Former GCU star Kevin Warren will have best seat in the house for Saturday's NCAA tourney gam

When Big Ten commissioner Kevin Warren finds his seat inside Indiana Farmers Coliseum on Saturday evening, his heart and his head will be pulling in opposite directions.

Just 15 months into the job, Warren has already found his conference making NCAA history. Nine Big Ten teams, a record, qualified for the NCAA Tournament. Two of them nine — Illinois and Michigan — were No. 1 seeds, while Ohio State and Iowa were both seeded second.

It’s Iowa’s opponent — Grand Canyon — that stirs Warren’s emotions. He was a ’Lopes star as a basketball player, scoring 1,118 career points and averaging 23.3 per game as a senior in 1985-86. Warren also excelled off the court, earning CoSIDA Academic All-America honors as a senior along with NAIA Academic All-America honors.

In March 2012, Warren was inducted into GCU’s Athletics Hall of Fame; he’s one of just five basketball players to be inducted.

“What Grand Canyon did for me was to really help me understand the meaning and essence of life.” Warren told the Star by phone this week. “I was able to recognize some dreams about playing college basketball there, get a great education and it was really a critical launching pad for me.”

The ’Lopes are playing in their first NCAA Tournament after winning the Western Athletic Conference Tournament.

Warren watched the selection show from his Landjet mobile office as he was driven to the Big Ten headquarters in Chicago from the conference tournament in Indianapolis, and traded calls and texts with his college teammates as soon as GCU made the field of 68 as a No. 15 seed.

He called it “a special drive back.”

“I just have great respect for the leadership (at GCU) and everyone who’s played there is just so proud,” he said.

Warren grew up in Tempe and attended Marcos de Niza High School before heading east to play basketball at Penn. He suited up alongside Fran McCaffery, who is now Iowa’s head coach, before transferring to GCU for the start of the 1984-85 season.

It didn’t take long for Warren to make an impact: He scored 42 points on Nov. 17, 1984 against Concordia, the fourth-best single-game performance in program history.

It’s a miracle Warren was able to accomplish those feats at all.

At age 11, Warren was struck by a vehicle while riding his bike. He landed on grass and not concrete, a difference that he says saved his life. Warren suffered a broken femur; for seven months, he wore a body cast that spanned from the top of his chest down his right leg and three-quarters of the way down his left leg.

Doctors told Warren he may never walk again.

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When Warren left the hospital in a wheelchair, he was told not to expect to live a normal life. He quickly went from a carefree kid to someone determined to make use of every single day and not take anything for granted.

“I thank God every day for sparing my life,” Warren said. “I am thankful for every day I’m alive. Every day that I wake up, every meal that I eat, and even taking a shower. It’s just a blessing.”

At the time he was discharged, doctors told Warren and his family that swimming could be a helpful form of rehab. He convinced his parents to use some of the settlement money from the accident to build a pool; when Warren had gained enough strength by swimming, he started to find joy in basketball.

He credits his sister, Marilyn, for keeping him in good spirits while he was in the hospital — and for getting him interested in the game. Marilyn married John Shumate, a former Notre Dame and NBA player. Shumate “taught me the game of basketball and I learned to love it,” Warren said.

Shumate went on to coach Grand Canyon from 1983-86, and was in charge during Warren’s junior and senior season with the ’Lopes.

The determination Warren showed grinding his way through rehab has carried over in the 46 years since his accident.

His first year-plus as Big Ten commissioner has been challenging in more ways than one.

“People sent me books about the first 100 days of being in charge,” he said, “but nobody sent me how to navigate the first 72 days and how to deal with a pandemic.”

But the first Black commissioner in Power 5 conference history prefers to look forward rather than backward. He’s especially eager for his first March Madness as commissioner; He’ll be in the stands for Saturday’s Iowa-Grand Canyon game.

“I’ll be hoping for Grand Canyon to play well, but I’ll be cheering for the Hawkeyes to win that game,” Warren said. “And then if we could get four Big Ten teams in the Final Four, that’d be wild, too.”

Warren has a lot of admiration for his alma mater. He was on the corporate board for the basketball team until 2019, when he accepted the Big Ten job. His wife, Greta, is taking online classes at GCU as part of a Master’s degree program.

“Grand Canyon will always have a special place in my heart, for many reasons,” he said.