bobinator said:
I think his defense is the most obvious example of how much he changed and/or brought in people that could help him.
His teams used to play the laziest 2-3 defense I've ever seen from a major college team that still won games. They had two finishes inside the KenPom top 50 in defensive efficiency in his first ten seasons, despite the team overall finishing there six times. They've had six teams finish inside it since then. (Though they took huge steps back last year and this year, was Tang the defense guy?)
Had some great convos around these parts back in the day about SD vs BCG before either blew up. This was a great message board for hoops junkies back then because everybody else was distracted by football.
As a Baylor Homer, I thought BCG was the better coach objectively, but SD was the better fit at his respective school because he's right of central casting for Baylor. I think it would be a mighty struggle to find a better fit for any given school than SD for Baylor.
Two interesting tidbits here with hindsight.
SD got to short circuit the typical pathway to P5 job by jumping into the Baylor mess. I felt 20+ years ago that while some distaste for Drew from other coaches was perhaps warranted as he was a brash young buck, a part of it was resentment by the older coaches in the league that Drew didn't have to pay his dues in coaching outposts to finally get a big time job. He got Valpo due to family and then jumped to the Baylor job at 32.
The other part is that while other coaches spent their 20s, 30s, and 40s making mistakes in the relative obscurity of lesser conferences, Drew had to take his hits on ESPN in front of packed arenas. It turns out experience matters.
Drew has made me ponder whether ADs should be more patient and put coaches on a much longer timeline to give coaches the opportunity to LEARN and get better on the job at P5 schools. Practically, it'll never happen because it would be career and perhaps even life ending (I jest) for an AD to do that. But Drew has served as a very interesting case study in that regard.
