Thursday, March 24, 2011

Valparaiso men's basketball head coach Homer Drew has been named the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) 2011 Division I District 12 Co-Coach of the Year in a vote of his peers, as announced by the NABC.

Drew, who shares the honor with Cleveland State's Gary Waters, guided the Crusaders to 23 victories, their 11th 20-win campaign in the last 18 seasons, including a program-best 12 wins in Horizon League play, just one win back of the league title. He led Valpo to a pair of in-season tournament titles, the first time in program history the Crusaders have won multiple in-season trophies in the same year. Drew also guided Valpo back to the postseason for the tenth time in the past 16 seasons, as the Crusaders hosted a national postseason tournament game for the first time in program history.

Along the way in 2010-2011, Drew led Valpo to six victories over teams that won or shared their conference's regular season championship and put the Crusaders in a position to receive votes in the ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll four straight weeks, the first time in nine years that Valpo had received votes for the national top-25 rankings. With the team's 23 wins this season, Drew now owns a school-record 371 victories at the helm of the Crusaders and currently sits seventh among active Division I head coaches with 640 career wins.