The Blue Demons swap out a bunch of experienced contributors from a losing team for mostly freshmen. Can that restore the glory in Lincoln Park?
Team: DePaul Blue Demons
2023-24 Record: 12-20, 4-14 Big East
2023-24 Big East Finish: 10th, two games behind Providence and four games in front of winless Xavier.
Final 2023-24 Her Hoop Stats Ranking: #125 out of 360 Division 1 teams
Postseason? Just a 71-64 loss to Seton Hall in the first round of the Big East tournament.
Key Departures: While DePaul didn’t win a lot of games last season, they still have a lot to replace. First and very foremost on that list is Anaya Peoples who was the leading scorer (16.8/game) and the leading rebounder (8.0/game) AND the assists leader (3.4/game) in 2023-24. Her Hoop Stats has her Player Efficiency Rating relative to minutes played at #104 in the country, so that seems pretty dang notable since the Blue Demons weren’t very good as a team.
It gets a little worse from there. DePaul’s looking at replacing three of their top four rebounders, as Katlyn Gilbert was pulling in 5.2 per game and Brynn Masikewich was at 3.2 per contest as well. Gilbert was also #4 on the team in scoring, chipping in 9.2 points per game, and she was third in assists at 2.8 per night. Masikewich isn’t that notable of a loss to the rotation as she was only playing 10 minutes per game, but again: She was the #4 rebounder by raw counting total so that’s kind of a big deal for DePaul in general.
Jade Edwards is done at DePaul as well, as her time in Chicago ultimately comes up as a disappointment. She never got a chance to show if the double digit scoring and high quality rebounding at American translated to the Big East as she got hurt early in 2022-23 and then averaged just 13.6 minutes in 25 appearances mostly off the bench this past season. Michelle Sidor also wraps up her time in Lincoln Park after being a most of the time starter this past season. Her one season with DePaul was a career best one, averaging 7.9 points, 2.2 rebounds, and 1.8 assists per game.
I should point this out: None of these departures are surprises. These are all women either on their bonus season of eligibility or finishing up a fourth season of action at the very least. It’s one thing to lose a bunch of production and minutes to the transfer portal, it’s another thing to be expecting to lose all your on-court leadership because that’s how eligibility works.
Key Returners: Jorie Allen is your leading returning scorer for DePaul after tossing in 11.1 points per game this past season. She’s the only returning double digit scorer, and at 6.5 per game, she’s also DePaul’s leading returning rebounder. This will be her sixth season of college hoops after losing the 2021-22 season to an injury.
DePaul just barely missed having two double digit scorers returning, as Kate Clarke averaged 9.8 points per game last year. Of the Blue Demons’ top four scorers a year ago, Clarke was the only credible three-point shooter, knocking down nearly 37% of her team high 4.8 attempts per game.
Maeve McErlane is the last returning starter on the roster after she got the nod in 25 of her 31 appearances last season. She’s the leader amongst returning players in assists at 2.9 per game, and she added 4.6 points and 2.2 rebounds in 26 minutes a night. The only other player that comes close to counting as a rotation player is Shakara McCline, who averaged 9.5 minutes in 23 contests. That’s right on the edge of “did she play a notable role” in terms of minutes per game, but she also didn’t play in nine contests, so it’s not like she was a “gotta get her minutes every night” contributor.
Key Additions: DePaul is very much leaning into a youth movement for the 2024-25 season. They have eight new names on the roster for next season, and six of them are freshmen. Angelina Smith (5’8” guard) from the Chicagoland area is the most important one, as Blue Star has her at #79 in the country. We could probably squint and say that Natiah Nelson (5’9” guard) at #140 counts as notable here if for no other reason than DePaul only has four rotation players returning and they’re going to need someone to step in and play minutes for them someway, somehow.
The Blue Demons also add two transfers. Meg Newman comes back to the Midwest after an injury redshirt year and a full season at Arizona State followed by a campaign at Alabama. The 6’2” forward went backwards in terms of stats after going from the Pac-12 to the SEC, and after two seasons of high major competition, she has averaged 2.5 points and 3.4 rebounds in 12.7 minutes across 61 appearances.
Taylor Johnson-Matthews is well traveled as well. She started her collegiate career at Wright State, bounced to Pearl River Community College in Mississippi for a season, and now she’s back closer to her home in Ohio. The 5’9” guard didn’t do much for WSU (3.7 points and 2.5 rebounds) but she ended up as the top scorer in PRCC’s conference at 18.2 per game. She also averaged 6.6 rebounds per game, but I suspect that might hold up even worse than her scoring whilst going from junior college to the Big East.
Coach: Doug Bruno, entering the 37th season of his second stint in charge of DePaul women’s basketball, and 39th season overall in Lincoln Park. He has a record of 754-389 in this go-round and 781-400 overall.
Outlook: The last time that DePaul women’s basketball had back-to-back losing seasons was in 1998 and 1999, when they went 11-18 and 12-15.
That’s happened again now, as Doug Bruno has been in charge of a team that went 16-17 in 2022-23 and then dropped to just 12-20 this past season.
DePaul has had women’s basketball since the 1974-75 season. They have never had three straight losing seasons.
They very well could hit that nadir by this time next year. Sure, maybe it depends on what Doug Bruno decides to do with his non-conference scheduling, but I’m not holding out a lot of hope for the Blue Demons to find a way to a winning record in Big East action. Why should I? What’s on this roster right now that says “yep, I see the plan,” and makes you think they’ll be a top half of the league team?
Which brings us around to several uncomfortable truths about DePaul women’s basketball. The first one is that DePaul hasn’t been to the NCAA tournament since 2022 when they got absolutely clattered as one of the first ever First Four teams in tournament history as that was the year the field expanded. So, from a certain point of view, DePaul should not have made the tournament that year as they wouldn’t have been good enough in a 64 team field….. and if that had happened, DePaul would be staring at a tournament drought since losing to Missouri State in the first round in 2019.
It sure doesn’t look like 2025 is going to snap that streak, which means we have to point out that Doug Bruno is going to turn 74 years old right as the 2024-25 season starts. That 17 year run of NCAA tournaments is long in his rearview mirror by now, and it’s reasonable to wonder what happens with this roster if they do in fact end up with a third straight losing record for the first time in program history. If that’s the case, how long does DePaul administration let Doug Bruno wander around in the wilderness trying to figure it out?
You know how we all joke about the attendance for DePaul men’s basketball at Wintrust Arena? Ha Ha Ha, worst in the Big East, ha ha ha, they can only sellout when Marquette alumni buy tickets, etc.? Yeah. So. DePaul’s women’s team plays at Wintrust, too. They averaged 1,702 fans per game last season….. and the men’s team averaged 3,703.
And the women’s average is propped up by 6,000+ against Green Bay on a local school kids Field Trip Day and 5,400+ against UConn.
It’s bleak over there, and I don’t see signs of it getting better in a hurry, not while running a youth movement onto the court with a coach who has clearly left his better days behind him.