In the last 10 seasons DePaul has had three coaching changes, only one winning season and one postseason bid – that coming in the 2006-07 season when the Blue Demons landed an NIT invitation. So, it’s not going out on a limb by any means to say that DePaul has not exactly been the hotbed of college basketball the last decade or so.
Yes, victories have been infrequent as the last time the Blue Demons enjoyed any sustained success was over a decade ago, from 2002-2005, when DePaul posted three straight winning seasons, including a pair of 20-plus win campaigns.
Those banner years came during Dave Leitao’s first term as head Blue Demon. Now, he’s back for a second term - with a full rebuild on his hands – and a goal of returning the Blue Demons program to the once proud status it enjoyed during its days in Conference USA, just before DePaul joined the BIG EAST for the 2005-06 season.
His first goal – change the losing culture enveloping the Blue Demons program. A difficult task, for sure.
“I don’t know if I’d use the word easy or hard, it’s just work,” Leitao told BIGEAST.com. “And work entails a lot of things. A culture change is not as simple as you get guys in the gym and you require guys to work hard and you blow your whistle and things go your way. There are so many things that happen within the framework of your team and in the locker room. It’s also understanding how you have to conduct yourself every single day. There are also ancillary things outside of basketball and the basketball department and the basketball office that are university-wide and community-wide that have everything to do with creating that environment of winning.”
During his first go-around as Blue Demons head coach, Leitao enjoyed a great deal of success. In his first season in 2002-03, he inherited a 9-19 team and promptly turned it into a 16-win team with an NIT invitation following the season. His success soared in his second year when he led the Blue Demons to a 22-10 overall record and a 12-4 mark in Conference USA to win the regular-season title. His DePaul team then advanced to the NCAA Tournament where the Demons knocked off Dayton in a first-round game before losing to UConn in the second round. His third and final season in Chicago saw him lead DePaul to a second straight 20-win season, going 20-11 and landing a third straight postseason bid with his second NIT invite.
No coach since has come close to that kind of success at DePaul. But Leitao is quick to warn that there are no shortcuts back to those heights as the two words he is using as he rebuilds are “Time and Patience.”
“Time and Patience. That’s something that I have to check myself on a lot because I want it to be done and I want it to be done yesterday,” Leitao said. “But we have to give it some time and we have to be patient, starting with me, knowing that sometimes you have to go through these kinds of times to get to the place you want to go.”
“These kinds of times” Leitao is referring to are the string of disappointing seasons DePaul has stumbled through in the past decade. Since its last winning season in 2006-07, the Blue Demons have not topped more than 12 wins in any season and have regularly finished near or in the basement of the BIG EAST. In fact, the Blue Demons overall record since joining the BIG EAST is an unsightly 121-211 with a conference mark of 36-145. Along the way there was a winless 0-18 season in the BIG EAST (in 2008-09) and a pair of one-win campaigns (in 2009-10 and 2010-11) while last season’s six conference wins were the most for DePaul in the BIG EAST in seven years.
Leitao says the process of turning the program around will not come overnight as evidenced by DePaul’s 6-12 overall record and 0-6 mark in BIG EAST play after Sunday’s loss to Creighton, a game that the Blue Demons led 11-0. But he is confident better days are ahead for the school that gave college basketball George Mikan and Mark Aguirre.
“You’ve got to remain resilient, you’ve got to remain confident and you got to be focused on what you want to have happen within this program,” Leitao said. “So I try not to look at anything past yesterday and anything more forward than tomorrow and just live and conduct this program in the moment. That’s what we need to get us to where I know we will be.
There are definite building blocks in place with juniors Tommy Hamilton IV and Billy Garrett Jr., one of the top guards in the BIG EAST, along with promising freshman guard Eli Cain out of heralded St. Benedict’s Prep in New Jersey, who is averaging almost eight points a game and scored 21 in the Creighton contest. And let’s not forget DePaul’s new 10,000-seat downtown arena set to become the Blue Demons new home in late 2017.
Indeed, better days appear to be on the horizon for DePaul and Leitao is fixated on what’s in front of his Blue Demons and not what is already in the rear-view mirror.
“What has happened over the past five, six, seven, eight years is not anything we can control,” Leitao said. “It’s just something we can work on at getting better at.”