There is no bedrock for DePaul basketball. Every time you think it hits rock bottom, they somehow find a way to sink way lower. I sincerely hope, for the sake of DePaul basketball and their community, this article one day ends up on Freezing Cold Takes.
Perhaps the men’s basketball program will program make the 2027 Elite 8 and totally prove me wrong, but I just don’t see any path forward right now, at all.
DePaul University already did what they most needed to do- find a new Athletic Director. And I still think they got a good one in DeWayne Peevy. All that success he accomplished, alongside John Calipari at Kentucky, was no fluke.
I believe Peevy is legit, but man, he could not have whiffed any worse on his first men’s basketball head coaching hire. He badly needs to get the next hire correct.
I’ll give him this though, he made the right call in sacking Tony Stubblefield on Jan. 22.
There was no need to wait until the end of the season. The Blue Demons are 3-26 on the season, 0-18 in the Big East.
They are staring down the barrel of a winless conference season, which although rare, is not unprecedented around these parts. As bad as DePaul has been in the league, they have never had a winless Big East season.
However, in 2008-09, they did put up an 0fer under Jerry Wainwright, as that team 0-18 in Conference USA. You have to be pretty awful to go winless in the league, when you’re a power conference team.
But it has happened twice in the modern era at Northwestern, and under two different coaches. Kevin O’Neill, in 1999-00 went 0-16 in the Big Ten while Bill Foster put up an 0-18 in 1990-91. Bill Carmody just missed, going 1-17 in 2008.
But this should never be in the conversation at a place like DePaul. They have two Final Fours, three Elite 8s and nine Sweet 16s in their history.
In the 1980s they were a NCAA Tournament regular, and having their games televised on the WGN Super Station made them a very trendy program.
You could argue that they even were THE winter sports team in Chicago, back in the day. The Blackhawks were pretty invisible as old man Wirtz clung to his insanely outdated idea that his team’s home games should not be televised.
Also the Bulls, pre-Michael Jordan were very irrelevant.
So it has been a very long fall down the pecking order for DePaul basketball, who are not even a blip on the local sports scene here. A new arena didn’t help.
Being back in the city (although still pretty far from their own campus) didn’t help.
A switch at Athletic Director and numerous coaching regime changes haven’t made any difference.
Another blowout loss to Butler yesterday, and when you go inside the numbers of that series, it tells the whole story. Butler is just one example, but the story is the same for every conference rival when it comes to the Demons.
Butler is 19-2 against DePaul since joining the BIG EAST. The Bulldogs have won nine straight in the series. Butler has won 10 of the 11 meetings in Chicago in the time the teams have been BIG EAST rivals.
You can go to the DePaul basketball record book and see a very similar situation vs. Villanova, Xavier, St. John’s, Marquette etc. etc.
The league changed but DPU b-ball remained in the dregs. It has been 20 years and counting since the last NCAA Tournament appearance, and we don’t see that drought ending any time soon.
Paul M. Banks is the Founding Editor of The Sports Bank. He’s also the author of “Transatlantic Passage: How the English Premier League Redefined Soccer in America,” and “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry.”
He currently contributes to Ravens Wire, part of the USA Today SMG’s NFL Wire Network. His past bylines include the New York Daily News, Sports Illustrated, Chicago Tribune and the Washington Times. You can follow him on Twitter.