Josh Andrews file
Age: 32
Birthday: Nov. 12, 1982
Family: Parents Jeff and Jennifer; wife Ashley, stepdaughter Alexis (15), daughter Ava (3)
High school: Hamilton, Class of 2001
College: Union (Ky.) College, Class of 2005, bachelor's degree in mathematics; Indiana Wesleyan University, Class of 2008, master's degree in education
Coaching history: Princeton junior varsity head coach, two years (2005-06 and 2006-07), 39-1 record; Princeton head coach, four years (2007-08 through 2010-11), 80-18 record; Middletown head coach, two years (2011-12 and 2012-13), 32-17 record; Taylor University head coach, two years (2013-14 and 2014-15), 22-35 record
He looks more like a kid than a college basketball coach.
Walk upstairs inside Odle Arena and step into his small corner office, and that’s the first thing you’ll notice about Josh Andrews.
A boyish look at the age of 32? He isn’t complaining.
But he is, indeed, a college coach. Andrews is in his second year at the helm of the Taylor University men’s basketball program, having followed an extraordinary road to get here.
He’s lived something of a nomadic basketball life, and he’s been a winner everywhere. Everywhere but here in northeast Indiana, at a small school with roughly 2,000 students.
But Andrews is here to tell you this: That’s going to change.
“It’s tested my patience and my toughness,” he said. “There’s so many unknowns, and it’s not for the faint of heart. But it is going to happen here.”
A college experience
Seventy miles northeast of Indianapolis. Fifty miles southwest of Fort Wayne. Fifteen miles southeast of Marion.
The 952-acre campus rises suddenly on the drive toward Upland. The countryside dominates the view, and then … welcome to Taylor.
It’s a Christian liberal arts school that plays NAIA Division II basketball. Taylor has long been a national player on the NAIA scene, known for very good teams and coaching stability.
How stable? The Trojans’ last two head coaches, Don Odle and Paul Patterson, performed their duties for a combined 66 seasons.
The program has slipped in recent times, at least by Taylor’s lofty standards. The Trojans haven’t been to the national tournament since 2005-06.
Patterson decided to retire after going 21-12 in 2012-13, his 34th year. He quit as the all-time winningest coach at an Indiana four-year institution with 734 victories.
Andrews was coaching at Middletown High School at the time. He was contacted by someone connected to Taylor about the job opening.
Andrews had spent one season playing for Patterson at Taylor, and they had remained in contact. On July 3, 2013, Andrews announced that he had accepted the head coaching position at TU.
“Coach Patterson had an impact on a lot of young men, and I was one of them,” Andrews said. “This type of job doesn’t come open very much. I just felt like it was an opportunity I had to take if I could get it.
“It’s a place that fits what I am as a person. It’s crucial that I played at a Hamilton and coached at a Middletown to walk into a job like this and understand heritage and history.”
Butler County roots
Andrews is a 2001 graduate of Hamilton High School. He spent his early years in Hamilton, moved into the Fairfield district and then returned to Hamilton for his last two years of high school.
He will rattle off names of coaches that influenced him as a younger player, guys like Jason Abodeely, Rod Ritzie and Mike West.
“I learned as a freshman in high school what it really meant to compete,” Andrews said. “Rod Ritzie is the first guy as a coach that I saw foam at the mouth in practice and in games. When you’re 14, you’re like wow, how does he care that much? But it made me try to do everything to the best of my ability.”
He started for the Fairfield varsity as a sophomore point guard. Andrews respected his head coach, Dave Bauer. But he felt he was better suited to play up-tempo ball at Hamilton under Larry Allen, so he transferred.
Andrews flourished in Allen’s system. He was known for his remarkable accuracy at the free-throw line.
“I found out nobody guarded you at the free-throw line, so I could control that,” Andrews said. “It kind of segues into coaching. You’ve got to control the controllables.”
Andrews and Allen meshed because they viewed basketball in much the same way. Their relationship wasn’t always hugs and grins, but it was genuine.
“There’s a thousand things I could say about Larry Allen, and almost all of them would be positive,” Andrews said. “He tells you the truth, and I love that. Sometimes you don’t like to hear it, but he is gut-level honest. You always knew where you stood.
“I have such an appreciation for him because he entrusted leadership on the floor to me. He had a great ability to find a balance in coaching a system and letting players play and take ownership of how to succeed. He knew how to sell confidence, maybe courage, in his players.”
Andrews was already thinking like a coach. He was starting to get the bug. But he wasn’t a great player, and while he had talked to some colleges, they weren’t exactly pounding on his door.
The decision was made to attend Miami University and not play basketball. Once there, though, Andrews realized he didn’t really want to be finished.
After one year in Oxford, he moved on to Taylor to play for Patterson.
“I quickly found out how many good players are out there,” Andrews said. “I found out how good small-college basketball is. I didn’t play a ton that year, but I learned a lot. I developed a great appreciation for coaching and becoming a student of the game.”
He loved the school, but realized that he probably wasn’t good enough to be a significant player at Taylor. After a year in Upland, Andrews transferred to Union (Ky.) College.
He was a two-year captain and point guard for Kelly Combs at Union, also an NAIA Div. II school. He was an important player, but again, not a great one.
“I wanted to play and compete at the highest level I could in college,” Andrews said. “I wanted playing experience to prepare myself for coaching. I knew where I was going with it. I was really driven, probably a trait of a lot of successful coaches and something I have to harness.”
He graduated from Union and accepted a teaching job at Princeton High School, which was in the process of starting fresh in its basketball program. The new head coach was a man named Bill Brewer.
Tragedy comes calling
Brewer had come over from Roger Bacon, where his team famously defeated LeBron James and Akron St. Vincent-St. Mary to win the Division II state title in 2002.
Andrews and Brewer struck up a friendship. From that came Andrews’ first coaching position, as the Vikings’ junior varsity coach.
He went 39-1 in two seasons leading the PHS reserves. All the while, the bond between Andrews and Brewer strengthened.
“He had become a strong mentor and a really good friend to me,” Andrews said. “And then …”
On Nov. 1, 2007, Princeton had a normal preseason practice session. The next morning, Andrews arrived at school and immediately knew something was wrong.
“There were a lot of people outside at 6:45 in the morning,” he recalled. “There were people motioning for me to hurry up, and I just remember it did not feel right.”
Bill Brewer was gone, dead at the age of 42 from a heart attack that morning.
“You can’t set yourself up to be prepared for something like that,” Andrews said. “It’s just a devastating blow. You just try to get through it.”
The Princeton administration immediately elevated Andrews to the program’s top spot.
Was he ready, at the age of 24, to be a head coach in the Greater Miami Conference? It didn’t matter, really. It was happening. Sink or swim.
Andrews responded with an 80-18 record in four years at the helm. Princeton won three GMC crowns and lost to Columbus Northland 60-58 in the 2009 Division I state final.
Andrews said he had a talented, mentally tough group of players that deserves most of the credit.
“When they gave me the job, I said I had to do it my way,” he said. “I had such a passion and a calling to that group of guys. I don’t know if it was a logical move, but I believe I was the right guy for the time. I certainly made a lot of mistakes, but I had great people supporting me.”
Andrews moved on to GMC rival Middletown for the 2011-12 and 2012-13 seasons, going 32-17. He’s proud of the two conference championships the Middies won during his tenure, ending a title drought of 17 years.
“We had some great players,” Andrews said. “Hopefully I added some belief.”
His first year, Middletown made it all the way to the Division I regional final with a starting five that included five major-college athletes: Geovonie McKnight (Miami) and Vincent Edwards (Purdue) for basketball, Chance Sorrell (Penn State), Zach Edwards (Cincinnati) and Jalin Marshall (Ohio State) for football.
The Middies defeated GMC foe Fairfield during the regular season, but the Indians rose up and denied Middletown a state berth with a 62-59 overtime win at Xavier University’s Cintas Center.
“I would have loved taking the Middies to state, but Fairfield got it done,” Andrews said. “I have great respect for Tim Austing and what he did at Fairfield.
“We had a tough group of dudes. We beat a terrific Moeller team in the regional semis to get to that Friday night against Fairfield. Looking back, you almost wish the order of those games could’ve been reversed. Now you’re playing a team you’ve already beaten, a team that had never been to that place in the tournament.
“The beauty of the NBA is that it’s best-of-7, and most guys will tell you the best team’s going to win the best-of-7. In the high school state tournament, you’ve got to do it in one night. There’s a lot of things in play that can help neutralize what happens in that type of environment.
“It was an overtime game. It wasn’t like our guys came out and laid an egg. You don’t get to the state Final Four by chance. Fairfield was a very good team and beat us. No excuses.”
One of Fairfield’s starters was Tim Fleming, a sophomore guard. He’s now a freshman guard at Taylor.
“I think it’s sensitive for him, but I tease him about it,” Fleming said. “You can’t let him forget.”
Said Andrews, “He brings it up every now and then. He doesn’t get fed on road trips when he says that stuff.”
It may be ironic that Andrews recruited an opposing player from one of the most painful defeats of his career. But Fleming said it’s all turned out for the best.
“Honestly, I had seen him as that purple enemy,” Fleming said. “It was good to meet him, to get to know him. We have talks all the time about basketball and life.
“That regional final was the beginning of the winning culture at Fairfield. Once you get a taste of that, you don’t ever want to go back to losing seasons. You see what kind of people it takes and what kind of coaching it takes, and you want to bring that wherever you go. That’s kind of what we’re hoping to do here at Taylor.”
Aiming for the sky
Taylor posted an 11-19 record in Andrews’ first season. The Trojans beat a couple Top 20 teams, but lacked consistency.
This season began in solid fashion, but Taylor has faded. Top-ranked Indiana Wesleyan handed the Trojans their ninth straight loss Tuesday night, dropping them to 11-16 overall and 2-11 in the rugged Crossroads League.
“We’re more competitive this year. It just hasn’t turned to wins yet,” Andrews said. “But we’re not far off.”
There are athletic scholarships at this level, but that money typically breaks down into a lot of partial scholarships.
Andrews said Taylor is recruiting aggressively, and he believes that will pay off in the near future. His latest recruiting class includes Franklin’s Evan Crowe.
“The losing record, that’s a different place for me,” Andrews said. “It’s fatiguing. You get tired of telling the guys that we’re close. I shared with the guys the other day — I believe it’s a Winston Churchill quote — that success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.
“This is the development part. This is where our program is at right now. But it will turn.”
The desire to lead has always been foremost in Andrews’ brain. He showed that as a point guard. He’s showing it now.
“I was always studying the game and coaches probably in a way that a lot of guys don’t, especially when I knew I wanted to coach,” Andrews said. “That passion and desire really came alive when I was in college.
“I remember (La Salle coach) Dan Fleming once telling me, ‘You’ll look back and laugh in five, 10 years. You’ll look at how much you’ve grown and how much you know and laugh.’ It’s very true. If you’re not growing in our profession, you need to get out.
“I would never try to sell anybody on how great of a player I was because I wasn’t. But I loved to lead, and I loved to win. That’s just who I was. I probably appreciated competing more than I even did the art of the game.
“I know that God’s connected everything on the almost laughable track I’ve been on. My desire is to impact lives the way so many people have impacted me. I think that’s what makes the world go round.”
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