DePaul

mold and mantra in how we handle our business. I come from Jim Calhoun’s camp, so I’m always going to be about defense first, and playing hard and toughness, but the way the game is played today you have to be equally, if not more skilled, in order to put the ball in the basket and be able to make plays. The combination of both is what we seek and have it be representative of this city and this university.”

DePaul spent its early history as an independent, most of it under Hall of Famer Ray Meyer from 1942-84. In 1991, the Blue Demons joined the league that eventually became Conference USA, and in 2005 shifted to the original Big East after the first of the league’s football-driven defections. DePaul joined the conference’s other basketball-centric schools to form the new Big East in 2013. Across 15 years, the program has won only 22.1 percent of its regular-season games in either version of the conference, its only winning record, 9-7, in 2006-07.

UConn won nine of 10 games against DePaul before the split up.

“A far as the play in the league, it still is at a high level,” Leitao said. “The physicality is maybe not as much, and I don’t know if that’s so much the Big East or if it has to do with the change in rules. There’s a little more freedom of movement. But if you were to describe for someone, what does a Big East team look like? Or a Big East player? There are a lot of similarities from times gone by to the times we are in right now. If you look at this past season and Myles Powell for instance, or Markus Howard, they’re representative of the same kind of talent that the Big East has come to know and love all the way back to Pearl Washington or Ray Allen, or Allen Iverson or Kerry Kittles. So there is a distinct personality that hasn’t changed, but the style of play has adjusted to the times.”

Leitao began last season serving a three-game suspension over a recruiting infraction. The Blue Demons went 12-1 out of conference, with notable wins at Iowa, Boston College and Minnesota, at home against Northwestern and Texas Tech. They were 3-15 in the Big East before upsetting Xavier in the first round at Madison Square Garden, after which the conference tournament was stopped due to the coronavirus, a 16-16 finish.

“We’ve been able to carry over the last couple of years the one thing we haven’t had since entering the Big East, and that’s culture and continuity,” said Leitao, 208227 as a college head coach. “Last year, we had some tremendous highs, and some tremendous lows as well, but there was a tremendous amount of learning that has defined our culture. … The mindset that comes with winning is something we had to learn and grow with.”

Charlie Moore, who led the team with 15.5 points per game, is among 10 returning players, along with starters Jaylen Butz and Romeo Weems. Newcomers include tranfers Javon Freeman-Liberty, Courvoisier McCauley, Brian Patrick and Ray Salnave.

“We wanted to address our backcourt in the offseason,” Leitao said, “and we’ve been able to do that without sacrificing who we are. Those guys address the need in this league to be guard heavy and to be diverse with the ball in their hands and the decisions that they make.”

DePaul’s players are not yet on campus, as Chicago and Illinois go slow with reopening, and the team is having ongoing discussions about how to move forward through the movement for social reform that has followed the death of George Floyd.

“The beauty of young people in this era is that they are very emotional about things and very emotional about this subject,” Leitao said. “We’ve tried to turn that emotion into a teachable moment, so they understand their place, understand what to do about it, understand how to move forward in a positive and unified way.”

Leitao goes about team-building the school way, the way he learned from Calhoun. He sees a UConn resurgence on the horizon because he identifies the same qualities in Dan Hurley.

“If I learned any one thing from my time as a player, assistant, as part of the UConn program,” Leitao said, “Coach [Calhoun] taught me the definition of competitive spirit more than anybody. I’ve never met a coach in any sport, any level that said they

want their team to play hard, but there have been only a few, and UConn has long been one of those few, that played harder than everybody else. Teams that win maintain themselves as having a competitive spirit, more and better than their opponent.

“I remember when Danny and his brother, Bobby, were in high school and it goes into the same thing we were talking about. Their father, Bob Hurley Sr., represented that competitive spirit, that drive and that will to win as much as anybody who has ever coached this game on any level. So Danny is representative of that, the games I’ve seen he’s an intense personality who gets his teams to play really, really hard.

“This next stage in UConn’s existence is very important, [The Big East affiliation] will give him and the university a chance to get back to the place they’ve been accustomed to.”