Mike Stovall knew that his last-second shot was going in.

DePaul hadn’t won a Big East regular-season game since March 2008, and it appeared as if that miserable streak would continue in the final moments of a Jan. 20 game against Marquette.

With DePaul down by one with less than a second remaining, Stovall, the Blue Demons’ junior forward, took a pass from just outside the 3-point arch, pulled a spin move, went baseline and nailed a 20-foot jump shot to give DePaul a 51-50 victory.

‘I shot it with confidence, and it just went down,’ Stovall said. ‘That was the biggest shot I have ever made in my life. I have hit some game-winning shots before, but that was the biggest one because we needed it. We needed to get our team out of the slump. I didn’t want to leave that building with a loss.’

Stovall’s buzzer-beater gave DePaul its first Big East victory of the year and ended a 24-game Big East regular-season losing streak. On Saturday, the Blue Demons (8-12, 1-7 Big East) look to get their second Big East victory of the year as they take on No. 4 Syracuse (20-1, 7-1 Big East) at 2 p.m. in Chicago’s Allstate Arena.

Despite following the Marquette game with two straight losses, the victory was a huge boost for a DePaul team that was facing all sorts of trouble.

On Jan. 11, head coach Jerry Wainwright was fired amid the Big East losing streak, becoming the fourth Division I coach to leave his position since the start of the season in November.

Wainwright posted a 59-80 record through four and a half seasons as DePaul’s head coach.

The Blue Demons’ chances of a Big East win suffered even more when three days later it was announced that junior co-captain Mac Koshwal was expected to miss two to four weeks with a right-foot injury.

Koshwal, the Blue Demons’ leading rebounder and second-leading scorer, had already missed eight games with a left-foot injury earlier in the season and has been one of the team’s captains since his freshman season.

‘Losing coach Wainwright really hurt our team,’ Stovall said. ‘He was the one that recruited most of us, so everybody felt down a little bit. A couple days later Mac goes down, and that brings everybody down even more. Everybody was just losing their heads.’

Assistant coach Tracy Webster has since taken over as the interim head coach, while senior co-captain Will Walker has taken on more of a leadership role on the court.

In four games without Koshwal, Walker only missed three minutes of playing time and is averaging 18.3 points per game.

Koshwal returned to play 25 minutes against West Virginia, but Walker is the Blue Demons’ go-to guy. He was originally supposed to shoot the final shot against Marquette.

‘I was really happy for all the players (after the win), but I was really, really happy for Will Walker,’ said Webster in a teleconference call. ‘He is a senior and he has been through a lot, but he persevered and hasn’t made any excuses at all. He comes to practice and practices hard every day and plays 40 minutes a game.’

Walker’s play on the court wasn’t what caught his teammates’ attention, though. He is the senior captain of the team, and they knew he would step up his game.

Rather, it was the change in his demeanor that caused for the double takes during practice.

‘He picked it up a lot,’ Stovall said. ‘In practice, sometimes he is real quiet and soft-spoken. Before we played Marquette, though, it was a new Will Walker. He demanded things and was putting people in their place on the court.

‘Everybody was just looking at him like he was a new Will Walker. He has become more vocal to everybody, and it really helps.’

Walker’s tenacity inspired the team, but it was the Big East victory that finally has the team believing.

Before the win, the Blue Demons didn’t know what to expect when they entered an opposing team’s gym. Now the team thinks they can take on any team in the country.

‘We should have beat Providence, we should have beat St. John’s, and we should have beat Pittsburgh and Georgetown,’ Stovall said. ‘We actually should probably be (unbeaten in the Big East) right now. It’s just when we get down a couple of points and people make mistakes, they think their back is against the wall. That’s what brings us down and causes for us to lose the game.’

One of the best examples of the team’s newly found confidence could be seen in sophomore center Krys Faber’s performance against Marquette.

Stovall said that it wasn’t long ago when he would see Faber walking around the locker room with his head down.

But in the game against Marquette, Faber registered a season-high 10 rebounds and has been smiling ever since.

‘Now that he can see that he can get 10 rebounds, he thinks he can go out there and get 20 next time around,’ Stovall said.

Webster approves the newly found confidence in the locker room but said his team needs to stay focused.

Playing in the Big East is no easy task, and a team has little time to enjoy a victory.

‘You don’t have a night off,’ Webster said. ‘When you get a win you want to celebrate, but you can’t relax. This conference is a really good conference, and I know that you always have to be prepared.’

Webster has preached the importance of resiliency to his players and knows that if his team stays level-headed they might be able to steal another game away from an unsuspecting opponent.

‘We have always emphasized for our guys to play extremely hard and fight through fatigue and fight through mistakes and persevere,’ Webster said. ‘We just really would like to get these guys to battle as much as they can and give 100 percent for every game. The challenge is to make sure these guys continue to stay confident and not get down.’

rwmarfur@syr.edu

Published on January 27, 2010 at 12:00 pm