“There’s not really anything unique about me,” said junior guard Drew Diener.
Yeah, right Drew.
In just two years time, Diener has gone from redshirting and seeing limited playing time to being an offensive giant for the Billikens.
Diener leads the Bills in three point field goals with 45 treys this season. He is shooting 45.7 percent from the field, 65.3% from the free throw line and is third on the team in scoring.
This season, Diener has surpassed his two-ear career totals in every offensive category.
“Each summer I made a point to improve one aspect of my game in order to build up to be a contributor to the team,” Diener said. “I can never be satisfied and I have to make the most of my time to improve as a player.”
The fruits of Diener’s summer improvements have shown in his numbers. As a freshman, Diener appeared in 12 games, a total of 24 minutes and was 1 of 9 from behind the three-point arc.
During his sophomore season, Diener boasted the best free throw shooting percentage in the club, going 80.5 percent from the line. He led the Bills in treys, draining 22, including the dramatic 25-foot game-winner against University of Illinois-Chicago.
This year, not only have Diener’s statistics continued to improve, his role on the team has expanded as well.
With Chris Sloan moving from guard to forward at the beginning of this season and the temporary loss of Marque Perry a few weeks ago, Diener found himself taking on a scorer’s mentality and becoming a more dominant factor of the Billiken offense.
“Chris Sloan’s change put more pressure on us,” Diener said. “Sloan is the best defender on the perimeter, and it put a heavy burden on other perimeter players. I’m just taking it one game at a time and trying to do an adequate job each game.”
Adequate is an understatement. Saturday against Charlotte, Diener was the hottest Billiken on the floor, posting a team-high 22 points, going 8 of 9 from the field and 6 of 7 from three-point range.
But Diener doesn’t see his recent offensive fire as an exceptional individual effort. Instead, it’s simply something that has to be done to fill the void while a teammate is out.
“We all looked at it as an opportunity to be more productive and add a scoring punch. Everyone had to fill the void, no one alone could do it. We took it upon ourselves every game,” Diener said.
The Bills now have plays centered around getting the ball into Diener’s hot hands to pull off a shot, especially while Marque Perry was out of the line-up.
“They’ve been calling more plays for me recently. It started when Que was out, but my number kept getting called a lot even when Que was playing. It’s a good feeling,” Diener said.
This season has been full of good feelings for Diener, including a mini-family reunion when the Bills took on the DePaul Blue Demons and later the Marquette Golden Eagles.
Diener had the opportunity to resume the same one-on-one match ups that he grew up with in Wisconsin when the Bills hosted DePaul and Diener played against his younger brother Drake, a sophomore guard.
Later in the season, it was another reunion as Diener had the opportunity to face his cousin Travis, a freshman at Marquette.
“It was more difficult to play against my brother than my cousin,” Diener said. “My brother and I are very close, and it’s hard rooting against him. But every game it gets a little easier to put my emotions aside, because it’s easy to see how important these games are for conference rankings and seedings going into the conference tournament.”
Heading into the conference tournament, Diener’s ability to put his emotions aside and play to the fullest of his capabilities prove that he is likely to provide a dynamic, maybe even unique spark to the Billikens offense.
