Tucker has the answer for DePaul

One of the bigger benefits of choosing to attend DePaul?

Final exams conclude before Thanksgiving, which allows basketball players to focus on nothing but their passion through New Year's Day.

"This is the best part," said Demons senior center Matija Poscic.

"It's going to be fun," said sophomore Dar Tucker.

But the fun took a long time to arrive during Wednesday's nonconference game with rebuilding Detroit.

"I felt like we were a step short tonight," said DePaul coach Jerry Wainwright. "We just didn't have a lot of giddy-up."

Stymied by the Titans' zone and their own sluggishness, the Blue Demons led by just 4 points with 8:45 to go before breaking away for a 71-62 triumph before roughly 5,000 at Allstate Arena.

Tucker's long 3-pointer triggered a 13-3 run that allowed the Blue Demons to celebrate the program's first 3-0 start in five seasons.

Tucker finished with a game-high 22 points, 7 rebounds, 4 steals, 2 blocks and 2 assists.

"I thought this was maybe one of Dar Tucker's best all-around games," said Wainwright, who deliberately pumped up Tucker's playing time to a career-high 36 minutes. "He always seemed to answer. He made big shots. I thought he was really composed. I thought he meant an awful lot to our younger players."

With DePaul's five freshmen combining for just 12 points in 53 minutes - Wednesday was the first time four of them had been in Allstate Arena as active players - the veterans had to step forward.

Sophomore forward Mac Koshwal crashed the offensive boards for many of his 18 points, while Poscic contributed 9 points and a career-high 9 rebounds.

"It's good to start 3-0, but we ain't satisfied," Koshwal said. "We're just going to keep working hard. Like Coach said in the locker room, we still ain't played a (full) game yet."

DePaul's missing piece to this game came midway through the first half when new Detroit coach Ray McCallum trotted out a zone.

The Demons neither moved around nor penetrated the zone, which allowed the Titans (1-3) to turn a 12-3 deficit into a 21-19 lead with four minutes left in the half.

"Those are tough matchups for us 1-on-1 with Dar and Will (Walker)," McCallum said. "We wanted to keep them in front of us. I felt like we had to keep them off-balance."

Ironically, DePaul went to its own zone to protect its 4-point lead with eight minutes to go - and it paid off even more than Detroit's.

The Titans managed just 3 points in a six-minute stretch as DePaul broke open the game.