DePaul Dominates Against Mercer

Behind a True Team Effort, The Blue Demons Prevail

Heading into last night’s game, there was a sense of uneasiness amongst the DePaul faithful. Mercer, a team lead by first year Head Coach and Rising Star in the Coaching ranks, Ryan Ridder was considered to be a lot like this Blue Demons team. Push the pace on offense and shoot a lot of threes. The Bears were coming off a 125 to 54 win vs University of Virginia Lynchburg (DIII) where they shot 31% from behind the arch. The opponent doesn’t matter-putting up 125 points in a college basketball game is impressive.

The game started off at a blistering pace, and by the time Troy D’Amico made a 3 and was fouled, there was no looking back for Chris Holtmann’s squad.

JJ Traynor (11pts/10 rebs/1 ast) when asked about how the team came out in the first half said, “We just brought energy. Pregame we watched a little hype video. And I feel like that bled onto our first half. On both ends playing with a bunch of energy, talking and that just translated into our good defense.”

That energy persisted and by 10 minutes into the first half DePaul had a lead of 29-13. CJ Gunn (13 pts/2 rebs/2 stls) made his debut and the spark off the bench was instant. He scored a deep three then proceeded to turn Mercer over and finish with a big dunk. No one person on this team lacks energy but defensively, a lot of that spark comes from two of the guards on this team. Layden Blocker (9 pts/4 stls/3 asts) was all over the floor on defense, seemingly apparates out of no where to block a shot or make a steal. Conor Enright (3 pts/2 rebs/8 asts), who we have dubbed The Punky PG a la Bears Great Jim McMahon, just might be the most irritating guard in the entire NCAA. He’ll be all up in the opposing guards face defensively ready to formulate into a brick wall like Kirby and take a charge. He finished the game forcing 4 charging foul calls against Mercer.

DePaul was about to go into half time on a half court buzzer beater by Troy D’Amico to lead 54-22, but the referees deemed the home town clock to be too slow to start and waved off the exclamation point to end the half with the Blue Demons up 51-22.

“Every practice, every game we’re getting better and better and just more comfortable with each other. We’ve got great coaches who got us prepared. We’re more prepared than anybody in the country I feel like. We just go out there and play unselfish and play together.” JJ Traynor said when he talked about the team’s preparation for games.

NJ Benson is one of the most improved over these three games-he’s more aggressive and assertive down low, and it showed as he led the entire team with 15 pts 4 rebs and 1 block. He has put the work in to improve footwork, spacing, and overall improvement on both ends of the floor. He was poked in the eye and lost a contact according to Coach Holtmann, then went on to make two free throws. Holtmann jokingly said after, “…maybe we keep your eye like that…”

That mindset of improvement and progress is evident across the board with these players. It’s a culture that is developing and growing, only three games into the season. The entire team is invested, the entire coaching staff is invested, and that’s evident when talking to Coach Holtmann,

“We have good coaches, whether they were head coaches or not, I think we just have good coaches. They all have a specific area and they’ve all got real strengths. Brian does a great job talking through an offensive game plan constantly giving me ideas. Jack is just a really good coach on both ends. Brandon plays a really big role on defense. Lavall has that perspective as a guy who can see things in a lot of different ways and he’s had an important role in some of our special situation stuff, so all those guys have done a really good job in their role.”

The game plan has been clear over, get smart open looks from behind the arch, crash the boards get the rebound, create second chances. This game was a perfect execution of that looking at the heat map from this game provided by CBB Analytics:

The Blue Demons shot 54.8% from the field and tallied their 2nd highest team 3pt FG% of the year at 36%. They also logged their highest Offensive rating of the young campaign (Points per 100 possessions) of 125.7 and are at at 119.0 for the season.

DePaul also currently claims the 4th best eFG% at 58.3% for and are just above the middle of the pack for eFG% against at 43.2%. DePaul for the season is shooting 35.8% from behind the arch and 63% from 2pt range. Holtmann’s squad is also effectively pushing the pace of play and are have the third fastest pace of play for and against in the Big East. With control of the ball and good shot selection, we’re seeing the fruits of that with a lot of points. On the defensive end that is creating a lot of turnovers that DePaul is turning into points, 17 on average this season. A vast difference in shot selection and style of play we have been used to.

All in all, there are a lot of superlatives to discuss 3 games into the season. DePaul takes on Duquesne (KenPom 155) out of the A10 Conference, DePaul’s highest KenPom Rated opponent yet on Friday November 15th at 8PM at WinTrust. Those not attending can catch the game on FS2.