DePaul’s men’s basketball team began its season with seven-foot freshman Steven Hunter easily winning the opening tip over his undersized counterpart from Howard. He batted the ball forward to Quentin Richardson, who handed off to point guard Rashon Burno cutting down the left sideline. Hunter, meanwhile, used a pick set by DePaul’s other forward, Bobby Simmons, to free himself down the right sideline. He is thin as a rail, listed at a generous 215 pounds in the team’s media guide, and with his uniform flapping and fluttering around his wispy frame he went up like some true Blue Demon and jammed an easy alley-oop pass from Burno. The play had been designed by coach Pat Kennedy to get his star freshman out of the blocks, and it worked so well–“Oooooh!” went the crowd of 5,224 at Alumni Hall–it inspired the team to score the first 21 points of the game.
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One measure of DePaul’s improvement is that Hunter, who gives the team much-needed height at center, might not even be the best new acquisition. Last year DePaul revitalized itself by restocking from the Public League across the front line–the freshmen Richardson from Whitney Young, Simmons from Simeon, and burly Lance Williams (out the first month of this season with an injury) from Julian–and also adding short but talented out-of-state point guard Burno. This year the Blue Demons brought in Hunter from Proviso East; a taller, fiercer point guard, George Baker, from Kentucky; and local outside sharpshooters Joe Tulley from Rockford and Randy Ramsey from Riverside. With all that freshman talent added to last year’s freshman foundation, junior-college transfer Paul McPherson, a South Shore High School grad who starred last year at Kennedy-King, kind of got lost in the preseason hype. But a rock-solid, 6-foot-4, 210-pound guy with a 45-inch vertical leap wasn’t likely to stay lost for long.
“He’s a beast!” Richardson said, clearly pleased that the team had been handed such a complementary tool. As Kennedy pointed out, McPherson’s broad shoulders and sheer muscular size allow him to create space near the basket, so he can use his leaping ability where other high-flying guards cannot. This means that even though Richardson–a gifted player and one of the top college talents in the country after passing up the NBA draft last summer to return to DePaul for his sophomore year–is listed at forward and McPherson at guard in the starting lineup, McPherson can play more of a small forward and Richardson more of a shooting guard (where he’ll probably play in the pros) giving teams that lack the oxymoronic benefit of a tall small forward anguishing matchup difficulties.
What makes DePaul so interesting right now is that the pieces are in place for this to be one of the best college basketball teams in the country. Richardson is a joy to watch night in, night out, but Simmons is equally sound on the fundamentals; like many of his young teammates he’s a powerful player when he isn’t being tentative. If Hunter settles into the offensive role of running the floor like a ghost and hitting the odd turnaround jump shot, he’ll be dangerous, and when Williams comes back Hunter should be able to poach more on defense and block more shots. If the kids go soft, Kennedy can go to the seniors Hartfield and Avery–he says the team has seven starters right now, eight when Williams returns–and if the 5-7 Burno proves a liability against bigger point guards, Kennedy can bring the 6-3 Baker off the bench. Once Tulley and Ramsey get comfortable, they should provide outside shooting that helps keep opponents out of packed-in zone defenses. McPherson, of course, is the beastly x factor; he can grab hold of a game all by himself and excite a crowd with his soaring dunks. If the underclassmen mature and the players find their interlocking roles and the whole team adjusts to the high-pressure tactics of top competition, the Final Four is not out of the question this year. And if Richardson were to return for his junior year (unfortunately, not likely), they’d be bona fide title contenders next year. For now, by the time March Madness rolls around they might be able to beat the Bulls–that is, if they can’t already.
