After raising its game to an elite level in Saturday's down-to-the-wire 93-91 loss to No. 13/14 Texas A&M, the Blue Demons return to Wintrust Arena some 40 hours later to face Chicago State (0-1).
Looking to carve its first notch into the W column, coach Doug Bruno's program will be led by the explosive backcourt foursome of Dee Bekelja, Deja Church, Sonya Morris and Lexi Held.
Whether scoring on the run via the "DePaulBall" style of play or spotting up behind the arc, this dynamic combination accounted for an amazing 86 of the team's 91 points. That comes to nearly 95 percent of the offensive output.
In other words, Dee, Deja, Sonya and Lexi outscored most of the teams in the country on Saturday.
No doubt the Blue Demons would do well to keep the ball in their capable hands going forward while actively escalating additional scoring options.
There will be games when one of the fearless foursome doesn't rack up double figures, and that's when Bruno will look to Jolene Daninger, Maya Stovall and quick-study freshmen Darrione Rogers and Kendall Holmes to make up the difference.
That could very well happen on Monday against a Chicago State team that lost to Loyola 70-57 on Saturday.
Nadia Thorman-McKey led her team with 19 points and five rebounds while Ana Haklicka contributed 13 points and team highs with seven rebounds, four assists and three steals. Wynter Webb added eight points and five rebounds. The Cougars were outscored 24-8 in the second quarter, going 3-of-12 from the field.
An interesting sidelight to DePaul's season opener and a tribute to the university's Vincentian mission and "Take Care, DePaul" initiative is that the Blue Demons wore facemasks while racing 94 feet up and down the Wintrust Arena court. It was a full-court press with faces covered.
Texas A&M opted to forego the masks.
That sparked the intrigue of Associated Press national women's basketball writer Doug Feinberg who asked Bruno, Bekelja, Morris and Church about their team's policy on the postgame media Zoom conference. Feinberg said DePaul was one of the few teams in the country who play with masks.
The players said the first couple weeks of preseason training wasn't easy in masks, but now it was practically second nature. They also expressed gratitude that leadership at DePaul places safety above all else during this raging pandemic.
Masks will be in place for the 2 p.m. tipoff Monday in the South Loop that can be viewed on the DePaul All-Access live stream.
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November 30, 2020 at 04:09AM
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Chicago State Up Next for No. 19/19 DePaul - DePaul University Athletics - DePaul Blue Demons
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