In just six short years, the annual USF-DePaul men's basketball game has taken its rightful place in the pantheon of great Big East rivalries.* Who could ever forget... that time the Bulls won! Or that time the Blue Demons pulled one out! Or the time someone made that one shot, and then someone on the other team made another shot! Yes, the great moments of this series will be remembered for generations to come.**
Certainly you don't need us to help remind you of the legendary games in the USF-DePaul rivalry.*** But we'll do it anyway after the jump.
* - Right at the very bottom, even below Marquette vs. Rutgers, or Providence vs. anyone.
** - Only applies if you are a mayfly.
*** - Yes, you do.
January 20, 1984: GarySJ already covered this in detail in our queefcore anthem for the DePaul game last month. Ray Meyer rolled in with a legitimately good Blue Demons team, USF countered with the Charlie Bradley show, the Sun Dome sold out for one of the few times in 30 years, and DePaul won 59-50.
January 11, 1997: Maybe the biggest cripple fight in the history of Conference USA took place on this date at Allstate Arena. Seth Greenberg's horribly outmatched first Bulls team traveled to Rosemont to play Joey Meyer's abominable DePaul squad, which finished 3-23 on the season and ended his Division I coaching career. Guess who won? (Hint: Not USF.)
January 25, 2001: The Bulls' first win ever over DePaul, 72-58 at the Sun Dome. This game is far more memorable to me because I was there and saw former Blue Demons coach Pat Kennedy get himself thrown out of the game. You almost never see college basketball coaches get tossed, but Kennedy was really asking for it that night. He just walked out onto the court in the middle of a possession, yelling at the officials about something or other and pounding a fist into an open hand. I don't think I've ever seen another coach make such a shameless attempt to get run. Finally the officiating dream team of Jim Burr, Curtis Shaw, and Steve Welmer (that's right, check the link) put Kennedy out of his misery after letting him make a total fool of himself.
(Side note: My girlfriend at the time threw herself out of the Sun Dome shortly afterwards and walked back to her dorm without telling me. In a related story, it didn't work out.)
March 12, 2003: Greenberg won his last game as USF coach at the Conference USA tournament, beating DePaul 76-74 as Reggie Kohn went off for 7 threes and 23 points in all.
Speaking of "went off", this was the game where ol' Greenie picked up, bar none, the stupidest technical foul I've ever seen. There were 50 seconds left in the first half, and someone (I want to say Jimmy Baxter) hit a basket as the shot clock buzzer sounded. Well, Seth confused that with the buzzer ending the first half, so he decided that he and everyone on the bench were going to run all the way to the locker room to fire the team up and claim "momentum", or whatever the point of that Harry High School stunt was. Seth was out past the free throw line and still making a beeline for the tunnel when he realized that no, dumbass, the half is not over, and you just got T'ed up. If the Bulls had lost that game, it would have been a truly fitting way for his time at USF to end.
March 9, 2010: The two teams met in the first game of the Big East tournament. The Bulls scored every single one of their 58 points from the paint or the free throw line. And still won by nine, 58-49. It was phenomenally ugly basketball -- an airtight argument against inviting every team in the league to the conference tournament. Which was promptly ignored.
January 27, 2011: #JAWANZA.
Jawanza Poland steal & dunk (via mocksessiondotcom)