It was a Sugarland concert barely two weeks before graduation, but it was Elon senior men’s basketball guard Drew Spradiln’s favorite memory of his Phoenix career.
The concert was in Raleigh, and Spradlin’s posse was a who’s who of Elon men’s basketball's recent past. Former Phoenix forwards Monty Sanders (now the director of men’s basketball operations at Elon), TJ Douglas and Scott Grable, guards Chris Long and Terrence Birdette and center Daniel Watts were in attendance as well, and, while Spradlin says Sugarland is not necessarily his favorite country band – but he does like country music a lot – it was a highlight.
“My best friends, my teammates, the guys that will probably be there the rest of my life,” he said. “It’s at the end of the year, I’m about to graduate, it was really symbolic of the good that’s come from all of it for me. It’s definitely about the relationships that I’ve made and will continue to have for the rest of my life. That’s what I’ll miss the most when I’m gone.”
Maybe there is a particular sense of parallelism that can be drawn from that trip. When Spradlin walks across the stage May 19 to receive his diploma, his teammates will see an echo of what Spradlin saw when Long, Grable and Birdette graduated last year, Douglas in 2010 and Sanders in 2009.
An older player who the young guys loved being with.
Because that is certainly what Drew Spradlin brought to the Elon Phoenix this past season. As the only senior.
From Wheelersburg to Elon
[quote]...when Elon offered and it was my junior year and I really liked it, the school. I liked the players a lot. I was just happy to play Division I basketball. - Drew Spradlin, Elon men's basketball senior guard[/quote]
Spradlin grew up in the small town of Wheelersburg, Ohio, and attended Wheelersburg High School, where he was first-team All-Ohio, AP District III Player of the Year and coaches’ District Player of the Year in 2007-08, his senior year.
“I played in two state final fours, my sophomore and my junior year,” he said. “I think I ended up scoring about 1500 points or something like that, which is pretty close to what I scored here. I think I got a little more in high school. I started for four years. I had a great time. I was playing with my best friends.”
Not only did he find the basket with a round ball often during his high school career, he also threw a pigskin a fair bit. Spradlin was named the offensive player of the year for his district during his senior year as the starting quarterback for Wheelersburg High.
“I played at first because my friends were playing,” he said. “I almost quit after my sophomore year because I was a receiver and I started on the varsity team my sophomore year and I didn’t get the ball that much. I thought, ‘This is boring.’ But they talked me into staying. I played basically because my friends wanted me to. So I was a receiver my junior year and I started playing quarterback at the end of it.”
Spradlin was recruited at quarterback by schools such as Kent State University, the University of Akron and Youngstown State University at the end of his junior year, but he had signed at Elon, then under head coach Ernie Nestor, early in December 2006. He got an early offer from the Phoenix and took it in light of the situation of a teammate of his.
“He was kind of holding out and waiting for the University of Dayton to offer, and they never did and he lost three scholarship offers doing that,” Spradlin said. “And he ended up playing at Western Carolina and then Marshall, so he’s been around and ended up playing. But I think he lost Miami of Ohio, Ohio University and Marshall. All had offered him, and he ended up losing them by waiting around and stuff, so when Elon offered and it was my junior year and I really liked it, the school. I liked the players a lot. I was just happy to play Division I basketball.”
Oddities of college athletics
[quote]We hadn’t even really gotten used to Coach Nestor yet, and then a change came and it was at such a tender time in our athletic career. As a freshman in college, everything, you’re trying to soak it all in. So just as we’re getting accustomed to that kind of scenario, a new coach came in and all the dynamics changed. - Josh Bonney, on the Elon coaching change from Ernie Nestor to Matt Matheny[/quote]
Spradlin came to Elon in 2008 the year after the Phoenix had advanced to the finals of the Southern Conference Tournament, when the Davidson Wildcats, led by current Golden State Warriors star Stephon Curry, won the tournament en route to a Cinderella run in the NCAA Tournament that year.
"Drew was very wet-behind-the-ears," Sanders said. "He was from Wheelersburg, Ohio. He probably hadn’t been a lot of places, so he’s just very young, very eager to get into everything."
The team was loaded with talent. Senior guard Brett James was coming off an all-SoCon season the year before and big senior forward Ola Atoyebi was selected to the all-SoCon third team by the media. Sophomore Long was coming into his own as a guard, and Spradlin and fellow freshman guard Josh Bonney added some speed and skill to the guard position.
Sanders said he was kind of like a big brother to Spradlin during that first year and that the freshman loved being around the older guys.
"Whenever we went to go eat at the dining hall, he always wanted to be with the upperclassmen," Sanders said. "We’d go play video games, he was alwyas tagging along. He just wanted to be involved in everything."
The year was set up to be a big one for the Phoenix. But, according to Spradlin, it was a letdown.
“It was a little bit of a disappointing year because we had a lot of talent, and as a team we just never really clicked the whole year,” he said. “Josh was playing a lot, Chris was playing too, so it was tough to get some chemistry with two point guards that were splitting time a lot.”
The team finished a lackluster 11-20 and Nestor was fired.
“We hadn’t even really gotten used to Coach Nestor yet, and then a change came and it was at such a tender time in our athletic career,” Bonney said. “As a freshman in college, everything, you’re trying to soak it all in. So just as we’re getting accustomed to that kind of scenario, a new coach came in and all the dynamics changed. We had to basically start from scratch.”
Spradlin was coming off a solid freshman year, averaging 4.6 points and 2.4 assists per game in 12.5 minutes a contest and said his confidence had been “spring-boarded” by his play at the end of the season. Then when Nestor was fired and then-Davidson assistant Matt Matheny was hired to replace him, things changed.
“It’s tough, but that happens a lot in college sports,” Spradlin said. “It’s a revolving door with the head coach. I was struggling, like most freshmen in college probably do. I wasn’t sure if this was the right place for me or whatever. So when the coaching change happened, my dad was like, ‘If you wanted to leave, this is the time that you would leave.’ But I wanted to stick it out, and I only had a little bit of stats, so I wasn’t even sure where I wanted to go. Then I met coach Matheny. I talked to him and I was definitely on board. I didn’t really consider leaving.”
Neither did anyone else. Despite a whole new coaching staff, not one Phoenix player abandoned the roster. Matheny made sure.
“I met with the whole team in the locker room after the press conference,” Matheny said of his first time meeting Spraldin. “And one of the first things I said was that, a lot of times when a coach takes over, people say, ‘He’s just gotta wait until he gets his players in here.’ And one thing that I conveyed to all the guys in that meeting was ‘You are my guys.’ I felt like we had a good start as a team.”
Playing for a new coach in a new system
[quote]He’s been a major part of the growth of the program because we’ve had some tough, tough times. He could have surrendered, he could have thrown in the towel...but he didn't. - Matt Matheny, Elon head coach on Spradlin[/quote]
So when the Phoenix went 9-23 in Matheny’s first year at the helm, the 2009-2010 season, it became a growing year. Spradlin said he understood it was a new staff but also said the relative inexperience of the team, which had lost seniors James, Atoyebi and Sanders, was a big part of that.
“I feel like it was a bunch of guys who maybe weren’t young, but were on the court for the first time, where they had been playing as sixth or seventh men, first or second guys coming off the bench a lot,” he said. “It was a new staff. It was a growing year.”
Long, Bonney, Douglas, Birdette and forward Adam Constantine played a big role in that, but Spradlin saw some major improvement. He started all but one of the Phoenix’s 32 games and led the team in scoring with 13.3 points per game.
Even with the change and the less-than-satisfactory year on the court, Matheny said Spradlin’s toughness was his best trait. He said it continued into the next year, when Elon’s record improved to 14-17, but there were still some tough losses.
“He’s been a major part of the growth of the program because we’ve had some tough, tough times,” Matheny said. “He could have surrendered, he could have thrown in the towel and said, ‘I don’t have to go through the 9-23 year, and I don’t have to fight through tough nights at Wake Forest when you lose by 40 (90-50 Dec. 13, 2009) or Coastal Carolina (University, 69-46 Nov. 17, 2009) or (the University of North Carolina at) Wilmington (86-56 Nov. 29, 2009) here.’ He could have just given up on all of that. But he didn’t.”
Spradlin’s junior year was also the year Bonney sat out after playing just two games and injuring his ankle. Bonney said it was strange not enjoying Senior Night festivities with Spradlin this past February because of the redshirt year.
“I always thought I’d be doing everything on the same plane with him,” he said. “But when I got injured and I figured out I’d be the year after that, it was different, because we always made jokes about how the class of 2008 was doing this and that, and we’d always be on teams in the drills and stuff, so that was our kind of thing. And it didn’t really end up that way, but in my mind, we’re still the class of 2008, 2012.”
At the end of the 2010-2011 season, Spradlin could look back on another solid campaign. He averaged 13.6 points per game, good for second on Elon and twelfth in the SoCon, scoring in double figures on 22 occasions. Perhaps his best outing was a 28-point performance against Davidson in a 77-70 victory Jan. 20, 2011. He ended the season ranked sixth in program history with 144 career three-pointers made.
Sanders had just returned after coaching high school basketball for a year to be the director of basketball operations for the Phoenix and saw a complete reversal in Spradlin's role.
"In that year-plus span, he had completely turned from the guy that was trying to follow everyone to the guy that’s leading people," he said. "When the guys wanted to eat, he was the one saying, ‘Let’s go to Colonnades tonight’ or ‘Let’s go to upstairs McEwen,’ as opposed to asking where we’re going to eat. That was the biggest thing – he was more a ringleader than he was when I was here."
But Spradlin maintained a attitude he learned from Nestor, even when he was selected as a preseason all-SoCon pick before his senior season.
“Coach Nestor always had these, we’d call them ‘Nestorisms,’” he said. “He always said, ‘Stats don’t mean anything. Stats are just about who gets to play the most and who gets the ball in certain situations.’ I feel like the more you play, the older I got, the more I realized it wasn’t all about scoring or whatever, you’re just trying to play at the highest level you could. The preseason awards and the awards in general, they were goals and stuff like that, and some of them were met, and some of them weren’t, but in the end, that’s not what was important.”
“Pressure, pushing down on me”
[quote]It was basically all on him as far as the leadership position for being a senior. I could tell it would not affect him, but I could tell he was conscious of it. He did an excellent job in not letting his personal stuff get in the way, and he kind of took it on his shoulders, kind of really embraced it, and he did well when he got that mindset. - Josh Bonney, Elon rising senior guard on the pressure Spradlin faced this past season[/quote]
Because of Bonney’s redshirt year, Spradlin came into the 2011-2012 season as the lone senior. He saw a lot of change in his gameplay and helped the Phoenix to a 15-win season.
“For my entire life, I’ve been a scorer,” he said. “I was here to put the ball in the hole and obviously, I did that a lot while I was here. But the role itself was a little different, and it wasn’t coaches pushing me towards it. I mean, they did to a certain extent, but I understood, I think, over the summer that we had a lot of talent and the ball needed to be spread around a lot.”
His point per game total dropped from 13.1 the year before to 9.1 in the 2011-2012 season. But Matheny found that a lot of Spradlin’s best games were when he may not have made a difference on the scoresheet, pointing out the Phoenix’s 88-87 win over the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in Alumni Gym, where he scored just five points but tied for a team-high five assists that game.
“Some of his better games this year where when he didn’t score a ton of points but he helped connect us, like Chattanooga here,” Matheny said. “I said to him after the game, ‘You were great.’ And he was, because of the way he defended, the way that he lead. He had a really good year, although his numbers as a senior weren’t as good probably as his numbers as a junior.”
Bonney noticed that Spradlin seemed to be weighed down by something.
“I could tell that there was,” he said. “It was basically all on him as far as the leadership position for being a senior. I could tell it would not affect him, but I could tell he was conscious of it. He did an excellent job in not letting his personal stuff get in the way, and he kind of took it on his shoulders, kind of really embraced it, and he did well when he got that mindset.”
Matheny said the team relied on Spradlin for almost everything, even restaurants to eat at and movies to watch on the road. He admitted that it may have affected his play, which fell off a bit from the previous year.
“This past year, the lone senior, can you imagine?” he asked. “That doesn’t happen very often, where you’re the only guy going through your last year. He’s playing with juniors, sure, but sophomores and freshmen. So we dumped everything on his shoulders. There were some great nights and some better nights than other nights, tough nights.”
A place where Spradlin stepped to the plate was leadership. Matheny looked to him as another coach on the floor, a role which Spradlin was happy to step into.
“We have 15 guys on the team, and there are several times in practice, we have such a high-paced practice, that we need upperclassmen to pull guys aside and say, ‘Hey, this is not how it is done. You’ve got to do it like this,’” Matheny said. “And he was great at that. He was really good at pulling (freshman guard) Austin (Hamilton) aside and saying, ‘Here’s where I want the ball. If you can get in the crack, and my guy bites, I’m going to come into your vision.’ Little things of the game that he had experienced. He conveyed those, I think, pretty well.”
Bonney saw a correlation to the leaders he and Spradlin had in the past when he watched his teammate this past season.
“We had some really good leaders in our past, so we kinda just emulated them to a certain degree and keep the tradition going,” he said. “When you’re a freshman, everything’s so new to you, so it’s good to have somebody who’s been through it to help you through it. Drew was great at that this year.”
Spradlin admitted he struggled a bit under the weight of the burden of being the lone senior.
“I think inside the locker room, there’s a lot of responsibility that people don’t see, and usually that’s split between a lot of people, or at least a couple,” he said. “It’s nothing like horrible, it’s not any different from any other situation, but I guess it’s really very self-imposed. I’ve always been like that, I’ve always put a ton of pressure on myself, and that’s probably how I’ve done the things that I’ve done. But it can be really hard.”
It came out in the team’s final game, an 87-63 loss to Davidson in the semifinals of the SoCon championship. Spradlin started, but played just 16 minutes, had zero points and two rebounds. Not the way he wanted to end, but Sanders noted the end result more.
"The majority of our team, especially the ones that played minutes with him in the games, were freshmen and sophomores," Sanders said. "From that aspect, it was tough because everyone’s looking at you for advice and direction. It’s a little bit tougher. I think he handled it well. We made strides as a program obviously and he was a huge part of it. He did what a senior is supposed to do, he helped elevate the program."
Finding quirks, enjoying the moments
[quote]I enjoyed being the guy that got to guard the best player most of the time, because I’ve never done that, that’s never been part of my role. I think defense is one of those things that comes with age. Defense is in your head. - Spradlin, on taking a more defensive role this past season[/quote]
Despite the way the year ended, Spradlin took a lot out of the season and the change of his style of play.
“I realized coming in (that the team has) a lot of talent that “needs the ball, and I’m probably going to have to change the way I was playing,” he said. And I’m not sure how that worked out, I’m still not sure how I feel about it, but I still think it was probably the right thing to do. And I did enjoy doing the little things.”
One of the things Spradlin got to do was play defense against the opponent’s top players, something he relished.
“I did enjoy the leadership role, and I did enjoy playing defense against certain guys,” he said. “I enjoyed being the guy that got to guard the best player most of the time, because I’ve never done that, that’s never been part of my role. I think defense is one of those things that comes with age. Defense is in your head. All of us, when you’re playing college basketball, everyone’s athletic enough to be a real good defender, it’s just whether you know what you’re doing and whether you’re smart enough or care enough.”
Spradlin looks to take those smarts to law school. He is not sure where he is going to go, but he wants to use the skill sets he believes he has to go that route.
“I was always told you should do what you’re good at, and that’s kind of the model that I’ve followed most of my life so far,” he said.
Wherever he goes, Bonney and the rest of the Phoenix have something to look forward to, even though there will be a Drew Spradlin-sized hole in Alumni Gym.
“You could definitely feel his presence gone, but I think we’ve got some good new guys coming in, and the freshmen stepped up a lot,” Bonney said. “We won’t replace him, but we will feel the void. You can’t replace him. We’ll get another dynamic role with the team chemistry and kind of work from there. We’ll definitely miss Drew.”