CHICAGO -- Romantics will say go for a familiar name, such as Tyrone Corbin or Rod Strickland.

They’ll say DePaul needs to harken back to its long-long-ago glory days to recapture the city after Oliver Purnell resigned to pursue other options that don't include coaching the Blue Demons to another 20-something-loss season.

News flash: Search firms don’t care about your nostalgia. Teenagers don't either.

Forget the past. Kids care about winning, making the tournament, having fun.

DePaul can’t even get A-10-type talent to stay home unless his dad is an assistant coach, like poor Billy Garrett Jr. Garrett Jr.'s backcourt mate his senior year of high school at Morgan Park, Kyle Davis, is going to his second NCAA tournament in two seasons at Dayton.

In the coming weeks, we'll hear about the allure of DePaul's proposed new arena, Chicago Taxpayer Centre. But ground hasn't been broken yet, and the McCormick Place site won't be ready until the 2017-18 season, at the earliest. Sorry, no 17-year-old is going to be wowed by renderings.

Give DePaul this, it does pay. In 2010, it gave then-Clemson coach Purnell, a rehab expert with zero NCAA tournament wins, a seven-year deal worth around $2 million per season. A head-scratching decision at the time, and it resulted, as you might expect, with basically nothing accomplished.

This was Purnell's best season, with DePaul showing a glimmer of progress. But the Blue Demons finished 12-20 with a 6-12 Big East record. Purnell went 54-105, 15-75 in conference play. Those are just facts.

High school coaches were laughing when he got hired, but they came to respect Purnell. Still, his teams weren't good. DePaul doesn't need someone to spark this program back to life.

If you were home Saturday evening, you might have watched the guy DePaul's administration should pick to succeed Purnell win a Mid-American Conference championship.

If DePaul’s leadership has any smarts, and that’s certainly up for debate, it will instruct whatever search firm it hires to make an early, lucrative run at Bobby Hurley, the former Duke star and current coach at the University at Buffalo. The Blue Demons won't be alone in this target.

Forget the famous name, though it helps. The 43-year-old Hurley has shown he can coach in just two years at Buffalo, going 42-19. Most importantly, he just won a conference tournament, the first in the school's short Division I history. In a one-bid league, that’s your “get out of the MAC free” card.

John Groce, then at Ohio University, parlayed a second MAC championship and a Sweet 16 run in the NCAA tournament into the Illinois job. Buffalo has that potential. Groce had a great team coming back at Ohio, including signee Caris LeVert, who ended up at Michigan and is now a potential NBA draft pick, but he knew when to get out.

DePaul is hardly a dream destination. It’s a good job only in that it will pay in the millions and offers a possibility to build your résumé for an even better job. It's a fixer-upper house. All it needs is some vision and some elbow grease. (In this situation, a lot of money, particularly in unmarked bills, wouldn't hurt either. But we don't talk about those things in college sports without some piety.)

Forget the local guys. DePaul needs Hurley, a fiery competitor who quickly alienated himself in the MAC because he's loud and he wins.

That's cool. The Blue Demons need someone to -- excuse the pun -- raise some hell. Jerry Wainwright was the guy you want MC’ing your Kiwanis Club roast. Purnell, a good coach, chased the cash.

DePaul needs some intensity to convince everyone this is still a Division I program. Passion is severely underrated these days, in my opinion.

Furthermore, the Blue Demons need someone with recruiting ties outside of Chicago. Let’s be honest. No one is going to plant a DePaul flag on the South Side and just start bringing homegrown talent to Lincoln Park on hopes and dreams.

Kids want to leave their hometown and I don’t blame them. College is the time to branch out. But Chicago still has allure, especially to out-of-state players who don’t realize the Blue Demons still play near the airport.

Hurley has ties across the country, and in real basketball hotbeds. He is Catholic basketball royalty, having played for his father, the legendary Bob Hurley Sr., at Saint Anthony in Jersey City, New Jersey. He has relationships in ACC country.

That’s where DePaul needs to recruit. Get the kids in New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, wherever. Get enough talent that doesn’t look down on DePaul and some Chicago kids will stay home, too. That’s how it works.

DePaul needs a guy like Hurley. But the question is, does he need DePaul?