This was it, finally, the product of all the pleading, screaming and begging coach Dave Leitao had been doing. Ever since he took over at DePaul last spring, he had preached the Blue Demons must learn to play harder, must learn to play at a fevered pitch they never had imagined.
On occasion, they had done just that. But not until here, on this Wednesday night at the Allstate Arena, did they open a game afire and then refuse to fall even when their knees were buckled and they appeared on their way to a knockout loss. They instead steeled themselves, stared down adversity and emerged from a hothouse of an affair with a stunning 56-52 victory over Cincinnati.
Guard Drake Diener broke a 50-50 tie and gave DePaul the lead for good with his only basket of the game, a 10-foot leaner with 51.9 seconds left. Forward Sam Hoskin, in the last 25.6 seconds, dropped four straight free throws to secure the victory. The Demons’ defense held the Bearcats to 30.6 percent shooting and forward Delonte Holland, in a funk for a month, sparked them with 22 points and an assertive defensive effort on Bearcats star Leonard Stokes (nine points on 1-of-10 shooting).
But those are mere numbers and do not fully capture the essence of this Blue Demons (11-6, 3-3 Conference USA) performance.
“I’m proud not only of the win, but how we rose to the challenge,” Leitao said, trying to capture that essence. “The way everybody has to beat Cincinnati is to match their toughness. I think we did that and then we didn’t wilt when they made their run at us.”
“We were disappointed in ourselves the last time [we played Cincinnati],” Hoskin said. “We didn’t come out fighting. This time we went punch for punch with them.”
The Blue Demons, in fact, outpunched Cincinnati (13-4, 6-1) in the first half. They attacked aggressively and effectively pounded the boards. They reached the majority of loose balls. On one such opportunity, Joe Tulley hit the floor, outfought Bearcat Rod Flowers, grabbed the ball and fed Hoskin for an open layup.
That snapshot represented DePaul through these 20 minutes, which ended with it up 10. The Blue Demons’ lead was still 11 with less than 13 minutes remaining. This is when Cincinnati rallied. At 9:18, it took the lead on a turnaround jumper by Jason Maxiell.
“You’re not just going to beat this team,” Leitao told his players during a timeout. “This is the thing that will make you. This is how you’ll be judged.”
“It was,” he later said, “like a boxer getting jarred by a combination and going back to his corner. He has a decision to make. We made the right decision.”
His Blue Demons decided to fight back, which they began doing on a pair of Hoskin free throws, and now this game just careened toward the finish with no more than three points separating the teams. DePaul answered each flurry the Bearcats threw. When the Demons were there standing at the end, they had broken Cincinnati’s eight-game winning streak and defeated Cincinnati for the first time since February 1999.
“I’m not going to go beyond tonight. We have to prepare for Saturday (when they play at St. Louis),” Leitao said. “But if we bring the same intensity then, I’ll know we’ve learned a big lesson.”
