No Regrets For Deposed DePaul Coach

Pride and a hint of awe are evident in her voice when DePaul University athletic director Jean Lenti Ponsetto speaks of the Big East Conference as “a man’s league.” Indeed, if college basketball were European soccer, the Big East would be the Premier League.

Ponsetto insists the Blue Demons are worthy competitors in their fifth year of Big East membership, even with their conference losing streak at an unfathomable 24 games before Mike Stovall’s last-second, off-balance, 20-foot fallaway jumper gave DePaul an unlikely 51-50 victory over Marquette on Wednesday at Allstate Arena.

About a dozen intrepid students “stormed “ the court before arena security intervened, recognizing an overreaction. Court-storming after a one-point win over an unranked, seven-loss team—it has come to this for the Demons?

“A thousand percent credit to DePaul,” Marquette coach Buzz Williams said afterwards. “They deserved it.”

Such sentiment was rarely heard during the losing streak, which was the impetus for the firing of coach Jerry Wainwright on Jan. 11. Saddled with a 20-51 Big East record, using crutches and wearing an ankle-to-hip leg brace as a result of injuries sustained in a sideline collision with a Villanova player in a Jan. 9 game, Wainwright acknowledged feeling “pretty pathetic.” But in keeping with the Big East ethos, the 62-year-old basketball lifer took his dismissal like a man after four-plus seasons.

“I got fired, my leg is in a cast and I’m sleeping on the couch, but other than that things are dandy,” Wainwright said in an interview eight days later.

Turning serious, he added, “No regrets, only lessons. Disappointed, but not bitter. I’m sorry that I didn’t follow through on the opportunity. It’s a results-oriented business, and I didn’t produce.”

Instead, but not entirely on his own, Wainwright strengthened a perception that DePaul, for all its tradition and despite Wednesday’s miracle, is in over its head in the country’s strongest basketball conference—six Big East teams were in the top 25 in this week’s national rankings. His hiring accompanied DePaul’s shift from Conference USA to the Big East before the 2005-06 season, a move requiring an across-the-board program upgrade. It hasn’t happened, and an NBA scout who has watched the Blue Demons regularly identified the most obvious problem.

“Talent-wise, they’re a mid-level C-USA team playing a Big East schedule,” the scout said. He asked not to be identified because he wasn’t speaking for his team.

Wainwright couldn’t disagree. “You’d look down the bench sometimes and it was like a video store at midnight on Saturday: not much to choose from,” he said.

Worse, no one is watching. Wednesday’s crowd of 10,115 was the season’s largest at Allstate, and more than half those fans were wearing Marquette gold. Ponsetto says the remote, charmless, 18,500-seat barn of a facility DePaul calls home is not the problem; good teams will draw good crowds. But there is no recent history of either, and that, sports fans, is the problem.

Twenty wins and a run to the NIT quarterfinals in his second season were the high points of Wainwright’s 134-game tenure. But that was accomplished with predecessor Dave Leitao’s roster, and DePaul paid for its failure to replenish after Wilson Chandler left early for the NBA and other contributors moved on.

Last season’s 0-18 Big East embarrassment was the undisputed low point, and Ponsetto passed judgment on Wainwright’s recruiting efforts by firing his staff, including Scott Wainwright, the coach’s son. The three years and $1 million-plus remaining on his contract spared Wainwright, but Ponsetto also believed he deserved a chance to coach his way out of it. Double-figures whippings in this season’s first three Big East games, following nonconference losses to the undistinguished likes of Florida Gulf Coast and American universities, hardly represented the progress she was looking for.

“We talked about certain performance standards going into the season, and quite frankly they were not met,” Ponsetto said.

Wainwright believes they eventually could have been.

“What’s enough time?” he said. “To make things last, you’ve got to be as committed to the process as you are to the results. You’re not going to go from no wins to 10 or 12 wins in the Big East in one jump—there’s too many good teams. But I was treated fairly, and I think I helped them establish a process that will be helpful to the new guy.”

The new guy, for now, is interim successor Tracy Webster, who has been asked to salvage what he can from what was looking like another lost season. Ponsetto has promised the proverbial nationwide search for a new head coach and will favor an experienced hand, but she said Webster will be considered if the Blue Demons respond to him. Webster viewed Wednesday’s dramatic streak-buster as something to build on, and he was happiest for senior guard Will Walker, who has remained a tough, committed competitor through these decidedly down times.

“It was great to see so much excitement in our locker room—the most since I’ve been here,” Walker said. “We’ve got to get to the point where it’s not a surprise when we win, where we expect to win.”

Webster, 37, was an all-Big Ten guard at Wisconsin and is known as a strong recruiter. He has coaching experience in the Big Ten and Southeastern conferences and recognizes the Big East for what it is: a monster.

“But why can’t we be competitive?” he asks. “We have what it takes if we get the right guys in here and continue to develop them. If you want to get a great degree and play high-major basketball in a family atmosphere, there’s no better place to be.”

Webster grew up in south suburban Harvey, Ill. Curtis Watkins, a starting forward on DePaul’s 1979 Final Four team, was an around-the-corner neighbor, and the Blue Demons of Mark Aguirre, Terry Cummings and Rod Strickland “were my team,” he said, during their 1980s run as an NCAA tournament perennial.

For one night, at least, those days didn’t seem like ancient history.