Radford Dances Into National Spotlight

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, 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 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 has witnessed in his three years at the school.

Lynch-Flohr said the excitement began to build with the 2007 hiring of Greenberg, whose lofty résumé 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.