Call of the big-time was strong for Homer Drew; pull of family was stronger

As is the case for so many men, perhaps most, there are two people present in Scott Drew's earliest childhood memory.

Himself.

And his father.

As the years have passed, some of the details have fallen away. But the basics of the scene are not that difficult to reconstruct.

A boy, age 3 or 4. A man, hunched over the steering column as his car cuts through the soupy Bayou air. Homer Drew, men's basketball assistant at Louisiana State University, is crisscrossing the Deep South in search of talent. His son rides with him, as the young, ambitious assistant struggles to steal a few precious hours of his hectic schedule for family.

"He was on the fast track to be at a Division I school," said Scott Drew, today the head coach at Baylor University. "But he gave that up for us."

Paying his dues

In 1966, current Valparaiso University coach Homer Drew graduated from William Jewell College in Missouri after three All-American seasons. He immediately launched his coaching career, taking a graduate assistant's job at Washington University in St. Louis, near his hometown of Webster Groves, Mo. Drew completed a master's degree while at "Wash U." He also started a family, marrying his wife, Janet, whom he met at William Jewell, in 1967. Scott was born in 1970. Dana Drew was born two years later and Bryce, the third and final of Homer and Janet Drew's children, was born a few years after that.

By that time, the moving van was a regular visitor to the family's residence.

Drew spent the 1971-72 basketball season in Pullman, Wash., as an assistant at Washington State University. After one year there, he took a position at LSU on the staff of first-year head coach Dale Brown.

After a few seasons, however, the grind of Division I basketball began to wear on Drew.

"'What am I doing here?'" he recalled thinking during lonely nights in random hotel rooms. "'What am I doing here going and looking at 17- and 18-year-old guys while my family is at home?' You do ask those questions."

In his last year in Baton Rouge, Drew said he spent 165 days out of 365 on the road recruiting. NCAA restrictions on recruiting travel were not as stringent at that time as they are today, and it could be extremely difficult for young families.

"I came back one night and Dana said, 'There's someone at the door,'" Drew said. "That was enough. We decided it was time to really emphasize the family."

Tough enough?

Before Janet Drew's family moved to Missouri when she was a teenager, they had lived in Mishawaka. And as luck would have it, in 1976, a small college in the town had a coaching opening. So Homer Drew left the Southeastern Conference and the fast track behind and took his first head coaching job at tiny Bethel College.

Before basketball practice began that first year, several of Drew's players had taken a class from him in the fall semester. Some began to think that his friendly nature might be something they could take advantage of.

"Someone said, 'I don't know if this guy will be tough enough,'" said Mike Lightfoot, a player on Drew's first Bethel team.

They found out differently in the first official team meeting of the fall. Two returning players waltzed in 30 seconds late. Drew slammed the door after them.

"It about came off the hinges," Lightfoot said.

Drew had his players' attention, and that quickly showed on the court. Bethel won 19 games his first season in Mishawaka. The next year began a string of six straight 20-win seasons, including a 28-6 campaign in 1981-82.

But after 25 wins in 1986-87 and 252 wins overall in 11 seasons, Drew called some of his veterans into his office. He was leaving for Indiana University-South Bend, a rival. It was a lateral move at best, but Bethel was struggling financially at the time, its future as an institution in doubt.

"He told us Bethel was going through a very rough time," said Jody Martinez, one of those veterans. "We were disappointed because we were hoping to play all four years with him. We even speculated there was a different twist to it.

"We didn't see him staying at IUSB. I figured something else was up, but we could never pinpoint it."

Something was up, or soon would be. More than 10 years after turning away from college basketball's highest level, Division I was calling again, and this time Homer Drew was ready to answer.

HOMER DREW | A LIFE IN BASKETBALL

Editor's note: This is the second of a four-part series on Valparaiso University men's basketball coach Homer Drew and his lifetime of work in the game of basketball. Read how Drew turned the Crusaders into a winning program in Tuesday's Times.