I am angry at the state of DePaul men’s basketball. Our once prominent program has reached the depths of embarrassment that I just can’t take anymore. As a FORMER season ticket holder, I have watched enough of unexplainable player rotations, poor defense, lack of organized offence, selfish play, and grade school turnovers. I thought the 27 point loss to Northwestern where DePaul scored a total (yes total) of 36 points, was rock bottom. Little did I know that would be followed by a 1-17 run in the Big East. At the center of this debacle is Jerry Wainwright, a mid sixties Chicagoan who has spent a career somewhere in the lower tear of mid-major college basketball.
What lead Jean Lenti Ponsetto to make this hire four years ago? Look back, DePaul was entering the Big East, arguably the best conference in college basketball year in and year out. They left a conference full of mid-major programs to join the toughest division in college basketball and hired a career mid-major guy with a .543 winning percentage to lead the charge? At the time of the hire, we all scratched our heads and said ‘Jerry who?’ Now we know who ‘Jerry who’ is, and we know why we’d never heard of him.
Everyone knows that Jerry is a likable guy, funny on the radio, and beloved by coaches everywhere. I even love the spiky hair-do this year. Unfortunately, on a stage like the Big East, likable doesn’t cut it, winning does. DePaul basketball has had very few bright spots these last couple of years. Since the remnants of the Dave Leitao program have moved on, DePaul basketball has been reduced to nothing short of a failure. Allstate arena is empty every night, the team rarely gets TV coverage, and game radio ratings are not worth tying up the time slot for WSCR.
Even though Ms. Ponsetto continues to stand by this failing coach and program, I will offer up two logical courses of action:
1. Keep Jerry around and move the program back into a mid-major conference. The Missouri Valley, Conference U.S.A, or even the Horizon League would provide a level of competition that DePaul could compete with. (DePaul was 8-2 this year against mid-major opponents.)
2. Let Jerry move back either to the mid-major world or retirement, and make a ‘Big East’ sized investment in the men’s basketball program.
Let’s say that heaven and earth move, the Red Sea parts, and Ponsetto lets Jerry go. How about Steve Lavin? Remember him, from UCLA with a record of 145-78. Compare that against Jerry’s DePaul term of 52-72. What an upgrade! How about Tim Jankovich who has lead Illinois State to a 49-19 record in two years since leaving the bench of Bill Self? For goodness sake, one could justify bringing Bobby Knight to the Big East if you really want a successful program in the national spotlight. The point is that there clearly are many other better options to lead this program. Why wait until Jerry’s contract is up in 2012?
The worst part of this entire situation is that DePaul had an opportunity to get on the national roadmap with entrance into the Big East. Through Jerry’s leadership, the program has gone to just about the worst place it could possibly go: obscurity. As a fan and alumnus, I am tired of the obscurity. At least put a program on the floor that is worth watching, be it in a mid-major conference or make an investment to compete in the Big East.
Ms. Ponsetto, PLEASE, let’s move on.
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