For Bryce Drew '98 Life Has Come Full Circle

By Tom Wyatt ’94

Bryce Drew ’98 laughs when he sees pictures of himself during his playing days at Valparaiso University.

“Times have changed so much,” Drew says while sitting in his office in the VU Athletics- Recreation Center’s Schrage Basketball Wing.

Drew turns 32 this September. “The Shot” took place more than eight years ago. But as much as Drew tells you he’s getting old, he still has that boyish, “aw-shucks” quality about him, the one that endeared him to so many Crusader basketball fans in the mid-1990s.

Since graduating from VU in 1998, the game of basketball has taken Drew around the country, overseas and led him to the woman who ultimately became his wife. And last year, basketball finally brought him back home to Valparaiso University. Like his father, Homer, and brother, Scott ’94 M.A.L.S., before him, Bryce is a basketball coach, joining the Crusader’s men’s staff as an assistant last year.

Once again, he shares the same bench on game night with his father. Now, however, when the horn blows, he sits down next to Dad while the “young” guys do the thing Drew once did so well on that very same ARC court. Coaching, undoubtedly, is a Drew trait, somehow firmly implanted in the family’s DNA. But some might have wondered if Drew ever would venture into the business.

Bryce Drew ’98

After leading VU to an improbable Sweet 16 run in the 1998 NCAA Tournament—sparked by “The Shot,” Drew’s unforgettable buzzer-beating, game-winning 3-pointer that stunned Ole Miss in the first round of the tournament—Drew became a first-round NBA draft pick of the Houston Rockets.

A few short months after graduating from VU, he suddenly found himself sharing the same Houston court with the likes of NBA legends Scottie Pippen, Charles Barkley and Hakeem Olajuwon. Drew spent six years in the NBA, including one nearby with the Chicago Bulls, before the New Orleans Hornets waived him late in the 2003-’04 season.

A bitter pill to swallow, he picked himself up and landed with a team in Italy the next season. It proved to be an extended honeymoon of sorts for Drew and his wife, Tara, a former dancer for the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks. The two were married in the summer of 2004.

“I was at the point in my career where I was ready to spend time with my wife and just have fun playing [the game],” Drew says. “It was really great to pull us out of our life here and put us out on an island and let us grow closer together.”

By that time, Drew already knew he wanted to become a coach. He had realized it a couple years earlier while playing in the NBA.

“My last couple years in the NBA, I didn’t get as much playing time, so I was on the bench,” he says. “I was able to think so much of the game through. I remember thinking I’ll probably be a better coach than I was a player.”

But it was all about timing. In the summer of 2003, Scott Drew stepped down as VU coach after one season at the helm to take over at Baylor. Homer Drew took back the program’s reins, just one year after retiring as head coach. That was the impetus for Bryce to turn his thoughts from playing to coaching.

“If it weren’t for my dad being here, I would definitely still be playing,” Bryce says. “My dad has helped me be successful, and I’d like to help him in whatever I can do here.”

As a member of the coaching staff, Bryce is in charge of player development, working with student-athletes to help them hone their skills. He also recruits potential players, a benefit to the program simply because of his NBA experience, and, of course, “The Shot.”

But despite his day-to-day coaching duties, which he admits are time-consuming and much different from life as a professional player, he still has a sort of celebrity status about him. Kids approach him for autographs, and when he’s out and about in town people still look his way and say to one another, “Hey, that’s Bryce Drew.”

Nevertheless, Drew has never sought the spotlight. He’s simply one of the other “fellas” on the coaching staff.

And he’s stayed true to his Christian morals, despite six seasons in a league where those morals often were tested.

“Anywhere you go there are going to be people who do good things, and people who do things that you don’t want to follow,” Drew says. “It’s just which way are you going to choose. I chose to follow the guys who were doing stuff I thought was productive and good.”

And he chose to come back to the place where those values were instilled—at Valparaiso University and under the tutelage of his father.

Times may have changed for Drew, but perhaps not as much as he thinks.

“My dad’s been a great example to follow,” he says. “It’s pretty natural coming up here [to the gym] and doing what we do.We’re used to it.”