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Bryce drew1/9/2023 His ESPN gig occupied him during the winter and afforded him the chance to visit various programs. “It was great to be with my wife and son and be present instead of having my mind somewhere else,” Drew says. Bryce cooked a little (if boiling pasta counts) and put Bryson through basketball drills using cones on the driveway. They went on long walks, and if Bryson wanted to stop and play in a stream, then Dad didn’t have to hurry him along because Dad had nowhere else to be. For the first time since he had become a dad, Bryce had time to take Bryson to a pumpkin farm and watch him play Little League baseball. So that’s what he did, settling into the contented rhythms of domestic life. “Enjoy this time now,” Homer said, “because you’re going to be coaching again soon.” One piece of advice from his father stuck with him. Drew received plenty of counsel from fellow coaches in those early days. “It was definitely an adjustment because I was used to him being gone,” she says. The first few weeks were challenging, especially for Tara, who was accustomed to being the head coach of the household. Bryce was also hoping to return to coaching, so he wanted to avoid moving his family twice in one year. Many coaches prefer to leave town after they’ve been fired, but Drew remained in Nashville, where he and Tara had a good group of friends and their five-year-old son, Bryson, was happy in school. In the days following his firing, Drew had a few feelers from other schools, but his heart wasn’t in it so he decided to take the year off. Drew took the Commodores to the NCAA Tournament in his first year, but the team finished in 13th place in the SEC in 2017-18 and then bottomed out in Year Three. During his five years there, Drew led the Crusaders to four Horizon League titles and two NCAA Tournament appearances, which convinced Vanderbilt to tap him to replace Kevin Stallings in 2016. After a seven-year pro career that included stints with four NBA teams, Bryce joined his father’s staff in 2005 and took over as head coach when Homer retired six years later. Drew’s father, Homer, was Valpo’s head coach that day. It was a dizzying fall from grace for Drew, who burst into the nation’s consciousness in 1998 when he was a senior guard at Valparaiso and hit an iconic buzzer-beater to beat Ole Miss in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Not getting to see that through and see how much better we would have been in Year 4 is what hurt the most.” “We had cleaned up a lot in terms of the culture of the program. “It was surprising because there had not been any communication with the AD, even though I had tried on my end,” Drew says. He found out otherwise when athletic director Malcolm Turner, who had taken over for the retiring David Williams in January, dropped the hammer during a meeting in Turner’s office. Garland became the fifth pick in the NBA Draft, but the Commodores never recovered, finishing 9-23 on the season and 0-18 in the SEC.Īs the losses piled up in January and February, speculation about Drew’s status grew louder, but considering he was set to add another highly ranked freshman class to a team that was returning most of its players, he thought he was going to get another year. He had started the 2018-19 season by welcoming the best recruiting class in program history, but things turned sour in November when the gemstone of the class, 6-2 guard Darius Garland, suffered a season-ending knee injury. I wanted it to be at a school where they were really invested in basketball and would give us the resources to be successful.”ĭrew is understandably eager to move on from his dismissal from Vanderbilt. I wasn’t going to take a job just to take a job. “From a personal standpoint, it was great to step back and do some things that I’ve been too busy the last few years to do. “It was honestly one of the best years of my life,” Drew says. Now he will take all of those hard-won lessons to Grand Canyon, a fresh face on the college hoops scene that, like its newly minted coach, is badly in need of a makeover. During the ensuing 12 months, Drew licked his wounds, marinated on his mistakes, spent time with his family and worked for ESPN and SEC Network. The decision provided a welcome resurrection for Drew, who himself was canned in ignominious fashion one year ago following a disastrous third season at Vanderbilt. Three days later, Drew, 45, was officially back as Grand Canyon announced it had hired him to replace Dan Majerle, who had been let go following a 13-17 season and a fifth-place finish in the WAC.
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