Mere moments after meeting DePaul basketball coach Pat Kennedy, only one impression is possible. This guy is full of it. Up-to-the-eyebrows full of it. He is so full of it that he shouldn’t wear a hat, he should wear a twist tie.
This is not a bad thing.
College basketball is full of it too. Gentle men and gentlemen are excused. In the Age of Vitale, Kennedy is a card carrier, glib and eager and cable-ready.
He may be exactly what DePaul needs.
“I’ve been telling recruits that Chicago is the basketball capital of the world,” Kennedy is saying. “This is not just some corny recruiting line. This is not so far-fetched.
“You think of basketball, what do you think? Chicago Bulls. All over the world. Basketball. Chicago Bulls. Basketball capital. Chicago.”
This is no way to start an argument with somebody from Chicago, no matter how distorted the point.
If Kennedy is recruiting outside of Chicago, maybe it works. If Kennedy is recruiting for the Chicago Bulls, it certainly works. When you are full of it, you see what sticks.
“Let’s face it,” Kennedy says, “recruiting is everything.”
Kennedy plans to recruit within Chicago, so he says, and pending the inevitable, he plans to recruit for DePaul, the ring in the tub that is Conference USA. DePaul would be to the Bulls what lint is to the tuxedo.
“If I want to recruit, I just take my car,” Kennedy says, still amazed, having come from Tallahassee, from which the only direction is Atlanta, wherever you are going.
Kennedy says he wants 80 percent of his team to be from Chicago. He wants DePaul to be Chicago’s team. He wants a lot. He wants to get to the last three minutes of the game with a chance to win with a team he describes as “undermanned in inches, but not in heart.”
“That’s where we are,” Kennedy says. “I am very realistic. I am not even thinking of the word `optimism.’ “
What a painless position to be in, a place Joey Meyer was not allowed. Meyer was fired because DePaul won only three games last year. The timing was rotten but the reason was valid. With father Ray leaving as well, DePaul is now Meyerless for the first time since it mattered. DePaul will become whatever Kennedy can make it.
Kennedy already has more forgiving academics, sees a new on-campus arena coming and can argue for any kid right along with Cincinnati and Louisville and Memphis–education and eligibility are identical twins.
“Folks may be excited to do it the right way,” Kennedy says, “but if you are not winning, no one is excited.”
Winning will be the only way Kennedy ever replaces the family Meyer in the hearts of DePaul followers, not necessarily a considerable but a loyal group, and the only way Chicago will become the kind of college basketball asylum Kennedy foresees.
I do have a couple of suggestions to help in the meantime, a few tips to warm the way.
First of all, never again mention being from New York, and especially delete from memory all references to the Mets. Chicago may not be able to tell Iona from Indianapolis, but we still stick pins in dolls of Cleon Jones.
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Tell the same tales but reference them with stories not from the Times but from the Tribune, not the back page of the Daily News but the scoreboard page of the Daily Herald.
Some directions. Aqueduct is now Hawthorne. Belmont is now Sportsman’s. Sorry about Arlington.
Don’t drop Louie Carnesecca’s name and expect anyone to catch it. Ray Meyer’s will do much better.
Forget the ACC, not that Florida State was ever a real player in the ACC. From there to here, sounds like slumming.
Don’t worry about not knowing exactly what Conference USA is, or even who is in it. It is the poorest defined confederation this side of the former Yugoslavia.
It ought to be Conference Great Lakes and Major Rivers, but that would clutter up the trophy, should DePaul ever win one.
And, oh yes, stay full of it.