Melvin quits

[Markedman]

wow....2nd semester of your senior year?

David Haugh ‏@DavidHaugh 4m
More bad news for DePaul: School announces senior forward Cleveland Melvin no longer enrolled or on team.

[WindyCityGoldenEagle]

Not a huge surprise and something I've actually been expecting - actually thought it wouldve happened sooner.

[MU_Iceman]

I have been saying this for years...but that program is such a mess, they really should think about dropping down from D1...they can't compete at this level. They are a joke.

[MKE_GoldenEagleFan]

Gotta wonder if Purnell will make it through the offseason...

[Markedman]

They have had trouble competing at the high major level...at least recently....but their are 200 D-1 schools that are consistently as bad or much much worse.

Hiring the right coach makes all the difference.......With all that talent in their backyard no reason why they shouldn't be a resonably good program.....

Purnell isn't the answer...he just took the money...they need to go young and hungry....like Northwestern and Minnesota did...

Of course you could always go with the Larry Brown method.........it sure is working so far at $MU....at least for awhile....

[IrwinFletcher]

Agree on SMU, when Larry leaves in 2-3 years they will drop back down to irrelevance.

DePaul will be fine if they fire the long time AD and bring in a young energenic coach who will commit to recruiting. You can draw a 90 mile radius around Chicago and recruit quality kids that will help turn this thing around.

IF MU can do it, no reason at all that DePaul can't do it.

[IWB]

DePaul will be fine if they fire the long time AD and bring in a young energetic coach who will commit to recruiting. You can draw a 90 mile radius around Chicago and recruit quality kids that will help turn this thing around.


People keep blaming OP, which is fair, but the AD is the one that made that hire and needs to go. She has turned off boosters in a major way and has done nothing to build up the program over the years.

They need a new AD and a new coach like say.....Brian Wardle?

[IWB]

Wonder what happened there? He is no longer enrolled in the school therefore is no longer eligible to play? What is that? Did he quit school or did he get tossed?

[Markedman]

Wonder what happened there? He is no longer enrolled in the school therefore is no longer eligible to play? What is that? Did he quit school or did he get tossed?

He was suspended so my guess is he just quit...must not have been close to graduating?

[MKE_GoldenEagleFan]

With a new arena going up I think now is the time for DePaul to clear house and start a new regime....

[Alan Bykowski, "brewcity77"]

They need a new AD and a new coach like say.....Brian Wardle?

I think I just threw up in my mouth a bit. I love Brian, he deserves a bigger job, but that one would make me sick.

[TulsaWarrior]

If I'm DePaul's President I clean house. Historically under Ray Meyers their recruiting was good. Why not again? A new arena and a basketball hotbed in the backyard those are strong selling points.

Brian Wardle still has some seasoning before he'll be ready to move. At the risk of making brewcity77 throw up I think Tod Kowalczyk might be the guy. He brought Green Bay back from the dead without much backing and has done the same at Toledo. He is a seasoned veteran assistant and head coach who has paid his dues and learned along the way. He's hungry and has a chip on his shoulder which would serve him well with a program that has a decent budget. DePaul could get him without the price tag of a failed head coach retread.

[WarriorOMalley82]

AD and has a decent grasp of some of the situation, I can tell you that I think it is not the AD but the support of the administration behind her. Depaul is the largest Catholic university and they do not need or identify themselves with sports or basketball as Marquette does. They are more concerned with their place in Chicago and the business community. I do think that if they got a new president and a new commitment to the basketball team I could see starting with anew AD, but they do alright in the other sports where they don't have to spend money. Someone else suggested a young hungry new coach they had that in Leito, but when he was offered somewhere else the administration did not give the AD the finances to wow him and keep him. When she realized that the school wouldn't make the commitment to keep a young upcoming coach she thought to go in a different direction and get an older coach that might find a more permanent home in Chicago. No matter until the support changes from the administration it won't get better with any changes.

[Gato78]

OP is just not a good coach. He does not bring any energy or excitement. Wardle is the perfect hire. Young, energetic and from Chicago area. His current team has many Chicago kids. Crean needed seasoning when he came here but it is worth it to take a chance on someone who can get things going. Kowalczyk is a good coach but he does not have the personality needed.

[BLT]

I think it be tough for DePaul to hire a Marquette grad. More so, I wouldn't wish the lack of support on Wardle. Btw, OP and Jerry both landed some good recruits, of which, they didn't stay at school.

[kneelb4zerg]

Yeah didn't IWB say something like they would never do things like Marquette? Can't see them hiring a prominent former MU player.

[Gato78]

Unless they are crazy, they will hire the person who gives then the best chance to win and who well represents the University. I don't think a guy like Wardle would be precluded because of his Marquette degree. If that is a problem for DePaul, their problems are bigger than I think. Some people wanted Larry to fail because he was from ND but that was all foolishness. Universities have people who have graduated from dozens and dozens of different schools. Very shortsighted to preclude solid applicants based on their undergraduate institution.

[unclejohn]

There are a bunch of things that go into being a successful coach. I am not willing to dismiss Purnell as a bad coach. If he is so terrible, how did he win at Dayton? And how did he win at Clemson, in one of the toughest conferences in the country, where few coaches have succeeded? When Purnell was hired, DePaul fans complained because he did not have a winning tournament record. They forgot how hard it is to even make the tournament, much less win when you come from a smaller conference. Before Purnell, they had Wainwright,who had also been successful at other smaller programs. Clearly, the guy knows basketball, as IWB can attest, and Buzz liked him enough to hire him.

A good deal of Wainwright's time was apparently spent cleaning up a mess left behind by Leito. It seemed some of his recruits were not so bright. Before him was Fat Kennedy, who recruited some players but couldn't coach his team out of a dark closet, (or the locker room of the Milwaukee Arena, in one hilarious episode.) To succeed, a coach has to not only be able to coach, but recruit and to a certain degree shmooze the big donors. Crean could do that at Marquette. Buzz is really good at it, though I think he leaves the shmoozing to others. Those things are hard to do at DePaul. If the administration is not behind the coach, it is just about impossible. So someone like Kennedy could do whatever it took to get players out of the Chicago Public League and onto the court, but he couldn't do the rest.

People reflecting back on the days of Meyer have it wrong. Actually, Ray was not much of a recruiter, and by the mid 70's, DePaul was seriously considering dropping down. Then Joey Meyer took over recruiting. He was the one who put those great teams together. Joey got fired when his teams became terrible, but that was largely a result of the fact that he could not get the players he wanted into school, and wasn't willing to play ball with the CPS coaches. He recruited Ronnie Fields, who was a great high school player. He couldn't get him in. He recruited Tracy McGrady, who is headed to the hall of fame. He couldn't get him in. Then when he got fired, Fat recruited some great Chicago players, including one who a friend of mine tutored. She was of the opinion that he could not count up to his jersey number, much less count the money he started making in the NBA a few years later. (That might also be a reason Mike Deane was not too anxious to get him to Marquette.)

DePaul needs more than a new coach to get it done. Right now, Northwestern, with its tough admission standards and sad history is a much easier place to recruit than DePaul.

[MUMac]

UJ, don't forget that Ray's teams also coincided with the departure of Al. The Aguire's, Cummings, Strickland's of the world may likely have been at MU had Al stayed. De Paul was decent with Corzine & Co, but not to the level they achieved once Al left.

It is sad to see the lack of commitment to all sports at De Paul, not just basketball.

[bleedbluegold03]

Did any one see us hiring a Notre Dame alum as an AD? Weirder things could happen

[unclejohn]

That may well have been a factor, but DePaul started getting quality players from Chicago before Al left. The first was Dave Corzine in about 1974. Al might have gotten some of those players, but DePaul was already on to many of them. DePaul has done all right in a few other sports. Their women's team is consistently good, and their softball team does quite well drawing local talent. But obviously, men's basketball requires more than just scooping up a bunch of local players.

[Goose85]

That may well have been a factor, but DePaul started getting quality players from Chicago before Al left. The first was Dave Corzine in about 1974. Al might have gotten some of those players, but DePaul was already on to many of them. DePaul has done all right in a few other sports. Their women's team is consistently good, and their softball team does quite well drawing local talent. But obviously, men's basketball requires more than just scooping up a bunch of local players.

If I recall correctly, I think some of DePaul's success back in the day coincided with their games being broadcast on a cable TV station, WGN. Cable TV made DePaul basketball available for tv viewers almost nationwide. Living in Milwaukee, I think you could see more Cub / DePaul games on TV than Brewers / Marquette games. Around the start of ESPN you could watch Big East basketball on ESPN and DePaul basketball on WGN almost anywhere in the country. That advantage DePaul enjoyed is long gone.

[Nukem2]

If I recall correctly, I think some of DePaul's success back in the day coincided with their games being broadcast on a cable TV station, WGN. Cable TV made DePaul basketball available for tv viewers almost nationwide. Living in Milwaukee, I think you could see more Cub / DePaul games on TV than Brewers / Marquette games. Around the start of ESPN you could watch Big East basketball on ESPN and DePaul basketball on WGN almost anywhere in the country. That advantage DePaul enjoyed is long gone.Yes, that was a huge factor and it dovetailed Al's retirement. Timing is often important.

[MU88]

DePaul needs to be DePaul and stop tying to be something they are not. DePaul wins when the bball program is allowed to recruit Public league kids and others that fit into a large, commuter school in a big city. When it starts developing a complex about it, they suck. Joey was doing fine till the school stopped letting kids like Sam Cassell into school. He promptly goes to Florida State and has a fine career. After upping the recruiting standards, DePaul collapsed in the early 90s and Joey was fired. In comes Fat Pat who promptly recruits guys like Q, Lance Williams, etc. He turns it around. However, the administration doesn't like the kids he brings in so out he goes. When Dildy doesn't get the job, he gets ticked off and the recruiting pipeline dries up. Leito has a couple of nice recruits, but he was nothing special. The administration wanted him to do it the Marquette way, but Marquette isn't a commuter college, it draws from the suburbs and the schools attract different types of kids. Leito knows it, so when Virginia offered a big payday, he left. JW was handcuffed by an administration that wants their program to be like Marquette or Boston College or Georgetown. Really, DePaul needs to be more like Louisville and Cincinnati. Under the current conditions, OP never had a chance. DePaul is nothing like Dayton. In fact, the culture at Clemson is probably closer to Dayton than DePaul is.

If you want to turn things around, DePaul needs to go after a guy like Reggie Theus and let him recruit in the Public league. He has a personality to excite the city about the program. Worst thing they can do is hire bland coach with no personality and handcuff his recruiting. DePaul needs a Pitino-type, a showman who will bring in the inner city kids and get the city excited about the program. Instead, I expect them to go after a another-milk toast guy and demand that he try and fit a square peg in a round hole.

[Mucrisco]

How about Bruce Pearl?

[TheSultan]

How about Bruce Pearl?


They would never do it...but that would be a really good choice.

[MU88]

They would never do it...but that would be a really good choice.

Agreed. He would be a perfect hire to turn around the program. They would never do it.

[Goose85]

How about Bruce Pearl?

I think he would elevate that program immediately. He would also be the salesman they need with moving forward to a new facility.

He would be a great hire for DePaul.

[MUBasketball]

How about Bruce Pearl?

That would be the best possible hire, he would completely turn the program around. (Although, I don't know if there are any lingering effects from the whole Deon Thomas situation when he was an assistant at Iowa?)

[Goose85]

That would be the best possible hire, he would completely turn the program around. (Although, I don't know if there are any lingering effects from the whole Deon Thomas situation when he was an assistant at Iowa?)

It might spark an instant rivalry with Illinois, or at least the Illinois fans old enough to remember Deon Thomas.

[ziggysfryboy]

If I recall correctly, I think some of DePaul's success back in the day coincided with their games being broadcast on a cable TV station, WGN. Cable TV made DePaul basketball available for tv viewers almost nationwide. Living in Milwaukee, I think you could see more Cub / DePaul games on TV than Brewers / Marquette games. Around the start of ESPN you could watch Big East basketball on ESPN and DePaul basketball on WGN almost anywhere in the country. That advantage DePaul enjoyed is long gone.

Depaul
Dedunk

Wgn commercial. Still remember that 30 years later.

[MUMac]

That may well have been a factor, but DePaul started getting quality players from Chicago before Al left. The first was Dave Corzine in about 1974. Al might have gotten some of those players, but DePaul was already on to many of them. DePaul has done all right in a few other sports. Their women's team is consistently good, and their softball team does quite well drawing local talent. But obviously, men's basketball requires more than just scooping up a bunch of local players.

Aguirre had said he was on Marquette until Al tried. He was the first of the Chicago pipeline top choose De Paul. Others had said similar things, as Cummings. I would have taken Al recruiting against Meyer any day of the week.

[unclejohn]

By the time Aguirre came along, DePaul had already gotten Robinzine, Corzine, Bradshaw, Ponsetto, and a bunch of other Chicago area players. Sure, Al departing game them a chance to pick up some more. Some of us are old enough to remember Walter Downing changing his mind at the last minute and going to DePaul when we figured Marquette had him. But DePaul was also recruiting pretty strongly.

And by the time he left, Joey Meyer was no longer getting primarily Chicago players. His last really good one was Dallas Comegys from Philly. The fact is, he refused to play ball with the CPS coaches at a time when CPS was about as slimy as it could get. Funny, Fat Kennedy did not have that problem. I wonder why.

In any case, my point was DePaul needs more than a coach. As some have mentioned, losing WGN hurt them a great deal. Right now, there is no panache to the team. Nobody gets excited about them. In the old days, the crummy arena situation did not hurt them. People will go just about anywhere to watch the top team in the country. But they won't to watch just another college basketball team. It used to be that DePaul's army of alums all got excited about the team. Now it is hard to start a debate with them. For the most part, they have lost interest. The students do not even know that DePaul has a team.

[MUMac]

As I said, Aguirre commented that he was going to Marquette until Al retired. What do you not understand? !?

[Nukem2]

As I said, Aguirre commented that he was going to Marquette until Al retired. What do you not understand? !?
And, Cummingsi followed. Quite simple.

[IWB]

MU would have had both had AL stayed.

[unclejohn]

Nothing. Aguirre probably would have wound up at Marquette. Cummings came later. Perhaps he would have as well, but much can happen in a year or two. But DePaul already recruited some NBA players before Al retired. They would have gotten some more. The same ones? As many? Perhaps not. But they were already a program on the rise. Their success was not just a result of Al retiring.

In any case, I do not see recruiting as a zero-sum game between Marquette and DePaul, as some do. Some see any success for DePaul as good for Marquette, and vice versa. But we compete directly against other schools we play for players all the time. In recent years, a bunch of players have chosen between Marquette and Georgetown, Marquette and Louisville, and a few others. Other times, we have lost recruits like Bobby Frasor only to sign Dominic James instead. And at one point in recent years when both DePaul and Marquette were actually looking pretty good, Marquette had more Chicago players than DePaul, and DePaul had more Wisconsin players than Marquette

In any case, I still maintain that DePaul needs more than a good coach to come in and suddenly start vacuuming up all the blue chip Chicago players. That was not the only factor in how they got good in years past, and in today's recruiting world where everybody knows about every player, it will not be enough now.