VALPARAISO, Ind. -- Humble, goal-oriented forward with Australian accent seeks date with destiny at the 2013 NCAA Tournament.
For Valparaiso senior Ryan Broekhoff, it's not a personal ad. It's a credo.
"It’s what everyone strives for," Broekhoff said. "All the individual awards are fantastic and mean a lot to me, but I’d trade them in to go to the NCAA Tournament."
He's the defending Horizon League Player of the Year and has won Player of the Week honors three times already this season, but don't expect Broekhoff to brag about it. It's even hard for him to talk about himself in an interview for a story about himself.
"It’s a team sport and, my brothers in the locker room, that’s what we all strive for. We put in all this hard work and dedicate all this time trying to improve and trying to get to the NCAA Tournament," Broekhoff, a native of Frankston, Victoria, Australia, said. "It’s just a huge motivating factor.
"We were so close last season.”
His voice trails off slightly with that last thought, remembering a 20-point loss at home to Detroit in the Horizon League Championship last March. Broekhoff had 13 points and six rebounds in that loss, but it is what wasn't accomplished that still haunts him. It's also what motivated him going into a rematch with the Titans nearly a week ago at Calihan Hall.
Detroit had a 17-game home winning streak and a 22-point second-half lead, but Valparaiso came storming back to erase the deficit and end the streak. Down one in the waning seconds, Broekhoff gathered a steal and was on his way to a fastbreak layup before being fouled. He was headed to the free throw line with the chance to put his team ahead for the first time in the ballgame.
"Honestly, I felt fairly calm. It’s an easy basket; there are no defenders at the free throw line," Broekhoff said of the moment. "I think they tried to ice me a little bit by calling the timeout just before I shot, but it just gave me a chance to collect my thoughts and put it all out of my mind and go to the line and shoot as if I’m shooting in practice. I was lucky enough to make them both and from then on it was just [having] to get a stop."
Valparaiso came up with the stop -- two, actually -- as the final 17 seconds ticked off the clock and the Crusaders escaped with an 89-88 win.
Broekhoff said that he had been upset with himself for missing some free throws earlier in conference play, so he put in extra work during the week. "Some" in this instance meaning two -- he went 1-for-2 from the charity stripe at Milwaukee and 4-for-5 at UIC. Broekhoff leads the Horizon League, hitting 90.8 percent of his free throws.
Against Detroit, he went 8-for-8, including the game-winner. It was satisfying.
"There is a bit of a rivalry, obviously. Last year, things happened. We’ve kind of moved on from that," Broekhoff said of the matchup. "A big home win streak … there’s nothing better than being able to go into a place and break something like that."
In total, Broekhoff amassed 18 points, nine rebounds, five assists, three steals and two blocks against the Titans, coming up just a board short of a fourth-straight double-double.
"It’s just what he does on a normal basis for us. He fills up the stat sheet, whether it’s points, rebounds, assists, blocks, steals; he finds ways to impact the game," head coach Bryce Drew said of his star forward. "He does so many things well. God-willing he stays healthy, and he’ll be making money playing somewhere, [either] in the NBA or in Europe."
Drew took over the program from his father, Homer, following Broekhoff's sophomore season and was last year named the Horizon League Men's Basketball Coach of the Year. He said that Broekhoff has made the transition easy for him -- even making Drew look good at times just by being on the floor.
"Every year, he’s gotten better. He makes a lot of plays out there that I can’t coach. He has great basketball instincts and he just makes plays that you can’t draw up," Drew said. "He always works hard every day. He’s enjoyable to coach, he’s enjoyable to be around and I don’t think we could find even one person on this campus who can say one bad thing about Ryan."
Drew -- who himself had an exceptional playing career for the Crusaders in the late 1990s -- said it's not often a coach can boast that everyone on the team gets along with the team's best player, but that's the case with Broekhoff.
"Everybody likes him. He’s the ultimate team player," Drew said. "He’s just as excited for the guy next to him making a shot as he is for him making a shot. I think it rubs off on the whole team and the whole program when your best player is that way."
Of course, Drew isn't the only one who has noticed Broekhoff's improvement and impact.
"You look back four years ago and he was mainly a shooter – a tremendous 3-point shooter. Then there was a game last year where he had 17 or 18 rebounds. He can be a high assist guy. He can put 30 points on the board," Detroit head coach Ray McCallum said of the Aussie. "He just does whatever his team needs him to do."
Whatever the team needs him to do. That was certainly the case against McCallum's Titans.
But that wasn't Valpo's last game, or possibly even its most important. Just two days after the improbable comeback win in Detroit, the Crusaders hosted Wright State. Heading into the game, the Raiders were 4-0 in conference play.
"Any time you get to play an undefeated team in conference is always exciting," Broekhoff said. "You get to go out there and really hunt them."
As in Detroit, Valparaiso trailed late again. And the Crusaders were delivered a victory by Broekhoff again. The senior had just six points with two minutes remaining on the clock but scored 12 of Valpo's last 14 points to finish with 18 points and 10 rebounds as the Crusaders pulled out a 69-63 win.
"It has been fantastic," Broekhoff said of the stretch that has seen Valpo win five straight Horizon League games, including three in a row on the road. "Except for the first half [against Detroit] obviously, we’ve been playing really well the last few games. We’re really starting to put everything together on the defensive end, our transition game has improved, our offensive spacing has really improved, our execution has really improved and it’s been a lot of fun playing the past few weeks."
What wasn't so fun was a stunning upset loss at home delivered by Loyola on the opening night of Horizon League action. The Crusaders had just ended the non-conference season with a huge road win at Murray State and were taken by surprise when the Ramblers beat them by nine on their own court.
Broekhoff thinks the loss may have served a purpose, however, becoming the turning point that ignited Valparaiso's current five-game winning streak.
"I guess it was the loss that, although you don’t want to have, maybe we needed," Broekhoff said. "It reminded us that this is the Horizon League; this is as physical as it gets, this is one of the tightest, most even leagues in the whole nation and you can’t go into any game with any complacency. It kind of motivated us."
Not that Broekhoff necessarily needed more motivation. He had a team-high 15 points in the loss, plus seven rebounds and four assists.
The motivation is there off the court, too. As Drew pointed out, the lowest grade Broekhoff -- a Kinesiology major -- got last semester was an A-.
"It’s been amazing. Four years have gone by very, very fast," Broekhoff said of his time at Valparaiso. "I’ve learned so much; I’ve grown so much not only as a basketball player but as a person. They really stress not only being a good player, but being a good person and being [involved] in the community. They really work on the character of the person. It’s been a huge privilege to be able to come here for four years."
As much of a positive impact as the experience has had on Broekhoff, he has had a major impact on the basketball program, as well. Drew wasn't willing to discuss Broekhoff's legacy just yet, though.
"Right now, we’re still in the thick of things. Hopefully in a couple months we’ll be able to talk about that," Drew said. "I know he’s still hungry and our team is still hungry to keep improving."
Broekhoff, however, knows what he wants to be remembered for.
"Hopefully people will remember me as someone who worked really hard at both ends of the floor and did whatever the team needed in any situation," he said. "And hopefully we can finish this out with an NCAA Tournament.”
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