Baylor Head Coach Scott Drew Named Coach Wooden ‘Keys to Life’ Award Winner
Athletes in Action announced its winner for the coveted Coach Wooden “Keys to Life” Award, and it’s a Big 12 coach. Baylor’s Scott Drew was named the recipient Tuesday.
With that, he makes history by, when combined with his father, Homer Drew, winning the award in 2012, becoming the latter part of the first father-son duo to both win the award. The Drew’s also join a group of many other basketball greats who have received the honor, including the likes of David Robinson, Allan Houston, Hubert Davis, Rick Barnes, John Beilein, Jerry Colangelo, Del Harris, Mark Price, Billy and Mary Kennedy and Clark Kellogg, among others.
The award, established in 1998, is given annually at the Final Four to a current or former basketball figure who best exemplifies the character and leadership for which the legendary Coach John Wooden is known.
This season, Drew has commanded the Bears to a 21-8 record, as we’re in the final week of the regular season. They’re ranked seventh nationally and have won 20-plus games for the 14th time in the last 16 years under his direction.
They’ve compiled double-digit wins in the Big 12 for the eighth time in the last nine seasons. Additionally, the Bears are still alive in the conference-championship race, as they aim to become only the second team in Big 12 history to win three-straight conference crowns (Kansas is the other).
Drew is in his 20th year with Baylor, having orchestrated one of the greatest rebuilds in college basketball history. That features a National Championship in 2021, which came on the heels of the program’s first-ever Big 12 Title. On top of that, he’s one of two active coaches to win an NCAA title and an NIT title and the only one to win both at the same school.
The longtime Bears head coach has sent 51 players on to professional careers. Thirty-nine of the 43 players who exhausted their playing careers in Waco under Drew have graduated from Baylor.
