Valparaiso Shows It Can Be Done

Excuses. We’ve sure heard them.

Cal State Fullerton doesn’t have a winning men’s basketball program because the gym is small and drab, because it is virtually empty on game nights, because kids today want new and shiny, want glitz.

UC Irvine hasn’t had a winning men’s basketball program because there is no tradition, because the high academic standards can be a deterrent.

Both Fullerton and Irvine mention that they are swallowed up in the shadows of their big-time neighbors, by the teams from UCLA and USC.

And you know what? So what.

Valparaiso, a small, Lutheran, academically challenging college in northwest Indiana, a college with no basketball tradition to speak of, a college overshadowed by Indiana, Purdue and Notre Dame, a college with a small, drab on-campus gym, has become what Irvine and Fullerton would love to be: A successful mid-major program that wins its conference, goes to the NCAA tournament and once in a while takes a run at making the Sweet 16.

And Valpo has another negative Fullerton and Irvine will never have--3 1/2 feet of snow on the ground.

When Donny Daniels brings Fullerton into Valparaiso tonight, he should also bring his notebook, pull up a seat and talk to Valpo Coach Homer Drew.

Before Drew arrived in 1988, the Crusaders had 16 consecutive losing seasons. In 1978-79 Valpo was 4-21. In Drew’s second year the team was 4-24. In his third year, 5-22. In his fourth year, 5-22. So Drew knows hopeless and Drew knows when to draw hope. And he says to all you Fullerton and Irvine fans, you dozen or so, that it is not impossible to do what Valparaiso has done.

The smart-alecks out there will say that Drew had the foolproof way to build a program. Produce a son named Bryce Drew, a son with ice in his blood, a deadly shot, an unstoppable work ethic and NBA athletic ability.

Forever more we will be treated at NCAA tournament time to the length-of-the-court pass and catch and the incredibly nervy and perfectly accurate shot Bryce made in the last second to beat Mississippi in a first-round game in 1998. The Crusaders made it to the Sweet 16 and barely lost to Rhode Island in what could have been a Final Four run. All the country became Valpo fans. Valpo was a household word.

The Crusaders have been to five straight NCAA tournaments. They have briefly been ranked in the top 25. It hasn’t been only because of Bryce, though.

“Foreign players,” Homer Drew says. “That’s what we finally decided. We had to look at foreign players.”

If there was a great high school basketball player in Indiana, unless his last name was Drew, he was going to go to Indiana or Purdue or Notre Dame. There was no way around that. Drew, one of the nicest men in college basketball, a man of conviction and high standards, a man who doesn’t swear, would never cheat, will always treat every player as if the player was named Drew, doesn’t have such a Pollyannaish view of the world that he didn’t get that reality.

“If we wanted any big men in particular,” Drew says, “we had to think a little differently. If there was a 6-9, 6-10 player in Indiana or Michigan or Illinois or Ohio, he wasn’t going to come to Valparaiso.”

So another one of Homer’s sons, assistant coach Scott, got a passport and never left home without it. To go along with All-American guard Bryce, Homer and Scott discovered a 6-11 center named Antanas Vilcinskas from Poland. Vilcinskas had played for the Polish Junior National team and wanted to come to America to play basketball. Valparaiso was definitely in America.

After Vilcinskas came 6-11 center Zoran Viskovic from Croatia. Soon he was joined by another 6-11 Croatian, Ivan Vujic.

The star of the Valpo squad that Fullerton will play is 6-8 Lubos Barton, who excelled on the Czech Republic Junior National team. And the other star is 6-10 Raitis Grafs, who was found playing on the Latvian Junior National team. The star-in-waiting is a freshman from Angola. Not Angola, Ind., but Angola the country in Africa.

This is better than having to rely on junior colleges, Drew thinks. These players from overseas tend to be just as committed to academics as athletics. Viskovic was a first-team academic All-American even though the NCAA actually suspended him because he had been unable to take his SAT on a designated day. His hometown was being bombed.

Players like Viskovic are happy for their scholarships and usually don’t know Gene Keady from Homer Drew, Indiana from Valparaiso. Players like Viskovic could get into Irvine.

Now that the success has started, the Crusaders have added 500 seats to their on-campus gym. It now holds 5,500 and all 500 of the new seats were sold immediately. But it is still a small, staid gym. It is not an arena. It is not new. It is something Fullerton could have. Winning matters. Becoming a star at NCAA tournament time means more income, more support the rest of the year.

Daniels, in his rookie season as Fullerton coach, has a team with only one victory, and none against NCAA Division I competition. Since Fullerton already lost to UC Riverside, a new Division I program that was ranked by one computer expert as the absolute worst of the more than 300 Division I teams, it is possible Fullerton won’t win another game this season. Drew knows the heartache ahead for Daniels.

“It’s not easy,” Drew says. “You have to be patient. Donny’s been at a successful program [Utah]. He’s had success as a player. It’s a struggle for mid-level programs. You need to find the right formula. But it is worth the search.”

Douglass, in his fourth season at Irvine, has also learned about patience. He confesses that his hopes had been for faster rebuilding. Now, the Anteaters have beaten Cal and trailed UCLA by only a point in the final minutes last Saturday. That’s progress. Douglass has chosen to take players who were too skinny, too weak in high school, bring them to college, get them in the weight room, sacrifice immediate success, redshirt them, bring them along slowly.

That’s a formula too.

But when you aren’t UCLA or Duke, Stanford, Michigan State, North Carolina, you need a plan. You need patience. You need a son named Bryce or a little luck. You need to believe in yourself. And you need to experience 4-22 and see Sweet 16. It can happen.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com