Koree Cotton scored 20 points off the bench and Magoon Gwath added 19 as DePaul rallied from a big first-half deficit to earn a 75-58 victory over West Georgia on Monday at Chicago in the season opener for both teams.
Ade Popoola (12 points) drilled four 3-pointers in a five-minute span of the second half as DePaul turned a 38-37 deficit into a 54-39 lead with 9:42 to go. Noah Meussen added 11 points, eight assists and seven rebounds for the Blue Demons.
Justin Redmond scored 13 points and Juaquin Dixon added 10 for West Georgia, which shot 33.3% from the field and had three players foul out as its 11-point first-half lead melted away.
DePaul built a 5-0 lead on its first two possessions thanks to its twin 7-footers as Fabian Flores drove for a layup and Gwath drilled a 3-pointer. The Blue Demons missed their next 15 3-point attempts to give West Georgia the time to build a double-digit lead.
Lou Hutchinson III fed Aleix Sempere for a layup, then canned a 3-pointer to highlight a 7-0 run that gave the Wolves an 18-11 lead. When Chas Lewless drilled a pullup jumper and a 3-pointer, West Georgia pushed its lead to 26-15 with 7:07 left in the first half.
DePaul dug in defensively to cut its deficit to 31-29 by halftime. The Blue Demons held the Wolves scoreless for 5:56 while Gwath heated up. In the final 4:23 of the half, he hit two free throws, threw down an alley-oop on Meussen’s inbounds lob and sank a 3-pointer.
The Blue Demons took a 35-33 lead — their first since the opening minutes — when Meussen fed Gwath an inbounds pass for a layup. The teams swapped the lead four more times before Popoola, who missed his lone shot attempt in the first half, seized control.
On three consecutive possessions, the Tulsa transfer set up in front of the DePaul bench and drilled a 3-pointer to give the Blue Demons a 49-38 lead and force West Georgia to call timeout with 12:26 to go.
Hutchinson snapped West Georgia’s 5:20 scoreless streak with a free throw to make it 51-39 with 9:58 to go, but Popoola answered on the next possession with a 3-pointer from the opposite wing to give DePaul its biggest lead to that point.