The Lincoln Blue Tigers have found the new leader of their men’s basketball program.
Jimmy Drew was introduced as the new head coach in a press conference Tuesday morning after spending the past six seasons as the director of basketball operations and assistant coach under Johnny Dawkins at the University of Central Florida.
Drew has also spent time on the coaching staffs of DePaul, Kentucky Wesleyan and Victory Rock Prep. He has ties to the state of Missouri from his playing days where he spent the first two seasons of his collegiate career at Southeast Missouri State before transferring to DePaul.
“When we set out to search for our next head men’s basketball coach, we wanted an individual with strong ties to this talent-rich region,” Lincoln athletic director Kevin Wilson said. “We also wanted a proven competitor who was player-centered, resourceful and would bring a coach of discipline, accountability and grind.”
Gallery: Jimmy Drew Named Lincoln Men's Basketball Coach
Drew fit the bill for the Blue Tigers and is well aware of the task set before him: getting Lincoln to make the jump into the top-tier of the MIAA.
“The bar is pretty high in this conference, and that is honestly something that attracted me to this job,” Drew said. “I want to compete against the best, I want to roll it out there and see where we stand against the top of the top. That is something I have always strived to do.
“It is not going to be something that happens today or tomorrow, it is going to be a process and we are going to build this thing the right way to sustain it. But I am not the most patient person in the room, I can tell you that. … I am a guy that wants to win and win today. We are going to attack this thing and we are going to move this thing forward in the right way and we are going to get after from the start.”
Drew is going to bring a fast-paced style of basketball back to Lincoln, very similar to the system former coach and current university president John Moseley used to revamp the Blue Tigers’ program when he arrived in Jefferson City in 2014.
“We are going to push tempo, we are always going to want to push the tempo,” Drew said. “Defensively, we are always going to pick up 94 feet, that’s kind of going to be our calling card. We won’t always necessarily press out of that, but the thing we want to do defensively is we want to speed you up and make you play at a pace that is a little bit different than what you are used to. … On the offensive side of the ball, we want to identify the first great shot.”
Drew experienced a lot of success in his time with the UCF basketball program in the past six seasons, including two 20-win seasons and one NCAA Tournament appearance where the Knights lost a heartbreaker to a very talented Duke team in the second round. But it is the connections he is going to remember most about his time with the Knights.
“It was a great experience, working for Coach Dawkins was incredible,” he said. “… The people that I met at UCF is the thing I am going to remember the most. We were able to take a program there that hadn’t won a lot and do some incredible things with it, kind of similar to what we are going to do here. I think there is an opportunity here to win when we got the right people on board, staff wise and hit the recruiting trail and identify the people that want to be here and want to be on board to build this thing. The sky is the limit.”
The next step will be for Drew to fill the rest of his coaching staff. He will be looking both internally and externally to fill the positions.
“We will do both, it is going to be a situation where it has to be the right fit,” he said. “I have already talked to a handful of people and there is actually a lot of interest in the positions. … Can they develop young, can they represent our program the right way and can they recruit, those are the three things I look for. There is a few on the table that I have talked to already, and we are going to see after this week where that all falls. We are going to make that a priority, the sooner the better we fill that staff in and we can start going to work.”