Former DePaul men’s basketball coach Joey Meyer died Friday at 74, surrounded by his family, according to the school.
The name Meyer is nearly synonymous with DePaul basketball. Joey was head coach of the Blue Demons from 1984 to 1997, leading them to seven NCAA Tournaments and 231 victories. Only his father, Ray, won more games at the school.
Meyer played for his dad at DePaul, ending his career as the school’s fourth-leading scorer before working on Ray’s staff as an assistant for 11 seasons. Before that, he was a high school star at DePaul Academy, helping the school win both the Catholic League championship and the city championship in 1967.
The 1986-87 Blue Demons, Meyer’s best team, went 28-3 and reached the Sweet 16. Meyer won at least one national coach of the year award that season.
In the 1991-92 season, which ended in Meyer’s final trip to the Big Dance, the Blue Demons beat Final Four-bound Cincinnati twice in Great Midwest Conference play and finished in first place in the league. Then-Bearcats coach Bob Huggins told former Sun-Times reporter Toni Ginnetti, who covered DePaul at the time, that Meyer was an even better coach than his legendary father.
Huggins wasn’t the only big-time coach who told Ginnetti that. So did former Kansas coach Roy Williams. Both men contended Joey Meyer never got the respect he deserved.
“How do you follow a legend?” Ginnetti said Friday. “And especially when the legend is your father?”
Bulls radio broadcaster Chuck Swirsky called DePaul games on WGN throughout Meyer’s run as coach and also hosted Meyer’s coach’s show. They were close friends — a relationship that spanned 40 years.
“He was a wonderful person,” Swirsky said. “He was a man of integrity and character who never looked for the spotlight.”
DePaul basketball was a big deal in the city when Meyer took the reins from his dad, who had coached the team for 42 seasons, winning 724 games. The Blue Demons were giants over most of Ray Meyer’s final decade holding the whistle. If they slipped at all under Joey, he heard about it. And for much of his final five seasons — a stretch without an NCAA Tournament berth — he took a lot of heat. He was fired when the season ended in 1997, the end of an era.
In later years, Meyer was a head coach in the NBA Developmental League and a regional scout for the Clippers. He also spent several years as a radio analyst for Northwestern games.
