Ex-Valpo Coach Drew, Wife Have Cancer at BetLM

Ex-Valpo Coach Drew, Wife Have Cancer

INDIANOLIS —Homer Drew taught dozens of bas­ket­ball play­ers how to beat the odds on the bas­ket­ball court.

Now, those play­ers are exhort­ing their ex-coach to take the same atti­tude into his own bat­tle with cancer.

Val­paraiso ath­letic depart­ment spokesman Aaron Leav­itt con­firmed Tues­day night that both the 67-year-old Drew and his wife, Janet, were recently diag­nosed with can­cer. The fam­ily is with­hold­ing addi­tional details about the ill­nesses, for now.

“Janet and myself both appre­ci­ate all the thoughts and prayers dur­ing this most dif­fi­cult time for our fam­ily,” Drew said in a state­ment released through the university.

The Drews made Valpo bas­ket­ball a fam­ily affair.

From the time Homer Drew took over a founder­ing Divi­sion I pro­gram in 1988, not a sea­son has gone by with­out the fam­ily sur­name appear­ing on the team’s roster.

Twice, Drew retired—turning over the pro­gram first to his son, Scott, and then in May to his younger son, Bryce. Scott Drew is now the coach at Baylor.

While those in the small north­west­ern Indi­ana city always embraced Drew’s viva­cious per­son­al­ity, the nation remem­bers him as the archi­tect of one of the NCAA tournament’s most famous plays—the tip pass to Bryce Drew, for the buzzer-beater that upset Mis­sis­sippi in the first round in 1998.

That play con­tin­ues to be replayed dozens of times each March and often serves as a reminder of how under­dogs win.

Ex-players are hop­ing the deeply reli­gious hus­band and wife team can keep winning.

“Just got off the phone with my coach from Valpo Homer Drew who put me in the posi­tion to have the oppor­tu­nity to play … ‚” for­mer player Bran­don Wood wrote on Twit­ter. “Every­body pray for my coach at Valpo Homer Drew and his wife who were both just diag­nosed with cancer.”

In 1988, Drew accepted the job at a pro­gram that had never been to the NCAA tour­na­ment, never won a con­fer­ence title and never posted a win­ning record in the school’s Divi­sion I era.

Within 10 years, Drew had cre­ated a mid-major monster.

He pro­duced nine 20-win sea­sons over his career and led the Cru­saders to five con­sec­u­tive NCAA appear­ances from 1996 to 2000. His crown­ing achieve­ment was tak­ing Valpo to the regional semi­fi­nals in 1998 when Bryce was the team’s star player and Scott was on the coach­ing staff.

Homer Drew retired for the first time in 2002, turn­ing the pro­gram over to Scott. But after one sea­son, the son took an even tougher job at Bay­lor, which had been dec­i­mated by an embar­rass­ing NCAA scandal.

With Scott Drew en route to Texas, Valpo con­vinced Homer Drew to return to the bench.

Not sur­pris­ingly, he started win­ning again. In 2005, the father brought in his other son, Bryce, as an assis­tant coach for what many expected to be an even­tual father-son suc­ces­sion. Again.

That’s exactly what hap­pened in May when Homer Drew announced for the sec­ond time that he was step­ping down. At the time, Drew said he felt good and was not retir­ing because of any health-related problems.

Drew coached in more than 1,000 games, win­ning more than 640 in 32 sea­sons. He often said he would only leave Valpo for two other jobs—Notre Dame or Saint Louis. Instead, he’s still an asso­ciate ath­letic director.

Bryce Drew fin­ished his play­ing career as the school’s leader in points (2,142), assists (626) and 3-pointers (364). The 1994 Indi­ana Mr. Bas­ket­ball was also a first-round pick in the NBA draft.

The younger son is sched­uled to make his head coach­ing debut Nov. 7 at Ari­zona. He will coach his first home game Nov. 14.

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