The Chicago sports scene is, shall we say, a little lacking these days.
The Bears are mired in another season of mediocrity, the Bulls, at 5-10 entering this weekend, still miss Michael Jordan, and the Blackhawks, well, they’re as mediocre as the Bears this year.
So who is going to step up to warm the hearts of Windy City sports fans through long, upcoming winter? Dare we say the DePaul Blue Demons?
What? You mean the team that finished at or near the bottom of the BIG EAST standings in each of the past 10 seasons? The one coming off just its first winning year since the 2006-07 season? Not the one that hasn’t been to the NCAA Tournament since 2004, right?
Yes, those Blue Demons. The ones head coach Dave Leitao raved about at BIG EAST media day in Madison Square Garden last month. The one Leitao said is deeper and more talented than any DePaul team he’s had since his return to Chicago five years ago. The one that blew out Iowa on the road in the Gavitt Tipoff Games two weeks ago.
And the one that is 5-0 to start a season for the first time in 33 years.
“When you try to go where we’re trying to go or come from where we’ve been, you have to embrace any victory you can whether they’re small or large,” Leitao said. “But I think we have an opportunity to get better so that’s what our daily focus is. We try to live in the moment and take care of the business at hand that will allow us to move this thing forward as best we can.”
The Blue Demons’ season began with a trio of gimme wins over the likes of Alcorn State, Chicago and Fairleigh Dickinson. Three games, three wins, all expected. But it was on Nov. 11, when the Demons went into Iowa City and hammered the Hawkeyes, well, that’s when DePaul shook off its past reputation and stamped itself as a legit program on the college basketball landscape.
“Young guys, especially in today’s world, whether it’s manufactured or it’s real, they brim with confidence,” Leitao said. “And this group has been pretty confident and I think our play has backed that up a little bit. We’ll find out as we go along whether it’s false confidence or not, but I think what helped us in Iowa was that our mindset was good and our play followed.”
A lot of that solid play has come from junior Paul Reed, who has exploded with four double-doubles in five games and is averaging team-bests in scoring (15.4 ppg.) and rebounding (10.6 rpg) so far.
“I’m really happy and prideful in the fact that he’s approached things in the right frame of mind,” Leitao said. “He’s probably in the gym more than anybody we have and he’s working on his game and understanding where he can excel.”
Playing wingman to Reed this season is junior point guard Charlie Moore. The transfer from Kansas hasn’t missed a beat as he is currently averaging 14.8 points a game and is running the DePaul offense with aplomb.
“He stabilizes us, one, because of his personality and, two, because of his position,” Leitao said. “We have somebody, when the ball is in his hands, that the guys feel good about and trust. He’s equal parts scorer and distributor and creating that balance is something that he continues to work on. Our guys enjoy playing with him. He also has a very quiet confidence about him. He’s not boisterous about his daily work but yet he knows and believes in himself.”
Moore, a Chicago native, said he’s happy to be back home playing in front of family and friends and helping bring his hometown team back to prominence.
“I’m comfortable but I think I could adjust a little more,” said Moore, who is shooting 43.5 percent from three-point range. “I feel like there is more to come from me and I feel we have a great season ahead of us. I just hope we keep winning. That’s big for me, more than anything.”
But DePaul is more than just Reed and Moore. There is 6-9 junior Jaylen Butz, who is averaging 10.4 points a game, veterans Jalen Coleman-Lands and Devin Gage, who is tied for the team lead with 10 steals, and the freshman tandem of Romeo Weems and Markese Jacobs.
The 6-7 Weems, the reigning BIG EAST Freshman of the Week who is averaging 9.2 points a game, was named Michigan’s Mr. Basketball last season while the 5-11 Jacobs had originally committed to Kansas before opting for DePaul. Not exactly the type of recruits you’d have associated with the Blue Demons in the past.
But wait, there’s more.
“What I’m trying to do is to grow that depth even more in terms of minutes,” Leitao said. “We have (6-4 freshman) Oscar Lopez, who I like a lot but has played very sparingly until the last game. So we’d like to integrate him into our lineup even more. And (6-10 freshman) Nick Ongenda we like a lot as well. So we’re still growing but how we utilize that bench of ours and our depth moving forward is our next challenge.”
Actually the Blue Demons’ next challenge will be Saturday when they travel to Massachusetts to square off with 4-1 Boston College, another big road test just as Iowa was two weeks ago.
“We know it’s not going to be an easy game going into Boston College,” Moore said. “So we just have to lock in defensively and offensively and hopefully we come out with the win.”
It was pointed out to Leitao that the last DePaul team to begin a season 5-0 was the 1986-87 team that featured Rod Strickland. That team not only made the NCAA Tournament but it reached the Sweet 16. No pressure, coach, but can this team possibly follow a similar path?
“What you’re asking me to do is to order a meal at the restaurant before I’ve even driven to the place,” Leitao said laughing. “So I’m just going to keep my daily GPS about what we got to do, the lefts and the rights and the highs and the lows and the quick turns. We’ve got to concern ourselves with that. This team hasn’t been to that place so we can’t look at the menu yet and figure out what we’re going to order. Our November and December schedule will test us mightily and we may or may not come out of that unscathed. But we’ve set our sights on where we got to go and we have to drive at the right speed to get us there.”
Moore said regardless of what occurs this weekend and the rest of the season, the one thing this DePaul team wants to avoid is getting too high off of the wins and too low with the losses.
“We try to stay even keel throughout the season,” Moore said. “It’s a long season. We started off 5-0 which is great but we have to keep it going. I feel like we have a great talent level and a great team and I feel if we keep playing consistently the way we’ve been playing then I think the sky’s the limit for us. But we know we just have to stay locked in on the next task at hand.”
And if the Blue Demons do that enough, and the wins continue to come their way, perhaps some space on the back pages of Chicago newspapers as well as some air time on local newscasts will follow. Move over Bears, Bulls and Blackhawks.
“We hope so but we have to get better every day in order for that to happen,” Leitao said. “If we do that the rest will take care of itself. This has always been a great basketball town so they’ll support us, whether it’s newspapers or television, when they know that it’s time to. I’ll embrace it if and when it happens but we have to do this on an everyday basis first.”