DePaul hired Jerry Wainwright away from Richmond to be their new b-ball coach.

Is he a good hire? I dunno. It depends on who you ask.

This is what Mike DeCourcy at the Sporting News said.

So this next statement might be hard to accept, but I firmly believe it to be the truth: Jerry Wainwright is the best pure basketball coach to work at DePaul during the NCAA tournament era.
…
Wainwright was an ideal choice for DePaul because of his deep Chicago background, his ability to deal with, accommodate and entertain the media, his track record as a recruiter at Xavier and Wake Forest and his accomplishments as a head coach at UNC Wilmington and Richmond. He took both those programs to the NCAA tournament. Wilmington had never been there before. Richmond had been there only once in the previous 12 years.

But more important than what his record says is what his opponents say. However shocking it might be, there have been coaches in the NCAA tournament who weren’t really all that capable. They got the right players in the right circumstances and managed not to foul it up. And some of those guys are pretty well known.

Privately, when coaches talk about those in their business that earn respect, Wainwright is someone whose name comes up frequently. Wainright’s admire how he deals with his players. They envy his eye for talent. They respect his ability to teach and coach defense.

Sounds glowing. But wait. How about Greg Doyel at Sportsline.

Wainwright to Leitao’s old office? That’s a fast hire. That’s a frugal hire. But a great hire? No, not a great hire.

Bearing down on Wainwright, who went 50-41 in three seasons at Richmond, is like sitting down at a nice restaurant and ordering the first thing on the menu. Maybe it’ll taste good. It better, because this place costs too much to do it again next week.

The spin coming out of Chicago — did you know Wainwright’s from Chicago? — is that DePaul has hired a coach with a track record of winning seasons and postseason appearances. Those are nice words, but the numbers aren’t quite so nice. Black and white, here goes:

DePaul has hired a coach who has never failed to lose at least 10 games in a season. DePaul has hired a coach whose career record in 11 years is 186-144, which means a typical season for a Jerry Wainwright team has been 17-13. And those seasons happened in the Colonial Athletic Association and Atlantic 10.

DePaul knows about those numbers, obviously, but doesn’t care. This hire wasn’t about finding the best possible coach to lead DePaul into the best possible conference, the 16-team Big East. If DePaul wanted the best possible coach, it would have taken more than four days to zero in on someone coming off a 14-15 season at Richmond.

This hire wasn’t even about Jerry Wainwright. It was about Leitao. DePaul went for greatness when it hired Leitao three years ago off Jim Calhoun’s bench at Connecticut, and greatness — or the hint of greatness — is what Leitao delivered. He won 58 games in three seasons at DePaul, recruited better than a Conference USA school with such shoddy facilities deserved, and then bolted for Virginia.

It was a smart move for Leitao, but a stick in the eye to DePaul. Being jilted hurts, and DePaul responded like so many jilted lovers — by vowing not to love again. DePaul will like Jerry Wainwright, but it will never love him. He’ll win between 13 and 18 games a season at DePaul for as long as DePaul will have him, he’ll steer clear of NCAA problems, and then he’ll retire. You don’t fall in love with a coach like that. You esteem a coach like that.

No matter what the truth is, Wainwright and DePaul are in for one hell of a baptism this season.