June 20, 2012
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Scott Draud
Basketball – 1987, 88, 90, 91
Here’s a trivia question for Vanderbilt basketball fans. Who was the first Vanderbilt player to make a three-pointer in a game?
Anyone?
The answer is Scott Draud. It was his three-pointer that began Vanderbilt’s remarkable streak of making at least one three-pointer in every single game since the three-point line came into existence during the 1986-87 season.
The former Commodore guard sank Vanderbilt’s first three-pointer in the team’s season-opener against Virginia Commonwealth on Nov. 28, 1986 in the Hawaiian Airlines Silversword Invitational.
Draud would go on to earn SEC All-Freshman team honors in 1987 and would close his career by being selected All-SEC First Team by the coaches in 1991. He scored 1,466 points as a Commodore, which ranks 16th all-time, and led Vanderbilt in scoring as a junior and senior.
Fittingly, the individual responsible for the first three-pointer in school history also happens to be one of the program’s most prolific shooters from beyond the arc. Draud’s 288 career three-pointers ranks fourth in school history. He is also tied for the school record with nine three-pointers made and holds the attempts record with 17. Both records were set against LSU, but in separate games.
VUCommodores.com recently spoke with Draud, who lives in Northern Kentucky with his wife and three children. Earlier this month he was back in Nashville with his son, Scotty, 10, who was attending Vanderbilt’s men’s basketball camp.
VUCommodores.com: What is your occupation?
Scott Draud: I’ve been in education for nearly 20 years as a teacher, assistant principal and principal. Last year I taught eighth-grade English and it was my first time teaching to middle schoolers. It had been 10 years since I last taught and that was at the high school level with juniors and seniors.
Have you been involved in coaching?
I was a longtime high school basketball coach. I was a head coach for seven years and an assistant for two. I was at Dixie Heights High School and then Newport High School. I’ve kind of gone back and forth between the two schools and the reason I quit coaching is there was a time when I was an assistant principal and head basketball coach at Dixie Heights, but I left to go be the principal at Newport. The only reason I quit teaching was to have the opportunity to be a principal.
The only coaching that I do now is that of my kids. I’ve got three kids and this is giving me the opportunity to spend more time with them and coach their teams. I’ve got two daughters Sarah, 14, Katie, 12, and a son, Scotty, 10.
You were recently back in town to take your son to basketball camp, what is it like to return to Memorial Gym?
There is a great sense of nostalgia. I love going back to campus and I love going back to games. I think one of the factors that sticks out the most for me is that we won. The banners that are up in the rafters there; I’m proud to say that I was a part of three of the teams that made it to the NCAA Tournament. The one year we didn’t make it to the NCAA Tournament was 1990 and we won the NIT that year.
You had a unique career in which you played two years, redshirted a year and then played two more, why did you elect to redshirt after your sophomore year?
I was playing behind two outstanding players in Barry Booker and Barry Goheen and by redshirting it gave me an opportunity to start for my last two years in 1990 and 91.
There was very little fanfare around your first three-pointer, but it began a remarkable streak that continues today.
I was 1-for-3 and didn’t get a ton of playing time in that first game as a freshman, but the first shot that I hit was a three. I didn’t even think about the significance of it at the time.
I was watching a Vanderbilt game one time and a trivia question popped up on TV asking who made the first three-pointer in school history and Barry Booker, who was commentating, said, ‘I was there, but I didn’t hit it.’ I was thinking, ‘who hit it? Was that me?’ Sure enough, my name popped up there on the screen. I was surprised.
Nobody really made a big deal about me hitting the first three to start off the year. It wasn’t news at the time, but some 25 years later, there has been a three in every game; it is kind of interesting to think back to where it all begun.
How little was the team’s offense built around the three-pointer those first few years?
One of the really interesting factors of college basketball is looking at the evolution of the three-point shot because when it first came out, people didn’t shoot it a lot. We didn’t shoot it a lot. The only time we were allowed to shoot it was with the inside-out shot, meaning that it first had to touch a post player’s hands and needed to be kicked out to the perimeter before we could shoot it.
Of course, we had a great center at the time in Will Perdue so that made sense as well. Defenses collapsed around him and he threw it out and we got our shots off, but only in that capacity. Really for the first two years, it was a really slow process. We might only take five or six three-pointers a game, which is nothing now.
How much did the emphasis on three-point shot change by the end of your career?
One of Rick Pitino’s first teams at Kentucky was an undersized group and he really emphasized the three-point shot. It was one of the first teams that would just come down the court and start firing it up.
Eddie Fogler took over for C.M. (Newton) around that same time and he took a little bit of a different approach and enabled us to shoot more threes and look to shoot the ball more. By the time I was a senior, we were shooting the three with more regularity and it didn’t always have to go inside out, but it was still preferred.
