DePaul Basketball: 5 candidates to replace Dave Leitao as head coach

Roger Powell Jr.

Each of the five names on this list makes sense for the DePaul opening, though some would be better fits than others. There’s any number of regional head coaches or assistants who could be excellent hires for the Blue Demons, but we’re going to look a little outside the box. It’s not someone from a Big Ten school or even a Midwestern school; it’s an assistant at Gonzaga.

Powell starred on the Illinois team that lost the national championship game to North Carolina in 2005. He grew up in the Chicago area and had a brief playing career before getting into coaching a decade. Most of his experience came as an assistant on Bryce Drew’s staffs, first at Valparaiso and then Vanderbilt. When Drew was fired in 2019, Powell was hired on at Gonzaga and has certainly played a role in two of Gonzaga’s most prolific seasons in recent memory.

Relatively speaking, Powell is pretty inexperienced as a coach and has never been a head coach. Getting his career started at a school like DePaul might not be the best choice; but it also might make the most sense. He was almost certainly given a chance to take over Valparaiso when Drew left in 2016, but he went along to the Commodores instead. The bigger question is if DePaul wants to trust their program with a local hero without head coaching experience. It’s also worth wondering if Powell would leave Gonzaga after just two seasons.