DePaul’s Chris Holtmann got off the mat and went back to work — like never before

On the day Chris Holtmann was introduced as DePaul’s new head men’s basketball coach, he promised to get right down to “good, old-fashioned hard work.”

It was March 18, the morning after Selection Sunday. After a press conference at Wintrust Arena, Holtmann went right back to his South Loop hotel suite and dove full-on into the transfer portal, which had opened that very day. Nothing old-fashioned about that.

Goodness, what a month he’d just had.

Holtmann made it to 52 years old before being fired for the first time in his life — a rarity in his high-stakes profession — on Valentine’s Day. One moment, he was steering the ship at Ohio State, where he’d led the Buckeyes to four NCAA Tournaments. The next moment, he was in a maelstrom. At least, that’s what it felt like.

“It was brutal,” he told the Sun-Times on Friday. “I’d never even been in jeopardy of being let go at any other job.”

He wanted to unplug from basketball but couldn’t; it was, after all, that time of year when the college game rules the airwaves. He watched a bit of Ohio State’s remaining season, stirring what he calls a “wild array of feelings.” His phone dinged nonstop, texts pouring in, sometimes more than hundred in a day. Coaches invited him to visit, and he took a handful of them up on it. He first spent a few days with Buzz Peterson at Texas A&M, attending practices and staff meetings. He last went to see former assistant Ryan Pedon at Illinois State and watched the Redbirds win their final home game on a buzzer beater.

It was enjoyable enough, but his mind was swimming. He worried about his family, in particular daughter Nora, who will start high school later this year. Was he going to have to uproot them and her from friends, community, church — from, as he puts it, “anything anybody loves about life”?

Yes, it turns out. On March 14 — one month after Holtmann was fired — DePaul made his hiring official.

Goodness, what a first month he had in store.

While UConn’s and Purdue’s men’s teams were soaring to the national championship game, and while South Carolina’s women were making unbeaten magic and Iowa’s Caitlin Clark was blowing up into an all-out national celebrity, Holtmann was quietly toiling as long and as hard as he ever has in his life.

It started in that hotel suite, with Holtmann grinding for recruits in the portal with help from his two brand-new DePaul assistants, who hadn’t even actually been hired yet. One was Jack Owens, the former Miami (Ohio) head coach who, before that, was Matt Painter’s right-hand man at Purdue. The other was former Ohio State graduate assistant Tyler Hicks, Holtmann’s new director of recruiting. Hicks ran out and returned with a whiteboard and an easel so they could write down targets on one and commitments on the other.

Their list of targets started at 20-30 players. The first to say yes would be Southern Illinois forward Troy D’Amico, who’s from Niles. By April 3, Holtmann had his first four players — transfers D’Amico, NL Benson from Missouri State and CJ Gunn from Indiana, along with Kenwood’s Chris Riddle, a Tony Stubblefield recruit who agreed to stick with his initial commitment.

The announcements have come in a dizzying flurry. Holtmann hired Bryan Mullins, who was D’Amico’s coach at SIU — and Porter Moser’s top assistant at Loyola before that — assembling a truly impressive Blue Demons staff given all its head-coaching experience. Assistant Paris Parham, who’d recruited Riddle, was retained from the previous staff and John McCausland was added as director of basketball operations. More promising players were quickly plucked from the portal: Isaiah Rivera, who was UIC’s leading scorer; Jacob Meyer, who was Coastal Carolina’s leading scorer; David Thomas, who scored in double figures as a freshman at Mercer.

By April 11, all of them were on board. A coaching staff. The core of what might be a surprisingly competitive first-year roster in the 2024-25 season. It didn’t take long at all. Then again, who has any time to spare in college basketball these days?

“The busiest I’ve ever been,” Holtmann said.

Nearly all of Stubblefield’s players and staff were not retained by Holtmann, and all those conversations had needed to take place, too. They did early on, before he felt comfortable bringing new recruits to campus and to check out Wintrust.

Holtmann and wife Lori have looked at five houses in Lincoln Park, a neighborhood so picturesque and cool it kind of blows their minds. For the time being, though, she and Nora are back in Columbus while Holtmann does the hotel thing.

He did get to go home once since being hired, though. It was the weekend of the Final Four, and Holtmann watched those games at the house with Lori, Nora and their closest friends. It got pretty emotional, actually, especially when it was time for their friends to say goodnight.

“It’s the last time we’re going to see you,” one of them said, wrapping Holtmann in a hug.

“It is?” he replied.

Maybe not literally. But getting fired, moving away, starting over — all of it would be a lot to contend with for anybody.

On the phone Friday, Holtmann stopped for a couple of beats in mid-sentence.

“There’s that sound,” he noted.

It was a Red Line train.

“I can see it outside my window,” he said.

The sound will take some getting used to. Soon enough, though, he won’t even notice it — except for those times that he does and it hits like church music. That’s called Chicago.