Gellert will have to lead this year’s relatively experienced Crimson squad against a league that has gotten better every year. Now in his last season he’s not exactly satisfied with how things have resulted since he’s been here.
“I wouldn’t say things have gone as expected,” Gellert says. “We’ve been pretty much a .500 team since I got here, which to me is a disappointment. You hope to improve [but] we’ve stayed the same.”
Playing college basketball also opened up another opportunity for Gellert this past summer, when he was selected to participate for the U.S. team at the 2001 Maccabiah Games in Israel. The Games are an international sports competition featuring Jewish athletes from around the world. Gellert had never been to Israel and was grateful for the chance to participate.
“But there were a lot of bombings and terrorism, and different people pulled out, including our coach; they had to find a new one, and some countries pulled out as well,” Gellert says.
Though the re-made U.S. squad eventually went to Israel, Gellert was not among those who made the trip.
“I told them I wasn’t going to go,” Gellert recounts, with a tinge of regret in his voice. “Basically my family just thought it wasn’t worth me going over there to play a basketball game, and be a target.”
So Gellert worked on his game in the summer, and looks once again looks forward to the challenge of guarding the Ivy’s best players—Brown’s Earl Hunt or Columbia’s Craig Austin, for example—regardless of position or size. On any given night, the best way of judging Gellert’s performance is not to look at his offensive numbers, but at the number of points the opposing team’s top threat had. In Crimson victories, it’s usually pretty low.
“In Andrew’s case, he doesn’t have to score for us,” Sullivan said. “He just has that matchup where he stops the other guy from scoring and that’s worth a lot more points than anything that appears in the offensive box score.”
Gellert relishes his role on defense.
“It’s one of my favorite parts of the game,” Gellert says. “If I can do my job and shut the other team’s best player down, we have a good chance to win. I feel I have more control of the outcome of the game that way.”
Winning the Ivy title, which Gellert calls a “legitimate” goal, is going to be tough. It will take the right combination of talent, poise and luck.
“Drew’s disposition is one that is extraordinarily competitive, resilient and he just doesn’t miss a beat,” Sullivan says. “He plays for keeps in the greatest sense of the phrase.”