Days after announcing he was stepping down as head coach of the DePaul women’s basketball team following 38 years at the helm, Doug Bruno is sharing his story after a stroke caused him to miss the entire 2024-25 season. NBC Chicago’s Mike Berman has more.
Days after announcing he was stepping down as head coach of the DePaul women's basketball team following 38 years at the helm, Doug Bruno is sharing his story after a stroke caused him to miss the entire 2024-25 season.
After suffering a stroke last August, Bruno faced a daunting road to recovery.
"I was not aware of anything that was going on around me the entire month of September, the entire month of October and a couple weeks into November," Bruno said.
He added that it took him until mid-November until he started to regain his ability to know and remember people in his life and his daily routine.
After countless hours of rehabilitation over the past seven months, Bruno, now 74, said he felt confident he could still serve as head coach, though ultimately decided to move on.
"This is not a forced retirement. You have to know how to do the right things. Your student-athletes want to know who their coach is, and whereas I know I could have come back and coached, it wouldn't have been fair to them to if and how long I was going to be," Bruno said.
During Bruno's nearly four-decade tenure, his teams won 19 conference championships, qualified for 25 NCAA tournaments and amassed 786 wins.
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However, Bruno looks back more on the relationships he made as he steps away from DePaul.
"I remember the people more than you remember individual games or individual seasons, because you do it together as a group. It's never done by oneself," Bruno said.
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Bruno will remain connected to the program he has led for 38 years, staying on as a special assistant to the athletic director for the team.
"I've had no second thoughts about this at all. I just thank God I was allowed to coach as long as I was," Bruno said.
