The fall of DePaul

Sporting News, The, Dec 30, 1996 by Gene Wojciechowski

They were big and bad, but the Blue Demons are searching for answers after a series of problems stripped them of heavyweight status

It's hard to recognize DePaul these days, even if you re wearing a pair of George Mikan's oval-shaped spectacles.

Has it really been four seasons since the Blue Demons played in the NCAA Tournament and seven since they won a March Madness game? Was that the same Blue Demons program that Ray Meyer took to the Final Four twice that recently lost to Indiana, 74-57; Georgetown, 6741, and Illinois State 75-50? Unfortunately for Blue Demon fans, the answer is yes. What in the name of Mark Aguirre is going on in Chicago?

The bad times will continue to roll this season for the 2-6 Blue Demons, but that doesn't mean the school's future will be a 9at line on the college hoops landscape. The Blue Demons' problems will be fatal only if they keep repeating them. So far, the program seems to be taking baby steps toward recovery, despite the rough start to this season. Among other things, coach Joey Meyer, an accomplished recruiter and solid tactician who's loyal to a fault, boasts a promising freshman class and a favorable contract. But how did DePaul, which earned No. 1 seeds in the NCAA Tournament from 1980 to '82 and a No. 2 in '79, get in this funk?

Calling all stars

You don't need a DePaul letter sweater to understand why the Blue Demons haven't been ranked in the final Associated Press Top 25 since 1991-92. The answer is as old as Alumni Hall, DePaul's on-campus home.

"There could be a complicated conversation we could have for three or four hours, or there is a very simple one: We didn't get the talent," DePaul athletic director Bill Bradshaw says.

But why? How did DePaul quit attracting the nation's finest recruits, to say nothing of Chicago's best players? This is where it gets complicated, mostly because the recruiting drought was years in toe making. It didn't begin with DePaul's 16-15 record in 1992-93. It began seasons earlier, when the Blue Demons were as adored as any program in the country.

Those were the salad days, when DePaul basketball was regularly beamed coast to coast on WGN, and infant ESPN was still the network for tractor pulls, not college sports. Recruits flocked to DePaul, thanks to the national exposure and the likelihood of an NCAA Tournament appearance. But the tectonic plates of college basketball were shifting. Television changed. Recruiting and academic rules changed. The game changed.

No longer is DePaul the darling of WGN. That title now belongs to the Bulls. Gone, too, is the recruiting advantage that went with it. A rewriting of recruiting guidelines also has had a big impact. As the number of contacts between coach and recruit were decreased by NCAA mandate, so was DePaul's edge.

"We could outwork those other schools for the local kids," Ray Meyer says. "When Joey was recruiting for me, you could go to Mark Aguirre's house every day. Now you can't."

As always, there were--and still are--DePaul's stiff academic requirements. But the schools admissions policies don't explain why recruiting began to suffer. Instead, DePaul's real troubles began during 1985 and 1986, when a The Demons booster named Jeffrey Tassani arranged for apartments and free lunches to be made available to six players and their families. Six years later, there would be an internal inquiry into the rules violations, followed soon thereafter by an NCAA investigation. That's when the whispers began: The Blue Demons were headed for probation ... Joey Meyer's job was in jeopardy ... a list of successors was already in place ... Meyer and Bradshaw were at odds.

Rival recruiters pounced on the situation. After all, nothing scares a high school recruit like uncertainty. Prospects had to be unnerved by the announcement in September 1994, when the NCAA stated its sanctions against DePaul Citing the dreaded "lack of institutional control," the NCAA sentenced the program to one year's probation, reduced the number of scholarships and cut the number of official visits by recruits. The NCAA also accepted DePaul's self-imposed penalties, which included the freezing of Meyer's salary and the suspension of all contract negotiations with Meyer until August 1995. In addition, Meyer wasn't allowed to recruit off campus for a year.

Lately, Meyer's program is beginning to show signs of a modest recruiting resurgence, and his cause will be helped by a four-year contract signed in November. But for the Blue Demons to again become a recruiting mover and shaker, they need victories. Lots of them.

The Joey and Bill saga

One is a child of the program, born and weaned on DePaul basketball. He is the coach's son. The former star guard. The faithful assistant coach The successor. The survivor. This is Joey Meyer's pocket biography.

And then there is Bradshaw, who came to DePaul nearly 11 years ago from La Salle with impressive credentials. He was the outsider, which was the point of his hiring.

"I don't have any relatives here," Bradshaw says. "I don't have any brothers who went to DePaul, or sisters. When I came here, I had no frame of reference. All they've asked me to do is base all my decisions in the best interests of DePaul. I don't have to satisfy anyone else--no legacy, the past."