The night before the Big East hosted its basketball media day in Manhattan on Oct. 1, the league’s athletic directors met for dinner. Naturally, the conference’s preseason poll was a topic of discussion, so DePaul AD DeWayne Peevy mentioned that he hoped his school would at least be outside the bottom three of the projected standings. That’s hardly dreaming big at most places. But at DePaul, it’s almost historic. The last time the Blue Demons were picked to finish higher than that in the preseason? 2007.
Sobering stats like that illustrate the challenge Chris Holtmann walked into when he took the DePaul job in the spring of 2024. He entered with the program in its darkest hour, coming off a miserable 3–29 season when the Blue Demons failed to win a conference game and later included point-shaving allegations. DePaul finished with a winning record just once in 17 years and finished last (or tied for last) in the Big East in 12 of those seasons.
