All Aboard The DePaul Hoops Bandwagon!!!
So last night DePaul broke off an impromtu “Club Dub” sort of thing in their locker room after beating Texas Tech 65-60 in OT. It was an AWESOME basketball game top to bottom – ton of back and forth scoring, buzzer-ish beaters, you name it. Really fun to watch, especially for a city that prides itself in its basketball history, whether it be high school, college or pro hoops.
We all saw what happened when Loyola took the city by storm a few years ago in their march to the Final 4. Everyone and their mother was wearing Ramblers gear for a solid stretch and Porter Moser was one of the hottest names in college basketball for a hot minute.
Blah blah blah. Fuck Loyola. I’m ALL ABOARD the DePaul hoops bandwagon. “But WSD you fat asshole, sure you beat Carrabis in an epic pitch off for the ages but who gives a fuck about DePaul?” Let me tell you. CHICAGO gives a fuck about DePaul. Or at least it did once upon a time and will again if they keep up this early season run.
Look, Illinois and Chicago specifically is the best HS basketball in the country. I don’t give a fuck what anyone says, that’s the truth. And notice I said Illinois – Peoria, Rockford, Springfield, farm cities in Central IL, the Catholic League and even the suburban schools pump out some of the best HS basketball recruits in the country year after year. This has been the case for decades, from Ronnie Fields to Shaun Livingston to Derek Rose to Frank Kaminsky to Anthony Davis. Year in, year out we pump out awesome HS basketball talent. Don’t @ me about NYC, Indiana, Texas or anywhere else. Pound for pound we’re the best. That is final. No bias speaking at all here.
The only problem is, none of those players stay in state. At least not very often at all. They all go to Kansas and Duke and Memphis… unacceptable. I loathe U of I athletics and wish death upon them more or less, but there is zero excuse for them to not be a perennial top 15 program in the country as the flagship university of Illinois. With how much talent that is within a 200 mile radius of that school it’s borderline criminal that they’re not a Sweet 16 team yearly.
And the same runs true for DePaul, especially now that they’re in the Big East as of a few years back. They’ve sucked for a long time, but the thing with them is that they used to have a really solid program:
– 1978-79 Final Four, 1977-78 Elite 8
– 20 win seasons 13 times in a 15 year stretch from 1975-76 through 1991-1992
– 15 straight post season appearances in the same span
– 4 Sweet 16s
Now obviously this was decades ago and things change. Just ask Nebraska football – they still think they’re the 1990s black shirts but in reality they’re just a flyover state and nobody gives a fuck about them anymore. But DePaul resides, once again, in the most fertile recruiting grounds in the country. They should, bare minimum, be a tourney team every other year. Is that too much to ask? I don’t think so, especially with their new South Loop arena:
I truthfully haven’t been there yet, but the pictures tell the whole story. Place is primo for a college hoops arena.
And ho hum – they’re officially 9-0 to start the year, and they’re winning on the back of Charlie Moore who’s from, low and behold, Chicago and Morgan Park HS. DePaul hoops are #BACK!
So I’m all in. Love me a good bandwagon. Also, shout out former DePaul forward and diehard south sider/Sox fan Max Strus for scoring the first points of what will hopefully be a long career for him:
Give me a Final 4!!!
PS – I know the DePaul fans that do actually exist aren’t the biggest fan of their AD. In fact a lot of them despise her. Ya know what the best way to handle that is?
