DePaul Basketball: 8 candidates to watch for potential HC opening
By Joey Loose
Brian Wardle
Things have not gone according to plan for the Blue Demons and that’s really a shame. Chicago is a hotbed of young basketball talent and it’s consistently being poached by out of state teams. The city hasn’t had much basketball success outside of Loyola Chicago’s surprise Final Four run in 2018, though DePaul is hoping to turn that around. Let’s look now at a successful college head coach who happens to be from the Chicagoland area.
Born and raised in Chicago’s western suburbs, Wardle played basketball at Marquette and was briefly a teammate of Dwyane Wade. He played and coached under Tom Crean before landing at Green Bay, getting his first head coaching job in 2010. After averaging nearly 20 wins a season, he took over a rebuild at Bradley in 2015 and has been extremely successful. He won a pair of MVC Tournaments and may have his best Braves team yet this season.
Wardle was lured by the jump from the Horizon League to the MVC and you’d think jumping to the Big East could be just as alluring. However, he’s finally got Bradley looking like a powerhouse of a mid-major and would have no guarantee of success with DePaul. Yes, he’s down a great job bringing talent down to Peoria and has been one of the state’s more successful coaches in recent years, but do we really think he’d depart for this position?