Young Valpo Squad Seeks Fourth Consecutive Postseason

By Mike Lopresti

Valparaiso’s game at Ohio University had just ended, and the Crusaders were back in the locker room. “I hadn’t even changed yet,’’ Alec Peters remembered.

Nov. 17, 2013 had been a good day for Peters, and a bad one. In only his fourth college game, he had 16 points and 13 rebounds, but the Crusaders lost 76-72. A coach called him into the hallway, handed him a cellphone and told him his mother needed to speak with him. Suddenly, all manners of nightmare scenarios flashed through his mind.

"I thought something had happened to my dad, my grandfather, someone in my family,” he said. Actually, something had happened to his entire hometown of Washington, Ill.  A tornado outbreak had roared across the Midwest, and one of its EF-4 members had picked Washington for its target. A lot of the town wasn’t there anymore. His family out on the farm was safe, but what about all his friends, the faces from his childhood? Midwesterners know to keep their eyes on the sky during turbulent weather, but in November?

“On the way home, it was like a nine-hour bus ride and the whole way I was pulling my hair out, trying to call people. It was probably the longest trip of my life,” he said. “I think I slept five hours that night. I got up about six in the morning because I knew I wasn’t going back to sleep. I drove home. When I saw it, my eyes got wide open. You’re finding people’s front doors three streets over. Everything was a scattered mess. It looked like a war zone.”

Dozens of homes lost. Millions of dollars of damage. But amazingly, just one death. In some ways, the town had caught a break. The twister touched down on a Sunday morning, so many of the citizens were in church when their homes blew away.

Eleven months later, Washington has been rebuilding. That includes a new swing set at a park, built by – the Valparaiso basketball team. Peters and his teammates dropped by in July and went to work. Not that the Crusaders’ roster is stacked with handymen.

“I would love to tell you they were all masters of power tools, but a few of them had a little deer-in-the-headlights look on their faces,” Peters said. “But they were all open to trying it.”

Working together is something Valpo does well, as Bryce Drew prepares his fourth batch of Crusaders. The roster always seems to include faces from hither and yon, and this is no exception. Two of the freshmen are from Montreal, another from Croatia. Returning center Vashil Fernandez, with 58 blocked shots last season, is from Jamaica. He grew up playing soccer and running track -- his home had not one, but two Usain Bolt pictures on the wall – and did not sample basketball until high school.

There are a gaggle of American urban kids, but also Peters, all-freshman in the Horizon League last year, from the farmland of central Illinois.

“It’s one giant melting pot,” Peters said. “It’s amazing how much you can learn from other people.”

Fernandez, a senior, often takes the lead in helping the process, even if northern Indiana seems another universe from Jamaica. Especially in January. “I don’t enjoy it,” he said of winter. “I tolerate it.”

Drew said his center could walk across campus at the busiest hour and not find a stranger. “I can relate to most of them, coming from all over the world, being thousands of miles away from their family,” he said, “and by understanding how hard it is to get this opportunity, so you have to make the most of it when you get it.”

Valpo went 18-16 last season, and returns Peters (12.7) and Jubril Adekoya (5.8) from the starting lineup. Guard Lexus Williams should have been back, too, but will be lost for the season after an ACL injury.

So Fernandez will have to be a force inside, and a lot of newcomers will have to pitch in if Drew is to continue his habits of winning (66-36 after three seasons) and postseason bids (he’s 3-for-3). He reloaded last season after losing 75 percent of his scoring, and has some revamping to do again.

“With a young team, I’ve found that I have to be a lot more patient. I’ve had to do a lot more teaching,” he said. “If they were going against everything I was trying to teach them, I’d probably be hitting my head against the wall and be miserable. But they’re trying to soak in everything.”

Peters will be an important key; a young man whose outlook changed with one phone call last November.

“Something like that makes you realize you have to live every day,” he said. “I might not be able to walk tomorrow. I might not be able to play basketball. It puts a whole new perspective on it.”

Peters and his team will be returning from the Missouri game on Nov. 17. Back home in Washington, they’ll be thinking of something else.