When Homer Drew received an offer in 1988 to take over as the head coach at Valparaiso University, the program was a shadow of what it is today.

The school had joined NCAA Division I in the late 1970s, then constructed an arena to match. But headway seemed impossible to come by.

"Several influential people in college basketball told him, 'Don't take the job there. You can't win there,'" said Drew's youngest son, Bryce.

Only a few influential opinions actually mattered, though, when decision time came.

"We had a family forum," Homer Drew said. "I said that this would be Division I now. If you don't win, you get fired."

With all of its attendant risks, Drew took the job.

On the rise

Even in the early lean times, there were flashes of promise. On Dec. 18, 1988, in Drew's first season, the Crusaders beat No. 18-ranked Notre Dame in overtime at the Athletics-Recreation Center.

"The biggest thing for me," said current Wheeler coach Mike Jones, who played on Drew's first Valpo team and sent the Notre Dame game into overtime at the buzzer, "was he was able to make the game enjoyable. There's so much pressure at the college level to win, win, win. He let us play through our mistakes. He let us have fun."

After four years, Drew's record at Valparaiso was a dismal 24-87. In his second season, the Crusaders went just 4-24. In year three, 1990-91, they finished 5-22.

"There were two big issues," Drew said. "One was the budget. It was very poor -- probably more like a Division III program. Then there was talk about whether Valpo should be Division I or Division III. That just killed us with recruiting."

In the summer of 1991, the return home of two of Valparaiso's prodigal sons infused the program with some hope for the future. Valpo High graduate Casey Schmidt transferred from the University of Arizona. His high school teammate, 6-foot-5 long-range marksman Dave Redmon, similarly left the University of Arkansas-Little Rock to come back home.

While that pair sat out the following season due to the NCAA's rules regarding transfers, Drew and the Crusaders again struggled to a 5-22 mark. The following year, Valparaiso won 12 games. Then, in 1993-94, VU won 20 games and finished second in the Mid-Continent Conference. The turnaround was staggering. And, like so much else in Homer Drew's life, it was very much a family affair.

In 1993, Scott Drew, his oldest son, was finishing up four years at Butler University. He had played tennis there and served as a student manager for the basketball team. Approaching graduation, he surprised his father by informing him that he would like to give coaching a shot as well.

"That's great," Homer Drew told his son. "And as soon as you finish your law degree, I'd love to help you out."

Not exactly.

Scott wanted to begin immediately, so Homer gave him a graduate assistant job on his staff. He took to it, particularly the player procurement part of the position. While the state of Indiana produced plenty of shooters, the Crusaders badly needed big men. Scott found them in Europe, signing 7-footers Tony Vilcinskas from Lithuania and Zoran Viskovic of Croatia.

But the biggest coup occurred in the family's own living room.

Home grown

In the spring of 1994, Bryce Drew led Valparaiso High School to the Indiana high school state championship game, and was voted Indiana Mr. Basketball soon after. Meanwhile, the improvement of his father's college program could not have been better timed.

"Valpo kind of emerged as a basketball program that year," Scott Drew said. "Bryce saw that they could really do something."

In Bryce Drew's freshman year at VU, the Crusaders won the regular-season and tournament conference titles, but the Mid-Con didn't yet have an automatic NCAA tournament berth. They had one his sophomore and junior seasons, and Valpo reached the tournament for the first two times in its history. Times were good, but for the coach's son, they weren't always easy.

"I would do a lot of things to stay away from (tension)," Bryce Drew said. "If my dad got on someone at practice, I probably wouldn't go to dinner with that person. If we had an especially tough practice, I wouldn't go into the locker room right away. I'd stay out and shoot for a while until it cleared out."

In 1998, at the end of Bryce's senior season, the Crusaders again reached the NCAA tournament, drawing No. 4 seed Ole Miss in the first round. Bryce, who would soon become the No. 16 overall selection in the NBA Draft, hit a 3-pointer as time expired to carry Valparaiso to the upset. The Crusaders also won two days later, against Florida State, to reach the Sweet Sixteen.

All the while, assistant coach Scott Drew, who once sat with his dad on recruiting trips at LSU, was being groomed to take over the job. That finally happened in 2002, when Homer Drew announced his retirement from coaching. He spent the next year as an assistant to the president of the university.

It was a position he thoroughly enjoyed. Then, in the summer of 2003, one of the most salacious scandals in college basketball history erupted at Baylor University in Texas. To clean up the mess, the school turned to Scott Drew.

Meanwhile, at Valparaiso, Homer Drew was returning to the bench.

HOMER DREW | A LIFE IN BASKETBALL

Editor's note: This is the third 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 what the future holds for Drew in Wednesday's Times.