The Ecstasy Of Chaos
Dave Leitao might be floating in the college basketball ether but the identifiers of his basketball teachings will linger at DePaul for the foreseeable future. Baked into that identity is the magic of chaos without the storybook ending; to push the boundaries of what isn’t acceptable for DePaul The Brand.
Which, as you know, is losing. Lots of it. Globs of it, smeared across the face of the BIG EAST, with no napkin in sight.
Tony Stubblefield is just another vessel to try to flip the program of its sub-mediocrity. Like an oil spill in the ocean, the shit simply just spreads, an unyielding force of man-made fuck ups disrupting natural beauty.
Regardless of who is at the helm, DePaul is a minefield of question marks and exclamation points. They bash their way through a non-conference slate looking perfectly cromulent before tip-toeing into conference play where they get routinely relegated to the basement. With these efforts they get chances at an occasional upset; they beat Seton Hall this year! Sometimes they push around Marquette! They beat Providence in the BIG EAST tournament last year! They don’t look awful on paper but the moment you push your eyeballs upon a basketball court to see them live and in person you understand their talent deficits and watch as they make up for it with lighter fluid, a book of matches, a shitload of dry kindling, and readings from a 5,000 year old, found in a mysterious well on sacred ground, passages that glow blue and red under moonlight, book of spells.
They scratch and claw, they play an unorthodox style, reserving a lot of their half-court offensive offerings to a three man weave, catapulting one of the three straight at the basket, to meet a rolling forward with the momentum of a tightly wound top, for an easy two points. It’s effective if they get their opponent on their heels, but the success rate wanes when faced with a zone or a shot blocker at the rim. Their defense is physical and in-your-face, sliding their way inside their opponent’s jersey, forcing as much discomfort as possible. When their opponent gets rattled they get buried by it, when their opponent rattles back, the Blue Demons crumble into an ashtray of despair.
Another aspect that makes DePaul-Creighton so devastatingly chaotic is that it’s typically designated to be broadcast on CBS Sports Network. It features announcers you don’t often hear from, camera angles and lighting filters that contrast with a usual Fox Sports broadcast, and different commercials for different shit that CBS executives think you want to buy. It’s like an alternate dimension. Makes you feel a little wiggly.
To make this even more bizarre, Creighton’s head coach, Greg McDermott, was out with a positive COVID test, adding spice to the chaos that we all seek, the chaos that we all would die to feel in our safely subdued day-to-day lives.
What happened today was exactly what you expected. Creighton gets sucked into shooting hell, can’t claw their way out, looks like there’s no light at the end of the tunnel, have to rely almost exclusively on the pick & roll with Kalkbrenner, and eventually DePaul takes a double digit lead.
The Jays were dead in the water. Maybe this was finally DePaul’s time. Maybe Tony Stubblefield was able to do what Leitao never could; take that Demon Magic and turn it into positive results. Maybe this was finally thei-
I’m just fucking with you, DePaul didn’t score for 8 minutes and Creighton went on a 22-2 run. Buried ‘em. Killed ‘em with a full court press while Ryan Kalkbrenner and Trey Alexander shined offensively and defensively. Like a drunken cigarette in a heated argument, the Blue Demons limped into that ashtray of despair, another memory of what could’ve been.
As the run churned and burned, Tony Stubblefield - who’d been full of vim and vigor throughout the first 22 minutes of the game, pacing up and down the court, yelling and screaming, pumping his fists - realized that despite everything, this was inevitable.
His entire demeanor was awash with a certain flavor of demoralization that’s so seldom seen today. It was honest and heartbreaking. He couldn’t fight what the Basketball Gods deemed necessary. He crouched, speaking softly to his assistant coaches, occasionally looking up to check the score, then looking down at the floor. That spark he carried throughout DePaul’s run was now simply a memory of an endorphin release.
Late in the second half, Ryan Hawkins dunked the ball on a fastbreak to push Creighton up by double digits.
The deathblow to hope.
The ecstasy of chaos.
