DePaul introduced Friday morning that longtime head ladies’s basketball coach Doug Bruno is stepping down after 39 years main the Blue Demons. He leaves his put up with 786 wins, which is Eleventh-most all-time amongst all Division I ladies’s basketball coaches.
Bruno, 74, coached DePaul briefly within the mid-Nineteen Seventies earlier than leaving to educate the Chicago Hustle within the short-lived Ladies’s Skilled Basketball League. After the league dissolved, Bruno was an assistant for the Loyola Chicago males for a number of seasons earlier than returning to DePaul in 1988 the place he remained in that put up via this season.
Throughout his practically four-decade tenure main the Blue Demons, DePaul turned a mid-major powerhouse and an everyday within the NCAA Match, after which stored successful when it joined the Huge East in 2005. They made 25 NCAA Tournaments and 4 Candy 16s below Bruno’s watch and gained the Big East Tournament 5 occasions.
The Blue Demons had been ranked within the AP High 25 Ballot for 221 weeks whereas Bruno was coach, rating as excessive as seventh within the 2010-11 season. Bruno additionally had 15 gamers drafted by WNBA groups, together with All-Star Allie Quigley.
Bruno additionally gained two gold medals as an assistant coach for Group USA in 2012 and 2016, and was inducted into the Ladies’s Basketball Corridor of Fame in 2022.
He missed nearly all of this previous season whereas on medical depart. He’ll stay at DePaul because the particular assistant to the vice chairman/director of athletics for girls’s basketball.
DePaul now has a training emptiness late within the carousel cycle, however many within the sport view it as an awesome job.
“DeWayne Peevy is a star as an athletic director,” one agent advised SB Nation. “He’ll get an awesome coach and assist them. DePaul is the most effective job remaining and I may argue it’s the most effective job that has opened this cycle — it might not even be shut.”
One longtime assistant coach added: “The amenities are good and the pay is anticipated to be strong.”
A number of sources advised SB Nation that DePaul can be dedicated to placing revenue-sharing funds in the direction of ladies’s basketball as soon as the Home settlement goes via. By not having FBS soccer, DePaul — and different Huge East colleges — could have a bonus within the Home period. The settlement will pave the way in which for Division I packages to share income straight with athletes for the primary time. Whereas colleges with FBS soccer groups will possible push most of these sources in the direction of that sport, establishments with out it usually tend to give males’s and girls’s basketball the most important items of the income sharing pie.
“I feel that may be, and perhaps can be, a bonus for us,” Huge East commissioner Val Ackerman not too long ago told Front Office Sports. “We don’t have soccer income, however we don’t have soccer bills, both.”
Duke athletic director Nina King told Yahoo Sports: “Within the Huge East, their basketball revenue-share portion can be much more than what these of us can do who’ve Division I energy soccer packages.”
The revenue-sharing period may make Huge East jobs extra engaging than they had been, say, 5 years in the past. The Huge East solely bought two bids into the NCAA Match this season — and, let’s be trustworthy, everybody else within the league is enjoying for second to UConn — however its picture may change as groups make investments extra into the game, which in flip may result in touchdown extra gifted gamers and successful extra video games. Bruno knew methods to get gifted gamers, like Aneesah Morrow, however he couldn’t compete with what SEC packages like LSU had been providing in NIL packages for her providers. Income-sharing may stage the enjoying area a bit.
“It’s an awesome opening,” one other agent advised SB Nation.
One supply mentioned they anticipate DePaul to rent a sitting head coach.
Right here’s who is perhaps within the combine to succeed Bruno.
Bart Brooks
Brooks was an assistant below Bruno for 11 seasons earlier than taking the pinnacle job at Belmont, the place he has amassed a training file of 197-67 in eight seasons — a successful proportion of 74.6. He’s taken Belmont to 4 NCAA Tournaments and has gained 21 or extra video games in each season on the job. His success at Belmont coupled together with his familiarity with DePaul and relationship with Bruno makes Brooks a robust match.
Carly Thibault-DuDonis
Thibault-DuDonis is pleased at Fairfield the place she’s gone 74-22 in three seasons and brought the Stags to back-to-back NCAA Tournaments, however sooner or later it’s possible that she’s going to transfer up a stage and check herself in a more durable league. A number of Energy 4 athletic administrators have referred to as her over the previous two years about openings and he or she has politely declined them. However due to the way in which DePaul is supporting and investing in ladies’s basketball, this job is perhaps engaging to her.
Carrie Moore
Moore, who simply led Harvard to its first NCAA Match look since 2007, is aware of the midwest nicely, having performed at Western Michigan — the place she led the NCAA in scoring as a senior in 2007 — after which labored as an assistant coach at Creighton and Michigan. Moore additionally labored for a number of years below Courtney Banghart at Princeton after which at North Carolina. She’s been touted as a gifted recruiter, and on the age of 39, among the best younger head coaches within the sport. Underneath her watch this 12 months, Harvard had its greatest season in additional than a decade.
Erin Dickerson-Davis
Dickerson-Davis is from Chicago, performed at Northwestern and is a former Huge East assistant coach, so she’s conversant in the panorama that DePaul is working in. As a Georgetown assistant, she signed 4 gamers who would grow to be All-Huge East choices. However Dickerson-Davis is a gorgeous teaching candidate proper now due to the success she had at William & Mary this season, the place she led the Tribe to their first NCAA Match berth and first March Insanity victory, topping Excessive Level within the First 4. Merely put, Dickerson-Davis simply gained — in simply her third season — in a spot the place no coach had earlier than.
Kristen Gillespie
About three hours south of DePaul, Gillespie has piled up lots of wins whereas main the Redbirds. Gillespie — who performed for Kay Yow at N.C. State — has gone 155-94 in eight seasons at Illinois State. In 2022, she led them to their first NCAA Match look in 14 years, and in 2023 gained the common season convention title and the Missouri Valley Coach of the 12 months award. Gillespie was linked to openings at Wisconsin and Missouri, however this may very well be the most effective match for her. Additionally, her father Mike performed at DePaul alongside Bruno within the early Nineteen Seventies.
