![]() ![]() We never had a chance to sit down and talk.” He added: “We never had a conversation about basketball. “Unfortunately, I never got to have that conversation.” “That was going to be the first time we were going to have that conversation,” Drew said. ![]() Drew never got a chance to hand him the document. ![]() It offered collaborative ideas, detailed areas for improvement and specific solutions. When Drew went to Turner’s office as summoned on the day of his dismissal, he brought with him an 18-page plan of how to fix the program. Stackhouse was hired to replace Bryce Drew as head coach. Vanderbilt basketball coach Jerry Stackhouse (L) is introduced by athletic director Malcom Turner during a news conference. Drew said Turner attended just one practice, they had no sit-down conversations prior to the dismissal and they only interacted a handful of times. In his first interview since his dismissal, Drew detailed to Yahoo Sports how little communication he’d had with Turner, who officially started on Feb. The general counsel who worked on Drew’s contract retired over the summer, and the chancellor who hired him announced he was stepping down two weeks after Drew’s dismissal.Įven more puzzling than the firing were the steps that led up to it. The athletic director who hired him, David Williams, announced his retirement in September and tragically died in February. The other McDonald’s All-American Drew recruited, Simi Shittu, injured his knee in January of 2018, which robbed him of some of the athleticism that defined his game in high school. There was the injury to Garland, who projects to be the highest Vanderbilt draft pick since 1966. “The component with that is Vandy had always had a history of being very family-oriented, very close-knit campus and the longevity of the coaches.” How the firing went downĭrew recalled a “perfect storm” of events that surrounded his firing. “I think the big lure was the opportunity to go build something and have a legacy similar to what my dad had at Valparaiso, to what my brother has at Baylor,” Drew said, referencing Homer and Scott Drew. In September, there’d have been better odds for Drew getting hired at UCLA than getting fired for losing.īut Vanderbilt fired Drew halfway through his six-year contract, leaving him disappointed that a school with a prior track record of patience pulled an about-face. Vanderbilt fired Drew after just three seasons (40-59), which included an NCAA tournament appearance, the best recruiting class in school history and no whiff of impropriety. Their first formal meeting came when Drew got dismissed.Īnd that’s why Drew found himself in a coffee shop in Boston on Wednesday afternoon, pondering a hairpin turn in a promising coaching trajectory that no one could have foreseen this fall. Vanderbilt’s new athletic director, Malcolm Turner, fired Drew weeks after Turner’s arrival on campus. Vanderbilt fell to Kent State, 77-75, and the season boomeranged from the cusp of the Top 25 to the worst SEC record - 0-19 in league play - in history. The centerpiece of the best recruiting class in school history, projected top-10 pick Darius Garland, tore the meniscus in his left knee early in that game and ended up lost for the season. “There was just an energy in the building people were just waiting to see us play.”īryce Drew now looks at that moment as the distinct turning point where everything he was building at Vanderbilt began to fall apart. “I remember at the start of the game, I was like, ‘Wow, this is what we were building for the last two-and-a-half years,’” he told Yahoo Sports.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |