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What: “The Demons Within”

Where: Fox Sports Net, Tuesday, 8-10 p.m.

The resurgence of DePaul basketball is a nice story. The Blue Demons were 3-23 the season before Pat Kennedy took over as coach in 1997. Last season they were 21-12 and earned an NCAA tournament berth.

On the surface, it may seem as though this story is not worth a two-hour documentary.

But if you watch it, you’ll see that it is. TeamWorks Media, a Chicago production company, was given total access. The result is viewers not only get to look inside the locker room but also inside the psyche of the players.

It’s similar to another two-hour Fox Sports Net documentary, “Between the Madness,” which chronicled Fresno State’s 1997-98 basketball season.

The Blue Demons had their troubles last season--sophomore center Lance Williams broke his foot on the first day of practice and had to have surgery, and junior Paul McPherson, now with the Phoenix Suns, was suspended for not attending classes.

But this documentary is mostly uplifting. Five players are featured. Three of them--Williams, Bobby Simmons and Quentin Richardson--were childhood friends from the southside of Chicago. McPherson was a junior college transfer, and point guard Rashon Burno is a sophomore from the projects of Jersey City, N.J., whose parents died when he was 8.

They all have sad stories to tell. During one eight-month stretch, Richardson, now the Clippers’ third-leading scorer, had a brother shot and killed, lost his grandmother, and then his mother died of breast cancer.

Simmons had a brother murdered on Dec. 16, 1997. Two years later, to the day, his son was born, and the birth is part of the documentary.

There is footage from most of the team’s games, including a 76-58 loss to UCLA at Pauley Pavilion. Kennedy, who wears a microphone for every game, can be heard shouting at an official, “Everybody gets cheated on the West Coast. I’m never coming back here.”

Afterward, Kennedy admonishes his players. “If you’re not embarrassed by this, then you should turn in your uniform,” he says. “In less than two weeks, we went from the Duke performance [a one-point loss] to this performance.”

DePaul finished its season by losing to Kansas, 80-77, in overtime in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Kennedy congratulates his players on the season. “This is the team that put DePaul back on the basketball map,” he says.

Kennedy’s candor throughout and the candor of his players make this a worthy two-hour documentary.