Big East Roster Analysis: DePaul Blue Demons
This is not a team-by-team preview series for the Providence Friars’ 10 Big East rivals, though it’s not far off. What it is intended to be is a look at how each of the 10 rosters is put together for the coming season. There are a lot of new faces and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what each piece brings and how it fits together. I’m sure I’ll be wrong often, but I walk away feeling more informed, and I’m hoping you will, too.
DePaul Blue Demons (see below)
No Big East team enters the season with more uncertainty than DePaul, which has a new coach – Chris Holtmann – and an entirely new roster. That uncertainty is a good thing, though, because the questions that come after this complete reboot are better than the certainty of the ineptitude of the outgoing coaching staff and its rosters. Holtmann has enrolled 11 transfers and two freshmen, and any of those transfers could be rotation players. It says something, I think, that Jon Rothstein’s Big East “Offseason Breakdown” and my own projected rotation have only one overlapping starter. In general, I’ve projected larger roles for players who had substantial roles at smaller schools (“up” transfers), while Rothstein prefers “pedigree” players from brand-name schools who played limited roles or were injured.
If you’re looking for a theme with this DePaul roster, it’s shooting. Here are the 11 transfers with their 3-point shooting from 2023-24:
Holtmann can nearly fill out an entire rotation with seven players who attempted at least two threes per game and made at least 36% of those attempts. Last season’s DePaul team had only three such players: Chico Carter (if you round up his 35.8%), Jalen Terry and KT Raimey. At the very least, Holtmann seems intent on forcing teams to defend the entire floor against the Demons this season, presumably opening up space for drivers as well.
The one player Rothstein and I agree is a starter is the center, David Skogman, a transfer from Davidson who started his career at Buffalo. Skogman missed the final 13 games of last season with a foot injury that required surgery, but the fifth-year big is emblematic of the floor-spacing Holtmann has prioritized. Skogman is a career 42% 3-point shooter and knocked down about two per game last season before the injury. The Milwaukee native will head closer to home to finish up his career.
There are honestly 10 options to fill those last four starting spots. I went with a backcourt of David Thomas (Mercer) and Jacob Meyer (Coastal Carolina), and my forwards were Isaiah Rivera (Illinois-Chicago) and Troy D’Amico (Southern Illinois). Thomas was a 39% 3-point shooter as a freshman in the Southern Conference, and he scored in double-figures in his final nine games for the Bears. He’s perhaps not a true point guard, but he did have the same assist-rate ranking in the SoCon (11th) as another point-guard option – Conor Enright – had in the Valley at Drake. Enright shot 44% on 3-pointers last season in a limited role as the fifth option on a stacked Drake team.
At the other guard position, I’ve slotted in another capable shooter – CCU’s Meyer. He knocked down 40% of his attempts last year and scored at least 14 points in each of the Chanticleers’ final 14 games. His 67% free-throw shooting creates concern that his 3-point shooting may come back to earth, but the volume of attempts points to sustainability as a high-30s shooter. Of the players who took at least 100 3-pointers in 2022-23 and made at least 40% of them while also making less than 70% of their free throws, five returned to school in 2023-24. All five shot at least 34% on 3-pointers in 2023-24 (though none better than 39%).
Two other high-major transfers will expect time at guard this season, led by ex-Razorback Layden Blocker. Blocker is a former top-100 point guard recruit out of Wichita, who yo-yoed in and out of the Arkansas rotation last season before sitting out the final five games. His offensive production (a sub-100 O-rating on 18% usage) needs to be taken in the context of his inconsistent playing time – he got at least 16 minutes in seven straight games in November and December but reached that mark only six more times in his remaining games, with DNPs and minimal run sprinkled throughout. Blocker did show the knack of getting steals, and so, if the Thomas/Mercer backcourt proves defensively porous, Blocker could get on the court more. C.J. Gunn, a 6-6 wing who was once a top-150, four-star recruit out of Indianapolis was merely a deep rotation player in two seasons with the Hoosiers. Gunn did score 17 points in a career-high-tying 24 minutes in IU’s 27-point Big Ten Tournament defeat to Nebraska to end the season. Like Blocker, he has shown the ability to get steals but has offered next to nothing on the glass despite being 6-6.
In the frontcourt, five more transfers will compete for minutes, led (from my perspective) by the UIC transfer Rivera, a 6-foot-5 wing who played his first three seasons at Colorado State. Rivera is another shooter, knocking down 40.5% of 163 attempts last season but also making 87 free throws and showing the ability to score inside. The last DePaul player who made at least 75 free throws, 100 2-pointers and 60 3-pointers (as Rivera did for the Flames) was Max Strus in 2018-19. Rivera was 99th percentile last season on catch-and-shoot attempts with a 72% effective field-goal percentage in those opportunities. If I had to guess who will lead DePaul in scoring, I’d pick Rivera, and so I expect him to start at one forward spot.
The other forward feels more up-for-grabs with another shooter – Troy D’Amico of Southern Illinois – getting my vote (for now). He’s a good passer as a forward and can knock down 3’s (37% over three years). He is not, however, much of an inside force or rebounder, which opens up space for Missouri State transfer N.J. Benson. Benson is more of an undersized 5 at 6-foot-8 – he has no shooting range but is a killer rebounder and good shot-blocker. And, if you have Skogman, perhaps you can live with a non-shooter next to him.
Another option is Louisville transfer J.J. Traynor, who missed all but eight games last season after suffering an early-season shoulder injury (his career has been beset by injuries – he missed most of 2021-22 as well). Traynor was a top-100 recruit a very long time ago, and at 6-8, 190, has the body type of a wing more than a four. Finally, there’s Patrick Suemnick, who played previously at West Virginia and Robert Morris before that. He’s a bulkier 6-foot-8 forward who excels on the offensive glass and should be a serviceable backup bruiser at the major-conference level.
There are a couple of freshman forwards – Chris Riddle and Sekou Konneh – that figure to be mostly deep-bench options in their first seasons in Lincoln Park. Riddle is the lone player committed to DePaul prior to Holtmann’s hiring (or on last year’s roster) who is still around, which seems promising. He heads 10 miles up Lake Shore Drive from Kenwood Academy in Hyde Park. Konneh, also a 3-star, will take the two-hour trip south from Milwaukee.
DePaul has a chance to be competent on offense, with plenty of shooting and a few shot-creators. My primary concern is on defense where Ohio State struggled under Holtmann in the last four years of his tenure in Columbus. Ohio State finished outside the top 80 defensively in each of his last four seasons — they were 124th when Holtmann was fired on Valentine’s Day and improved to 63rd by season’s end under Jake Diebler. This leads me to wonder whether this team can hold up defensively with seemingly less talent at that end than what he coached at Ohio State. Can Holtmann find the right offense/defense balance or get enough defense from his best offensive players to compete? A top-125 national finish would be a step in the direction of competence and one that would surely be welcomed by Blue Demons fans.
Sueminick re-transferred to OK St.