Bellarmine guard Landin Hacker shows off his shooting form in an exhibition game against Transylvania.
Submitted photo
The video lasts less than two minutes, a snippet of Landin Hacker’s young life destined to live on for years thanks to YouTube and social media.
In terms of the gesture itself, Hacker can’t think of a better one.
In August, a team meeting conducted by 19th-year Bellarmine coach Scott Davenport turned celebratory when graduate student Bash Wieland announced that Hacker, a redshirt sophomore guard, was being awarded a full athletic scholarship.
In the video, Hacker, a 2021 Center Grove graduate, bows his head.
“It was just a shock. I was completely blindsided,” Hacker remembers. “As soon as it happened, I was so grateful and appreciative of my coaches and teammates.”
And them of him.
Hacker’s Bellarmine teammates immediately began cheering and converged on the former Center Grove player after Wieland’s announcement, knowing darned well the 6-foot, 185-pounder deserves it.
They’ve seen the work. The commitment. The unselfishness. The all-for-one mentality.
“He earned it,” Davenport said. “It’s an incredibly powerful message. How many hundreds of thousands of basketball players look like him physically? How come they are not him?
“It’s Landin’s dedication. His passion. Not just as a player, but as a person and teammate. Landin is a great example of what it means to judge players, and evaluate based on them as a person.”
Hacker, who carries a 3.5 grade-point average as an exercise science major, had already been on an academic scholarship that covered roughly 70% of his tuition, meals and room and board.
Now the remainder of his time on the Louisville campus will be completely covered through his hard-earned Division I ride.
Redshirted during the 2021-22 season, Hacker averaged nine minutes of court time per game last season. He averaged 3.7 points, was virtually automatic from the free throw stripe (18 of 19) and sprung for a career-best 13 points in a 69-65 triumph at North Alabama.
As difficult as it was at times to be sidelined during the redshirt year, Hacker feels it served its role.
“In my opinion, I learned to grow as a person, and as a basketball player,” Hacker said. “I had some older guys on the team who I looked up to who set a good example for me.”
Hacker wasn’t alone. Classmate Ben Johnson, a 6-3 guard, was also redshirted and went through the experience with him.
Bellarmine opened this season with a 91-57 loss at Washington, a game in which Hacker tallied nine points and grabbed four rebounds in 19 minutes of action. More recently, however, he sustained a stress fracture to his right tibia during a game against Midway after an opposing player drove into him.
Hacker has sat out the last three games to rest the leg and won’t be in the lineup for today’s game against Boyce, but he hopes to be back on the court when the Knights face Evansville on Dec. 16 in Freedom Hall in Louisville.
On the court and off, the former Trojan is enjoying his time as a college student-athlete.
“That’s what drew me to Bellarmine at first. Just how great the school was academically, and just the success rate it provides,” said Hacker, who aspires to someday be employed as a strength coach at a college or university.
“The teammates I have, I wouldn’t trade them for the world. They make it so easy to be here, and some of these guys will be friends of mine the rest of my life.”
