On a star-studded quarterfinal Thursday at MSG, the strongest impression was left by DePaul

CJ Gunn (11) goes up for shot as DePaul takes Creighton to wire in Big East quarterfinals, falling in double overtime. (Photo by DePaul Men’s Basketball)

NEW YORK — The biggest story of quarterfinal Thursday at the Big East tournament was not regular season champion St. John’s turning back Butler with relative ease as it continues its charmed season. Nor was it Marquette surviving a 14-point deficit and a career day from Ryan Conwell in a desperate attempt to lock up an NCAA Tournament bid for Xavier. It wasn’t even two-time reigning national champion UConn, who shook off a challenge from Villanova and finally showed signs of the juggernaut it has been in March for the past two seasons.

Rather, it was DePaul, the oft-maligned, far-too-often punching bag of the media for its record—or lack thereof—since joining the Big East, who left the strongest impression at Madison Square Garden Thursday, lasting 15 rounds with Creighton and matching the Bluejays punch for punch, shot for shot, before falling four points short in double overtime.

And Thursday’s showing wasn’t even Creighton playing down to its competition, either. DePaul built up a lead as large as 17 points during the night, and led by 11 with just over three minutes to play in regulation before Ryan Kalkbrenner proved too much for the Blue Demons to overcome. Still, the performance of Layden Blocker, Isaiah Rivera and CJ Gunn, among others, has already yielded a payoff in athletic director DeWayne Peevy’s decision to hire Chris Holtmann as head coach just weeks after he was fired at Ohio State.

“This has been a really rewarding team to coach because of that type of stuff that you see,” Holtmann reflected after he overachieved in his first year in Lincoln Park. “We talked all year about (how) at DePaul, we’re going to have a strong backbone. We’re going to respond the right way in the face of hard things. Man, did they do that in overtime and did they do it for the bulk of the season. There’s no question that this group has laid a foundation moving forward in a real positive way.”

DePaul’s foundation included winning four Big East games this season after only taking just three in the previous two years under former coach Tony Stubblefield. Only once, in 2006-07, have the Blue Demons ever navigated a Big East season with fewer than 11 losses, including a six-year stretch from 2008 to 2014 where they went 10-98 in league play. Holtmann, along with a staff that boasts two former college head coaches in LaVall Jordan and Bryan Mullins, went to work addressing the deficiencies on the roster, and were rewarded with perhaps the biggest leap forward the program has made in several seasons.

“We want to build a roster and play a certain way that we played this year: Skilled, versatile, high-IQ, tough and high-character,” Holtmann said. “That’s the most important thing moving forward. Most of what we’ll look at is how we played for the past four to six weeks in spite of season-ending injuries, the character of our guys (and) how they came together, the example for our younger guys that are going to continue to be a part of our program. That’s the foundation that was laid.”

In many ways, DePaul’s acquittal of itself in New York this week is reminiscent to another program that had become tabloid fodder more than it deserved, one that made a similarly intelligent coaching hire to lift it from the doldrums into respectability. And that school also made its first mark in a conference tournament at Madison Square  Garden.

Seven years ago, Rutgers was finishing its fourth campaign as a Big Ten Conference member, and second after Steve Pikiell was tabbed to replace Eddie Jordan on the banks. In short order, Pikiell laid the groundwork for what currently exists in Piscataway, with the first signs of turning the corner coming in an unexpected run to the Big Ten tournament quarterfinals in 2018 as the No. 14 seed.

“I think you’re getting a dose of what we can be,” Pikiell remarked as a team led by junior guard Corey Sanders shocked college basketball with wins over Indiana and Nebraska before bowing out in a close game against Purdue. “I’m so excited about the future, I really am, and we’re going to get better and better. Two years now (and) we’ve gained some respect. My phone’s not ringing as much and I think that’s a good thing.”

“That’s not how we want to be remembered,” Sanders said that night in 2018, as he and then-freshman Geo Baker—the latter in his baptism to the country—led the charge for the Scarlet Knights, dispelling the notion that Rutgers was a pushover. “Nobody expected us to win one game. To win two and push Purdue to the max, that’s a great accomplishment.”

Coaches by and large do not normally subscribe to moral victories, but DePaul may be an exception on this day. Going 50 minutes with a team bound for the NCAA Tournament is more than just a token Rocky Balboa moment. In this landscape, it is a sign of more to come with a proven winner at the reins.

“I think when you go through something like this with a group, you can feel really good about the fruits of our labor collectively,” Holtmann proposed. “That’s what we’ll reflect on, that this group really has laid a foundation of competitiveness that we need to build on moving forward.”

“I think there’s no question that our guys—when they have a moment—can reflect back and say, ‘yeah, this was the start of something pretty special.’”