What was Chris Holtmann’s reaction when he discovered, courtesy of DePaul’s athletics communications crew, that he’s the school’s first men’s basketball coach to start off 7-0 in his debut season since some fellow by the name of — ahem — Raymond Joseph Meyer in 1942?
Did Holtmann beam with pride? Rush to Twitter and declare himself the new GOAT of Lincoln Park? Dance a celebratory jig on Sheffield Ave.?
Not quite.
“Oh, God, no,” he said by phone Tuesday. “I immediately tried to debunk it in every way I possibly could. I said, ‘Come on, you can’t put that out there. Please don’t compare me to the great Ray Meyer just yet.’ ”
Look, no big deal. All Holtmann, 53, has to do now is win another 717 games at DePaul, maybe tack on a couple of national coach of the year awards and Final Fours while he’s at it, and the comparison won’t make anybody so much as blink.
On the other hand, this season’s Blue Demons have beaten Southern Indiana, Prairie View A&M, Mercer, Duquesne, Eastern Illinois, Northern Illinois and Valparaiso. It’s only early December, but one suspects there isn’t a national championship contender in that lot.
Also, there’s the minor matter of DePaul’s less-than-glorious recent history on the hardwood. Last season’s team was 3-29 overall and 0-20 in the Big East. The last three teams combined for a 9-51 Big East record. Nine straight Blue Demons squads have finished last, or next-to-last, in the conference. DePaul’s most recent NCAA Tournament appearance came in 2004, and its two decades since have been college basketball’s saddest, quietest disappearing act.
This is why DePaul basketball stories have long had a way of turning into bummers in a hurry.
“We understand what the perception is now,” Holtmann said. “That’s not going to be easily changed. We’re not questioning if it’s founded or not. It’s reality.”
Reality will change, though. It has to. Holtmann — a former Big Ten and Big East coach of the year with seven NCAA Tournaments under his belt — was too good a hire for DePaul not to finally get that rusty old needle moving again.
The hard stuff begins Wednesday with a game at 6-1 Texas Tech (8:15 p.m., ESPNU, 670-AM). After that, Holtmann dives back into a Big East schedule for the first time since leaving Butler for Ohio State in 2017.
He has a team that was, understandably, pegged for last place in the conference in most previews. But the Blue Demons — a completely reconfigured team Holtmann built largely via the transfer portal — rank in the top 10 nationally in both assists and bench points per game. Holtmann credits older transfers Isaiah Rivera, David Skogman and Troy D’Amico for setting a tone of selflessness and believes the same core will be able to handle whatever losing inevitably comes around.
“They just want to leave it in a better place,” Holtmann said.
That has always been the simplest way to judge coaches, too.
In his first season as a head coach, at Gardner-Webb 14 years ago, Holtmann’s team played early games against five major-conference foes and got run out of the gym each time.
“My head was spinning, for sure,” he said. “I thought, ‘Whew, this is hard.’ ”
But three years later he’d won enough to get from there to Butler, where, in his first season, his team beat Roy Williams and No. 5 North Carolina the day before Thanksgiving in the Bahamas. Later that night, Holtmann and wife Lori ran into the Williamses while strolling along the beach. The vanquished old coaching star couldn’t have been more gracious before deadpanning, “Now excuse me while I go drown myself in the ocean.”
That first Butler squad finished tied for second in the Big East, getting Holtmann to his first Big Dance. Two years later, the Bulldogs climbed to 11th in the Top 25 en route to the Sweet 16 and Holtmann was named the league’s coach of the year.
That propelled him to Ohio State, where he went 15-3 in his first season in the Big Ten, in 2017-18, and took home more coaching hardware. Two years after that, his Buckeyes started out like world beaters, knocking off a trio of top 10 non-conference foes in Villanova, North Carolina and Kentucky. Alas, the pandemic would keep that team from the Big Dance. If not for that, Holtmann would’ve piled up five straight NCAA appearances in Columbus.
The truth is, Holtmann has missed being in the thick of such high-profile matchups in the season’s early weeks. He has had pangs for those nationally televised games in neutral arenas where influential media types are buzzing and it can feel like March before the first turkey leg has been claimed. He simply doesn’t have that in this DePaul job — not yet.
“When I was watching [ESPN’s] Feast Week, I did say to myself, ‘We need to get to those games quickly,’ ” he said. “And we will. I want to be playing in those.”
DePaul will spend next Thanksgiving in Destin, Florida, home of the Emerald Coast Classic tournament. Holtmann’s program might have a little bit of mojo by then.
In his second season, he’ll trail Meyer’s time at the school by a mere 40 years. That’s nothing, right?
But we kid. No, we won’t be judging Holtmann against Meyer. Doing so would be meaningless and silly. But at least the man is off to a nice 7-0 start.
“You have to play the games in front of you,” he said.
The hard ones are here.
“And that’s a good thing,” he said. “It really is.”