CHICAGO — Jerry Wainwright was fired Monday as the basketball coach at DePaul, which has lost 22 straight regular-season games in the Big East Conference. He was replaced on an interim basis by assistant Tracy Webster.

The Blue Demons are 7-8 and 0-3 in the Big East this season, Wainwright’s fifth at DePaul. He has two years left on his contract after this season.
“At this time a change needed to be made in the direction of the men’s basketball program at DePaul University,” athletic director Jean Lenti Ponsetto said in a statement.
The school was to discuss the move at a campus news conference.
Webster will be the coach for the rest of the season. He was an assistant at Kentucky, Illinois, Purdue and Ball State before joining DePaul last April.
Wainwright has a 59-80 overall record at DePaul, including 20-51 in the Big East. He injured his leg during a sideline collision Wednesday when the Blue Demons were routed 99-72 at Villanova.
Wainwright becomes the fourth Division I coach to leave his position since the season started in November. Glenn Miller (Penn) and Dereck Whittenburg (Fordham) were fired and Terry Dunn (Dartmouth) resigned.
Last season was an embarrassing one for a DePaul program that was once a national power. The school hasn’t won a regular-season conference game since March 2008. The Blue Demons upset Cincinnati in the first round of the conference tournament last year but finished 9-24 and 0-18 in the Big East.
DePaul went 20-14 and made the NIT in 2006-07, its lone winning season under Wainwright. Wainwright took over in 2005-06 after eight years at UNC Wilmington and then three at Richmond. During those 11 years his teams made the NCAA tournament three times and reached at least 20 wins three times. While at UNC Wilmington, he was twice the Colonial Athletic Association coach of the year.