DePaul Blue Demons Men's Basketball

A Chicago programme older than the conference it plays in

DePaul began playing basketball in 1923 and spent the next 68 years as an independent, joining a conference only in 1991. The defining stretch belongs to Ray Meyer, who coached from 1942 to 1984 and finished 724-354 with 21 post-season appearances — 13 NCAA, eight NIT. Meyer took the Blue Demons to the Final Four in 1943 with George Mikan and again in 1979 with Mark Aguirre, and won the 1945 NIT by beating Bowling Green 71-54 at a time when that tournament carried comparable weight to the NCAA field.

The conference years were shorter and thinner. DePaul won the Great Midwest in 1992 and Conference USA in 2004, then moved to the Big East in 2005 and has been near the foot of it ever since. Across its history the programme has made 22 NCAA tournaments for a combined 21-25 record, and it has not won an NCAA tournament game since 2004.

The home court has moved with the programme's ambitions. Since 2017 the Blue Demons have played at Wintrust Arena, a 10,387-seat building at 200 East Cermak Road in the South Loop, attached by skybridge to a McCormick Place parking garage and reachable on CTA bus, the L and Metra.

What hangs in the rafters

Five numbers have been retired at Wintrust. Mikan, Aguirre, Terry Cummings and Dave Corzine were already up there when DePaul added Rod Strickland's No. 10 — worn from 1985 to 1988 — at halftime of the home game against St John's on 3 February 2026. Strickland was told the week of the ceremony, having stopped by to watch a practice, and the announcement drew public congratulations from contemporaries including Mark Jackson.

That ceremony was the clearest statement DePaul has made in years about connecting its present team to a back catalogue most of its current students have no memory of. It also sat in the middle of the best league campaign the programme has produced since joining the Big East.

The rebuild, measured in wins

Chris Holtmann was hired on 14 March 2024, immediately after DePaul finished 3-29 overall and 0-20 in the Big East — a season with no conference win at all. He had 15 seasons of head coaching behind him at Gardner-Webb, Butler and Ohio State, and a career record of 281-207.

Year one produced 14-20 and 4-16 in the league, with a run to the Big East tournament quarter-finals. Year two produced 16-16 and 8-12, good for sixth place: DePaul beat Xavier 86-77 on 3 January 2026, Marquette 80-75 at home on 16 January, Seton Hall 67-60 on 24 January, then won at Creighton 72-71 on 25 February and at Marquette 62-51 on 1 March. The two meetings with UConn, both when the Huskies were ranked inside the top five, ended 72-54 and 72-60 against DePaul. The season closed with a 63-56 first-round loss to Georgetown at Madison Square Garden on 11 March.

On 29 September 2026, athletics director DeWayne Peevy announced an extension keeping Holtmann at DePaul through the 2030-31 season. Holtmann, who turns 55 in November, accepted a lower salary in the new deal so the difference could go towards the programme's NIL budget. Peevy framed the extension as confidence in direction rather than a reward for a finished job. Holtmann's record at DePaul stands at 30-35.

The 2026-27 roster and a deliberately hard schedule

The current squad carries nine newcomers against seven returners. Eight players left after last season, four of them graduating — Brandon Maclin, Kaleb Banks, CJ Gunn and N.J. Benson — and four transferring out. The incoming group includes Wilson Jacques, a 7ft centre from Fresno State, and Noah Meeusen, a 6ft 5in guard from Arizona State, with players on the roster from France, Belgium, Spain and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Senior guard Layden Blocker, who averaged 11.1 points and 3.5 assists last season, is the returning anchor.

At Big East media day at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square on 1 October 2026, the coaches picked DePaul eighth of eleven with 32 points, two clear of Seton Hall and well behind UConn, St John's, Villanova and Marquette at the top. Blocker was named to the preseason third team.

Holtmann has described this as the most demanding non-conference schedule of his three years at DePaul. It includes four teams from the 2026 NCAA tournament field — SMU, South Florida, Purdue and Saint Louis — and a first appearance at the Fort Myers Tip-Off from 24 to 26 November at Suncoast Credit Union Arena, alongside Purdue, Pittsburgh and Oklahoma. Conference play opens away at St John's in Madison Square Garden on 19 December, with the first home league game against Seton Hall on 30 December and the regular season closing at home to Marquette on 6 March. The Big East tournament runs from 10 to 13 March.

Pre-season gave a split verdict: DePaul beat Loyola Chicago 72-65 in the first exhibition, then lost 71-63 to Notre Dame at Wintrust on 23 October 2026. The Blue Demons shot 51.9 per cent in the first half and Fabián Flores scored 14 with five dunks, but Notre Dame built a 69-58 lead off second-chance points and saw it out. The regular season begins at home against West Georgia on 2 November.

The gate, which is the other scoreboard

DePaul's attendance problem at Wintrust has been well documented, and it is the metric the athletics department now leads with. Since Holtmann's arrival the programme reports the largest attendance growth in the Big East, including a 118 per cent rise in student attendance and the biggest year-on-year increase in conference-game attendance in the league. Matt Menard, general manager of ticket sales and service, has said it is the first time since the move to Wintrust that DePaul has renewed 90 per cent of season tickets two years running.

The raw numbers remain modest against a 10,387 capacity. The home win over Marquette on 16 January 2026 drew 7,474; the Seton Hall win on 24 January drew 5,368. The marketing operation leans on giveaways and student incentives — associate athletic director Nina Goodhue has talked about meeting students where they are with free shirts rather than appeals to tradition — and students have turned up for cold midweek tips when the team has been worth watching.