Former Northwestern men’s basketball player David Newman committed Tuesday to Drake and will resume his career in his hometown of Des Moines, Iowa.
Earlier in the week, fellow former Wildcat Adam Robinson committed to play at Division II South Dakota State. Robinson made his decision Saturday.
Newman and Robinson’s announcements ended a month-long saga that started in late March when four players quit NU’s 5-25 team and said they would transfer.
The other two players, Steve Lepore and Brody Deren, committed last week to Wake Forest and Creighton, respectively.
Robinson can play this coming season because he transferred to a non-Division I school. The other three players can practice with their teams, but cannot play until next year, according to NCAA rules.
Newman, a 5-foot-10 sophomore point guard and former Iowa Mr. Basketball, said his decision to attend Drake was not solely based on the school being close to home.
“My decision wasn’t made for family reasons,” Newman said. “I’ve known (Drake) coach (Kurt) Kanaskie for a long time and I think it’s going to be a real comfortable situation to go to.”
Drake finished 11-18 and 4-14 in the Missouri Valley Conference this season. When Newman suits up for the Bulldogs, the team could feature as many as five transfer players — including four from junior colleges — on its roster.
In addition, Newman will be reunited with freshman center Greg Danielson, a former teammate at Hoover High School. In his senior year, Newman averaged 19 points and 10 assists per game in leading Hoover to the state title game. He was named the 1998 Iowa Mr. Basketball.
Coming out of high school, Newman said Drake was one of four colleges he was considering. The other schools were NU, Oklahoma and Iowa.
“They play in a good conference,” Newman said of Drake. “The Missouri Valley is pretty solid — it’s going to get two or three teams in the NCAA tournament every year.”
Newman, who started all 29 games of his freshman season, hurt his knee in the offseason and had difficulty recovering. He averaged 4.4 points per game this year but started only 12 of 28 contests and didn’t get off the bench in NU’s 51-41 loss to Wisconsin in the Big Ten tournament.
Newman said he hopes to play immediately for the Bulldogs. He visited Drake over the weekend and chose the school over Creighton, Providence and Southern Mississippi.
Robinson, a 6-foot-9 freshman center, said he didn’t want to sit out a season and hoped to find a school that had a good basketball program as well as a strong curriculum in computers. He was a graphic design major at NU.
“I looked at my options and if I stayed in Division I there were various ones to choose from,” Robinson said. “But I would have had to sit out a year and I didn’t want to. So I chose a really good (Division II program) — one of the best out there.”
South Dakota State ended this season with a 21-9 record and made the NCAA Division II tournament. Robinson said the school recruited him out of high school, but he was focused on Division I at the time.
“Nothing’s going to be given to me, but I expect to play right off,” said Robinson, who played in 16 games this year as a reserve and averaged 1.1 points per contest. “It’s going to be real fun to start winning games and be part of a really good team.”
