, he worked for the New Orleans Pelicans, before accepting the head coach position with Iona.
“The college landscape is changing,” Geriot said. “At Iona we’re dialed in with our player development program. I’m excited to let our foundations and systems take off.”
A native of Dallas, Zach Chu knew he wanted to be a coach when he was just 10 years old. He remembers his father, Daniel Chu, a basketball coach at the University of Miami at Sewanee, telling him that if he wanted to learn how to coach, he would need to be exposed to the best coaches. Chu had attended Richmond’s elite basketball camp as a junior in high school and became fascinated with Chris Mooney’s offense — a style of play Mooney brought with him from Princeton.
Radford University Head Coach Zach Chu (Class of 2015)
Zach Chu always knew he wanted to coach. After almost a decade in various positions with NBA teams, he was chosen to be coach for Radford University.
At 5-foot-10, Chu was a walk-on. The business major played in less than a dozen games during his four years on the team, but he was an integral part of the Spider scout team, studying opponents’ tendencies and role playing them during practices in preparation for upcoming games. Back then, Mooney called Chu the player-coach “because he has such a good understanding of the game. As a guard, he’s on the court calling the plays. He’s making the decisions.”
Chu learned about diverse styles of play, philosophies, the interplay of different personalities and how to be a good teammate — valuable information for someone who wants to pursue a career as a coach.
"You see how the Richmond program impacts lives and provides its student athletes with a solid foundation for their future," he said. "When you're in a program like Richmond, you realize that the vision is bigger than basketball. My closest friends come from my time at Richmond. It's a family I'm immensly proud to be a part of."
While Hovde may have been Geriot’s best friend, Chu also has a solid connection to Geriot. Chu introduced him to his wife Dana, who was one of his classmates. “I introduced them at a basketball player and coach reunion,” Chu said.
Laser focused on his goal to break into coaching, Chu interned one summer with Nike Basketball, which took him to China and Spain to assist with grassroots youth camps, working alongside NBA coaches. This opportunity resulted in his first NBA role as a player development intern with the Clippers.
He has nine years of NBA experience under his belt, three of those years as assistant coach with the Dallas Mavericks G league team and three seasons with the Indiana Pacers as the manager of game strategy and analytics. Most recently, he served as the chief strategist for Southern Methodist University men’s basketball. Chu is now the ninth head coach of the Radford basketball program.