Last season was the first time in eight years that Grand Canyon head basketball coach Bryce Drew wasn’t in charge of a program. However, his presence was still courtside at a handful of college games. 

After his exit from the head coaching position at Vanderbilt, Drew took to a role that he had never done before: studio and game analyst for ESPN. Although he’s been around the game his entire life, Drew said the broadcast experience offered him a different perspective. 

“It was great to see basketball through a different lens,” he said. “You get to be at practices, look at scouting reports and game plans. You really understand the game from the media side in what to look for a try to report on.” 

Spending prior seasons in the Missouri Valley Conference and Southeastern Conference, Drew continued his journey into uncharted territories as his assignments were focused on American Athletic Conference basketball. The aggressive style of the game, primarily played on the East Coast, offered him a perspective to see what makes each individual program successful. 

“In each top 25 team, their shoot-arounds operate so differently and each team has different personalities,” Drew said. “There’s different ways that you can be successful in Division I.” 

Watching AAC basketball allowed Drew, before he was coach, to get a closer look at current GCU senior center Asbjørn Midtgaard while he was at Wichita State. Drew was focused on mastering the craft of analyzing the game, but watching Midtgaard play gave him more familiarity with his style of play when they went to recruit him. 

As he returns to coaching with the Antelopes, Drew said the experience allowed him to study the game a more and understand what really made teams good and what made them struggle. In addition, he felt like he was coaching both teams at the same time. 

“I think if you take a step back to study and evaluate other programs, you get to see their game plans and if they work or don’t work,” Drew said. “It feels like you’re coaching two teams throughout the game and contemplating what each coach is going to do throughout the game.” 

Other than a handful of experiences as an analyst, Drew hasn’t studied Western Athletic Conference basketball from that deeper perspective. Drew said from his past coaching and from what he’s watched so far, he’s looking to get GCU’s rebounding numbers up. 

“I’ve always put a precedence on defensive rebounding and seven of eight years in head coaching we’ve out-rebounded our opponents,” Drew said. “I kind of want to stay in line with what we’ve done in this coaching area throughout my career.” 

As one door closes and another one opens for Drew, his career as an analyst has give him some fond memories to look back on and learn from. Drew was in attendance in a handful of Cincinnati’s overtime games where he experienced the action as someone in the crowd and on the court. 

“As a player and a coach, in those overtime games, you feel all these emotions, but as an analyst, it just became more fun to me,” Drew said. “You have all these situations and you get to talk about what each coach was planning and what options they had coming out of timeout. It was a highlight that I got to put on the coaching hat for both teams.”