Eric Henderson still remembers it vividly. He was a young, peppy second-grade teacher looking to influence his class like his sixth-grade teacher influenced his development. Ever since those middle school days he wanted to be a teacher, he wanted to influence young lives. That’s what he signed up for, not the moment in which he was about to experience.
“I’m not feeling very good,” one of his second-grade boys said.
“You’re good,” Henderson said, “Just go grab a drink of water and come on back in.”
“Mr. Hendo,” the second-grader said “two minutes” later, “I still don’t feel good.”
“Just go grab one more drink,” Henderson told him.
The student came back into the classroom and promptly puked “all over the table.” When he was done, he looked up at Henderson and said “I told you I didn’t feel very good.” The entire class “busted out laughing” in the ensuing moments. Henderson says that “there weren’t many bad days” in second grade and that he focused on allowing his students to have fun by creating an “enjoyable environment.”
15 years later Henderson jokes that he still picks up puke as a father of four–including two “really young”--kids. He’s doing it as Drake’s head basketball coach instead of as a teacher, though. Henderson’s thought process as a second-grade teacher and principal aren’t all that dissimilar from his thought process as he looks to keep the good times rolling as Drake’s basketball coach.
“Is it a business? We don’t really look at it like that,” Henderson told Basket Under Review. “It is, probably. But, we want to make sure it’s a place where they can learn and grow and have fun. Something that we really learned from there, and then being a principle, it was important for me that all of our teachers and staff members knew that they understood how valuable they were, how much of a difference they could make in our program. It’s no different here.”
Henderson initially envisioned that his coaching career would cap out at the high school level and that he’d be okay with that until his coach at Wayne State Greg McDermott asked him if he’d ever thought about coaching in college and he eventually “got the bug” to coach in college.
Now that Henderson is running the show for this Drake program rather than a second-grade classroom, the classroom-like fun doesn’t have to stop. Henderson says he’s still bought in on “developing young people” like he was years ago, just in a different way. He believes he still hasn’t lost his title from back in the day.
“As a teacher I try to help young people learn and grow and develop every single day on the basketball court,” Henderson said. “We’re extremely competitive, but it’s more than that. I want to make sure that people understand that it’s a holistic approach and we want to win as many basketball games as possible, but at the end of the day we’re not going to sacrifice character.”
If Henderson doesn’t win, it won’t be difficult to notice. Drake has reached the NCAA Tournament in four of the last five seasons and has won 25 games or more in every season since 2020.
As a result, its last two head coaches have taken on Big 10 jobs. After Ben McCollum took the Bulldogs to the tournament and completed a 31-win season, he was poached by Iowa. The year prior, program architect Darian DeVries–who is a friend of Hendersson–took the West Virginia job before ultimately leaving for Indiana.
Those around this Drake program expects to win consistently. They aren’t going to take anything else. If it was any other way, Henderson may not have bought in to what Drake Athletic Director Brian Hardin was selling.
“If I was gonna leave for a program from South Dakota State, I was gonna go to a program that really cared about winning and that’s what I see at Drake,” Henderson said. “Is there pressure to win? I think there’s pressure to win in a lot of jobs, so I don’t look at it like that.”
If there is pressure, Henderson appears to be as equipped to handle it as any coach Drake could’ve gone out and gotten. In his six years as South Dakota State’s head coach, Henderson took the Jackrabbits to the NCAA Tournament twice, won 20 games four times and put together a 30-game winner in 2021-22 that went 18-0 in the Summit League.
Henderson’s campaign at South Dakota State came in a similar spot to the one Henderson is in now as McCollum’s successor. Prior to being named the Jackrabbits’ head coach, Henderson was now Iowa State head coach TJ Otzelberger’s lead assistant as Otzelberger engineered a program that became an annual presence in the NCAA Tournament.
Henderson has never had the luxury of low expectations. Perhaps if he did, he wouldn’t be equipped to step into the shoes that he’s been tasked with filling.
“Coach Henderson is the right person at the right time to lead Drake,” Otzelberger said in a release when Henderson was hired. “His ability to connect, develop and empower student athletes is second to none. He’s a proven winner with a burning desire to succeed.”
Perhaps Henderson will succeed–the track record indicates that he will–perhaps he won’t. If he doesn’t, then it won’t be for a lack of being himself. Henderson isn’t budging on a few things as he returns to his home state of Iowa and looks to keep this Drake program– that went through its lean years throughout his childhood–rolling.
Henderson’s team is going to play fast and is willing to take shots earlier in the clock than McCollum’s team did a year ago as it looked to methodically wear opposing defenses out with consistent good shots late in possessions. He’s not going to stop with the “big old bear hugs” that sophomore guard Owen Larson–who played for Henderson as a freshman and followed him to Drake–says Henderson gives out daily, either.
In an era of transactions and an overwhelming pressure to perform driving college basketball’s best leagues, Henderson is an outwardly-positive players’ coach looking for his team to take ownership at any given opportunity.
“I don’t think you’ll find a coaching staff in the country that lets you play this freely and with this much confidence, they’ll never tell you not to shoot the ball,” Larson–who is still out of the lineup with a torn ACL and says he hopes to return “by a little before Christmas break–told Basket Under Review. “They’re going to encourage shoots and we don’t really run sets, it’s just kind of a free-flowing offense and it’s a lot of fun to play in.”
When Henderson’s teams are at their best, he doesn’t have to interject all that much or call all that many actions. He can guide his group and let them know what he sees, but when it’s going for this Drake team it will be on the back of its players running with a top 100 tempo in the nation, trusting each other and knowing their roles.
“Offensively I want [the fans] to notice how free we play to try to give our guys a lot of freedom and confidence and let them hoop,” Henderson said. “Maybe most important is just to have a selfless group, I want to make sure we play very selflessly.”
Larson admits that enough bad shots consecutively eventually results in Henderson making a substitution and that the generally positive head coach isn’t afraid to “get on you” if he senses a mental lapse.
Henderson is working to pull the selfishness fully out of his e drain his team entirely of selfishness and is bought in on making sure they avoid it in order to become “extremely sound defensively, extremely physical and a good rebounding basketball team.”
Perhaps it’s not quite a second-grade classroom setting, but Henderson is giving away his not-so secret past as he looks to keep Drake in contention for MVC titles.
“It makes sense,” Larson says of Henderson’s teaching background. “He’s a very positive, energetic person who is just very good at getting people together, bringing them together.”
This meshing together act will have to be as good as any that Henderson has done to this point if his team is going to compete the way he wants it to, though. His Drake team has just one player returning to the school, one player from his 2024-25 South Dakota State team and 12 newcomers. It’s a fresh start in every sense of the word.
It’s almost jarring, but this Drake team wasn’t included within the preseason top five that the conference released and is ranked just seventh in Blue Ribbon College Basketball’s MVC preseason ranking.
This team still walks and talks like it’s Drake, though.
“I think our team’s gonna be really good,” Larson said. “I think the sky is the limit. It's our goal to win the regular season, win the tournament, make it to March Madness, win a couple games there. I think we're all a bunch of like-minded individuals that are trying to keep a goal and I'm looking forward to it. It's gonna be a lot of fun this year.”
If Henderson’s track record is an indicator, Larson’s theory could be closer to reality rather than the national thought surrounding what Drake has this season. Henderson has yet to have a losing season as a Division-I head coach and hasn’t had a season below 19 wins outside of the Covid-shortened 2020-21 season in which his South Dakota State team played just 22 games.
Perhaps this Drake team doesn’t have a player of Bennett Stirtz or Tucker DeVries—who collectively combined to win the last three MVC Player of the Year awards—but Henderson believes it has enough to be a product that his program’s fanbase can be proud of.
“We’re super excited,” Henderson said. “I think our size is something that I think people probably talk about if they’ve seen our team that they probably haven't seen from a Drake team in a long time. I think we've got great physicality. I think we've got the ability to play fast. I think our guards are extremely quick and we got guys can shoot. When I think about this year's team, I do think we can be super physical, protect the paint. We’ve got some great length and hopefully make every every other team earn every basket so that's what I hope.”
