Dylan Fink | Sports Writer
For the first time since 2015, Baylor basketball head coach Scott Drew will coach against his younger brother, Bryce, in a public matchup.
The Bears will host Grand Canyon in an open scrimmage at Foster Pavilion Friday at 4 p.m. The game represents an early opportunity to play a team with three consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances — and for one Drew brother to win some bragging rights in a friendly rivalry.
“Whenever I see him coach, I always just notice he’s so calm out there coaching,” Bryce Drew said of his brother to Arizona Sports in January. “I don’t think I’m that calm like he is.”
Even before becoming Division I coaches, the Drew brothers were surrounded by college basketball nearly their entire lives. Their father, Homer Drew, is a college basketball legend who spent the majority of his career coaching at Valparaiso, leading the school to the 1998 Sweet Sixteen. That moment, remembered as one of the greatest Cinderella runs in NCAA tournament history, was a family affair.
Scott Drew had the opportunity to be an assistant coach under his father for the historic ‘98 Valparaiso team. Bryce Drew, the team’s star player, is remembered for “The Shot”: an emphatic buzzer-beater in the final second of the round-of-64 that immortalized 13th-seeded Valparaiso in NCAA tournament history.
“That’s one of the most memorable shots ever in the tournament,” Scott Drew said in a 2021 interview with the Rich Eisen show. “Every time I see it, I still smile. It was a great thing in our family’s lives.”
Scott Drew took the reins at Valparaiso for the 2003 season following his father’s move to a one-year interim role in university administration. After leading the Mid-Continent Conference team to the NCAA tournament in his first season as head coach, a troubled team on the Brazos came calling.
The rest is history, as Scott Drew has amassed a national championship, two conference championships and sent dozens of players to the NBA.
Bryce Drew’s path to Division I coaching is a slightly different story.
Following his college career, Bryce Drew was drafted by the Houston Rockets as the 16th pick of the 1998 NBA draft. Following a mediocre six-year professional career, the younger Drew brother looked to join his family in the college coaching world.
“[The NBA] was a great experience, where I got to live a dream of playing against the best players in the world,” Bryce Drew said on the Sports Spectrum podcast in 2020. “It also was a grind being an undersized player. The experience was jarring, too. It demanded a lot from my faith and family.”
Bryce Drew followed in his family’s footsteps, returning to Valparaiso for the 2006 season as an assistant coach. In 2011, following Homer Drew’s retirement from coaching, Bryce was given the opportunity to succeed his father’s legacy.
“Coaching [at Valparaiso] at the time was amazing,” Bryce Drew told the Field of 68 in 2021. “Being with my dad there and then also my brother was so cool, and then I got to be in that same role. It was like being a part of the family business.”
Following his tenure with the Beacons, Bryce Drew was brought in to coach at Vanderbilt in 2016, where he had a yin-and-yang experience. After making the NCAA tournament in his first season, Bryce Drew signed future NBA lottery picks Darius Garland and Aaron Nesmith.
“Aaron is an elite shooter with outstanding character,” Bryce Drew said in 2020. “From the moment I saw him play, I knew he would make it to the NBA.”
The recruiting success did not translate to the court, as Garland tore his meniscus five games into the season and the team shot 31.1% from beyond the arc. Two years after making the NCAA Tournament, the Commodores went 0-18 in SEC play.
Following his lack of success in the SEC, Bryce Drew was hired as head coach at Grand Canyon in 2020, where he now leads the four-time Western Athletic Conference champions into the 2025-26 season.
“What he’s doing here [at Grand Canyon] is just unprecedented success,” Scott Drew said in a surprise appearance for a 2021 Grand Canyon post-game interview. “I’m proud of what he’s done, who he is, and who he’s turning these young men into.”
The loving rivalry between the two brothers is still founded on support.
At the 2023 NCAA tournament, Grand Canyon’s jerseys, shoes and other equipment failed to reach their regional location on time with the team, limiting their ability to practice. When it looked like the Antelopes would have to play unprepared, the Bears — who happened to be at the same regional site — saved the day. Scott Drew loaned Baylor’s excess practice equipment to his brother’s team so they could prepare for their round-of-64 matchup.
“We had to hook them up,” Scott Drew told CBS Sports. “I mean, what are big brothers for?”
According to college basketball insider Trilly Donovan, Grand Canyon and Baylor have competed in secret scrimmages against each other for the past four seasons. The first of these scrimmages to receive a reported score came in 2024, which wrapped up in a tight 83-80 win for the Bears.
This year’s exhibition will provide not only the opportunity for the public to get a first look at the Bears this year, but also to watch two college basketball legends, who happen to be brothers, go head-to-head, hoping to lead their teams to victory on 94 feet of hardwood.
“They are both better sons than they are coaches,” Homer Drew told Nicole Shearin in 2024. “That makes me, as their dad, very proud.”
The exhibition match will tip off at 4 p.m. Friday at the Foster Pavilion.
