By the time DePaul men’s basketball reached the first round of the brand-new College Basketball Crown tournament in Las Vegas on Tuesday, they were down to eight players.
After a slow start by both teams, DePaul and Cincinnati went pound for pound, tallying six lead changes in the first half. Starting 1-11 from deep, DePaul fell behind double digits at halftime as Cincinnati’s top 25 defense began to wear down DePaul’s thin lineup.
After ultimately losing 61-83, DePaul head coach Chris Holtmann said he was pleased with his team’s chance to play more basketball in April, building on positive momentum to end the season.
“I feel really good,” Holtmann said. “To be able to, more than anything else, compete like we did in the Big East Tournament, to play the way we did at the end of the year … I feel really, really good.”
DePaul ended the regular season on a two-game winning streak, followed by a Big East Tournament run that included a first-round victory against Georgetown and a double overtime loss to two-seeded Creighton.
Sophomore Layden Blocker, junior NJ Benson and junior CJ Gunn announced their return to campus for the 2025-26 season before the team headed to Vegas amid a hectic transfer portal window that opened on March 24 and will close April 22.
Sophomore guard Jacob Meyer and junior guard Conor Enright entered the portal before the tournament. Another guard, sophomore David Thomas, played against Cincinnati but entered the portal after DePaul’s loss. He will head to the University of Richmond, while Enright committed to Indiana University.
Some say a disadvantage of postseason play is that the transfer portal is open while teams who have earned postseason slots are still playing. There is mounting effort for a rule change that would see the portal open after the conclusion of the NCAA Tournament championship, which this season is tonight.
Holtmann said the timing of the transfer portal “probably needs to change” but that he will “leave that for other people.”
Other postseason tournaments concluded recently, including the Crown yesterday and the National Invitation Tournament on Thursday, while the portal remained open.
Holtmann said his top priority when the portal opened March 24 was to retain his core of Blocker, Benson and Gunn, three of DePaul’s four leading scorers this season. Benson said his choice to stay at DePaul was an easy one.
“It’s about being home, being like a family,” Benson said. “Everybody has accepted me. The fans have, the coaches have. … They just make it feel like home, and I feel wanted. And for me, that’s bigger than money.”
In this college basketball landscape, securing transfers began long before the season concluded.
“In terms of what we’ve done with the portal, yeah, we’ve been hard at work,” Holtmann said. “We’ve had visits. We expect decisions here in the coming days … but our focus was two-part. Obviously a focus was the portal, and then getting our guys ready to play here.”
The day after their Crown loss, DePaul landed their first transfer, Tulane junior forward Kaleb Banks. Banks and Gunn played together as freshmen at Indiana during the 2022-23 season.
As m0re potential transfers make their way to campus for visits and negotiation, Benson said he would do “whatever coach needs me to do” to help the recruiting effort in the transfer portal.
Senior guard Isaiah Rivera added that, despite having played his final collegiate basketball game, he would pitch in too.
“Anybody could ask me, and I’ll tell them the truth and how good of an experience it is to play under coach Holtmann,” Rivera said.
Related stories:
- DePaul lands its first transfer portal addition
- DePaul falls in first round of Crown Tournament
- DePaul accepts postseason bid to College Basketball Crown tournament
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