After years toiling in the Big East basement, DePaul basketball can finally see the sky now that Chris Holtmann has settled in at Chicago’s once-proud program.
March 14 marked the one-year anniversary of Chris Holtmann taking the head coach position at DePaul University. In Year 1, the Blue Demons won more conference games (four) than the two seasons prior and forced double overtime against Creighton in the Big East Tournament quarterfinals before falling 85-81. Had they pulled off the upset, it would have been the school’s first trip to the semifinals.
“We talked all year about, at DePaul, we’re going to have a strong backbone,” Hotlmann said postgame. “We’re going to respond the right way in the face of hard things.”
DePaul eclipsed its prior-year win total just four games into the season, eventually entering Big East play at 7-1. The Blue Demons went on to win four conference games, and on Wednesday night, Holtmann’s team completed a three-game sweep of Ed Cooley’s Georgetown Hoyas.
Building the Blue Demons from scratch
When Holtmann took this job a year ago, he embarked on a complete rebuilding project. That’s nothing new in college basketball, but they early results have been encouraging, even amongst his Big East peers.
“Coach Holtmann has done an unbelievable job of instilling his culture in a short period of time with a bunch of guys that weren’t on the team last year,” Creighton coach Greg McDermott said. “That’s very difficult to do, especially when the wins weren’t necessarily stacking up early in the conference season.”
The Blue Demons began the season not just with a completely new roster, but with every rotational minute-earner coming from the transfer portal. Junior CJ Gunn (Indiana) and sophomore Layden Blocker (Arkansas) were the lone power-conference transfers, having averaged just 12.8 and 13.3 minutes at their previous stops.
Holtmann credited seniors Isaiah Rivera and Troy D’Amico for the team’s three-game win streak before getting knocked out by Creighton. “Those two guys that played throughout this stretch,” Holtmann said. “I just love those kids. They would not let this group give in.”
D’Amico played 30 minutes or more in the final six games of the season, including 37 and 45 minutes in the Big East tournament games. The Southern Illinois transfer averaged 8.8 points and 2.5 assists in the final month of the season.
On Thursday, Creighton struggled with the defensive wrinkles DePaul deployed to slow down star Ryan Kalkbrenner. DePaul led by 15 points at the half thanks in large part to holding Kalkbrenner to just five of Creighton’s 27 field goal attempts.
“To finish the way that they finished and to play as well as they have here in New York,” McDermott said of DePaul, “let’s be honest, we were really fortunate to win that game.”
Can DePaul get back to national prominence?
Considering the level of execution by this group of lower-level transfers and two high-major reclamation projects, DePaul has an opportunity to develop into a competitive team — not just in the conference tournament but also in the national bracket.
“There’s no question that this group has laid a foundation moving forward in a real positive way,” Holtmann said. “We want to build a roster and play a certain way that we played this year: skilled, versatile, high IQ, tough, and high character. That’s the most important thing moving forward.”
This team’s toughness was a defining characteristic in its two Big East tournament games. The Blue Demons came back from a seven-point deficit in the second half against Georgetown and made an eight-point comeback in a minute and a half to force a second overtime period against Creighton.
DePaul didn’t just respond to deficits; its players also responded admirably to physical limitations in both games. Blocker was hobbled for stretches in the second overtime on Thursday, finishing with 40 minutes played and a team-high 25 points. Meanwhile, junior center NJ Benson missed the six games preceding the conference tournament but found a way to get back on the floor.
“In an era right now where kids sometimes don’t always play when they don’t feel full strength, it is really refreshing to have a guy that was begging to play the last two weeks,” Holtmann said of Benson.
There is now a constant uncertainty of roster retention in the portal era, and the Blue Demons’ situation is likely not any different from that of many other programs. But if the strong finish signifies anything for a school that hasn’t played in an NCAA Tournament game since 2004, it’s this: DePaul has found the right leader to guide this once-proud program back to prominence.