DePaul Looking to Make Big East History With Portal Haul

The transfer portal has become college basketball's great equalizer, a revolving door of ambition and reinvention that rewards the bold and punishes the passive. In the spring of 2026, DePaul men's basketball has chosen to be very bold.

In what is shaping up as the most consequential offseason in the program's recent history, head coach Chris Holtmann has secured four transfer commitments that collectively rewrite the expectations surrounding a program that, not long ago, was the sport's most reliable cautionary tale. The Blue Demons have signed Noah Meeusen, a 6-foot-5 guard from Arizona State, and Wilson Jacques, a 7-foot center from Fresno State, and have now added commitments from Kahmare Holmes, a volcanic scoring guard from Wofford, and Magoon Gwath — the 7-foot former Mountain West Defensive Player of the Year from San Diego State who turned down a visit to Kentucky to choose Lincoln Park.

Read that last sentence again.

These moves arrive at a pivotal moment in what has quietly become one of college basketball's more compelling rebuilding arcs. After going 3-29 in 2023-24 with zero conference wins before Holtmann's arrival, DePaul finished 2025-26 at 16-16 with an 8-12 record in Big East play — its second-most conference wins in program history. Holtmann was awarded the Skip Prosser Man of the Year Award this spring, presented annually to a Division I coach who "wins with integrity on and off the court." The foundation has been poured. Now, the Blue Demons are building the walls at a pace nobody anticipated.

Meeusen is Chicago's Finest

Noah Meeusen does not announce himself the way some recruits do. There are no highlight-reel dunks, no viral crossovers, no social media spectacle preceding his arrival in Chicago. What he offers is something more durable and, in the long run, more valuable: length, defensive instinct, and a basketball IQ forged across two continents. He is, in the language coaches use when they think no one is listening, exactly the kind of player you build around.

A native of Zandvliet, Belgium, Meeusen is DePaul's first-ever player from that country — a distinction that speaks less to novelty than to the increasingly global reach of American college basketball. Before arriving at Arizona State, he was ranked by DraftExpress as the No. 15 2005-born international prospect. He played for Filou Oostende in the BNXT League, where he was named Rising Star of the League in 2024 and helped his team to a league-leading 26-10 record. He also represented Belgium at the FIBA U20 European Championship, averaging 10.3 points, 6.3 assists, and 1.6 steals per game.

At ASU, Meeusen appeared in 30 games with 11 starts, averaging 5.9 points, 3.2 rebounds, 2.6 assists, and 1.4 steals per game. His career-high came against No. 1 Arizona — 16 points on 4-of-7 shooting from deep, with five assists. He arrives with two years of eligibility and a profile that fits precisely what Holtmann has been building: a switchable, multi-positional guard who can push pace in transition. Ranked No. 85 in the national AIR-A transfer index, Meeusen is the kind of player who quietly makes a team better in ways that don't show up until February.

The Frenchman in the Frontcourt

If Meeusen represents DePaul's ambition at the guard position, Wilson Jacques represents something the Blue Demons have desperately needed: a legitimate presence in the paint.

Jacques, a 7-footer from France, arrived at Fresno State as an unknown commodity and left it as a program record-holder. He started all 32 games for the Bulldogs, averaging 8.8 points and 8.8 rebounds per game on 48.4 percent shooting from the field. His rebound average bested the Fresno State freshman record by more than two per game and ranked fifth among all freshmen nationally. He tallied nine double-doubles on the season, including a 16-point, 19-rebound eruption against San Jose State in the regular-season finale — the kind of line that makes NBA scouts write names on notepads and circle them twice.

Before college, Jacques was named the Espoirs Elite Season Most Valuable Player at JL Bourg-en-Bresse, leading his team to the France Espoirs Elite U21 title in 2025 while averaging 14.9 points and 10 rebounds per game.

Ranked No. 474 in the AIR-A index, Jacques is a developmental piece — not a finished product. But at 7 feet and 264 pounds with a nascent touch around the rim, he joins a frontcourt that now also includes 7-foot-2 center Fabián Flores. DePaul is assembling a frontcourt that will make opposing coaches uncomfortable before tip-off.

Holmes is Fully Loaded

If the first two signings represent long-term investments, Kahmare Holmes is a weapon that arrives fully loaded.

The 6-foot-3, 205-pound sophomore shooting guard out of Wofford was not a rumor or a projection this past season — he was a revelation. Holmes started all 26 games for the Terriers, averaged 19.5 points, 5.7 rebounds, and 2.7 assists per game, and was named All-Southern Conference First Team. He scored 20 or more points in 15 games — the most by a Wofford player since Fletcher Magee in 2018-19 — and dropped a career-high 36 against Samford in January. He also led the Terriers in steals with 53 on the season, a figure that underscores how complete a player he already is.

The list of programs that contacted Holmes before DePaul landed him reads like a who's-who of college basketball interest: Georgia Tech, Ohio State, Georgia, Georgetown, Virginia Tech, NC State, Ole Miss, Baylor, Maryland, and Memphis. That Holtmann secured his commitment over that field — with DePaul — is not a minor footnote. It is a statement.

Ranked No. 231 in the AIR-A index, Holmes brings to Lincoln Park something the Blue Demons have lacked for the better part of a decade: a player who does not need the game to come to him. He creates his own shot at every level, defends with fury, and has already proven he can carry a team on his back against Division I competition. The question now is not whether he can handle a bigger stage. It is how many Big East defenses are prepared to handle him.

The Magoon Squad

And then there is Magoon Gwath — and his commitment to DePaul may be the most stunning development of the entire spring portal cycle.

Gwath, a 7-foot sophomore forward from San Diego State, is not merely a good player. He is the kind of athlete programs build around. He was named Mountain West Freshman of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year in 2025, setting the program's freshman record with 68 blocked shots — a figure that ranked seventh on SDSU's all-time single-season list. This past season, he averaged 8.9 points, 4.3 rebounds, and 1.5 blocks per game while shooting 43.5 percent from three-point range — a combination of rim protection and floor spacing that is exceptionally rare at any level, let alone in a 7-foot frame.

Gwath started 42 of 51 games across two seasons at San Diego State — and in that time, he drew interest from Kentucky, which had scheduled a campus visit before Gwath bypassed Lexington entirely and chose the Blue Demons. Ranked No. 351 in the AIR-A index, his path has not been without turbulence. He missed six starts this past season due to a hip flexor injury, and SDSU — which had entered 2025-26 with sky-high expectations of a deep NCAA Tournament run — missed March Madness altogether. A 7-footer who can anchor a defense, clean the glass, and step out and knock down threes at 43.5 percent is not a reclamation project. He is a weapon waiting to be unlocked.

He chose DePaul. Let that land.

The Bigger DePaul Picture

What DePaul is constructing this spring is not simply a collection of players. It is an argument — a declaration about what this program intends to become under Holtmann's watch.

Picture Gwath patrolling the paint alongside Jacques and Flores — three players standing a combined 21 feet, 2 inches tall, with Gwath's shot-blocking instincts and perimeter range anchoring a defense that opposing bigs will not want to drive into. Picture Holmes running off screens, getting to his spots, and doing to Big East defenses what he did to the Southern Conference all winter. Picture Meeusen — long, switchable, relentless — as the connective tissue in the backcourt, pushing pace, making reads, and guarding the opponent's best perimeter player. This is not a roster assembled for the portal era's sake. It is a roster assembled to win.

The Blue Demons have not made the NCAA Tournament since 2004. They spent the better part of two decades as the Big East's cautionary tale, a program with a storied past and a painful present. But the trajectory has shifted in ways that are no longer deniable. The 2025-26 season produced the program's highest Big East tournament seed ever. They swept Creighton, Seton Hall, and Marquette in conference play. Their eight Big East wins were the most since the 2006-07 season.

Now, this offseason, they have added a Belgian international with FIBA pedigree, a French freshman who rewrote Fresno State's record books, a Southern Conference scoring champion who turned down blue bloods, and a 7-foot rim protector who shoots threes and was being recruited by Kentucky — all in the span of days.

The portal has given DePaul a roster that, on paper, looks nothing like a program still searching for its footing. It looks like a team with something to prove — and, for the first time in a long time, the pieces to prove it. Whether this group translates to wins in a Big East that includes UConn, Marquette, Creighton, and St. John's remains to be seen. Rosters built in April do not always survive November intact. But the ambition is real, the talent is real, and the message being sent to every recruit in the country is real: DePaul is no longer a destination of last resort. It is a destination.

And somewhere in Lexington, Kentucky, a coaching staff is staring at a commitment list and wondering how they lost Magoon Gwath to DePaul.

Chris Holtmann knows the answer. He is building something. And now, so does everyone else.

The transfer portal entry window closes April 21.