PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) – Not only were the players not alive, most of their parents weren’t either as Duquesne returns to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1977 as an 11-seed playing BYU (23-10 overall, 3-7 on the road) Thursday in Omaha.
Senior Jimmy Clark said it means everything as his teammate Dae Dae Grant said they tried to turn the program around as a whole. They did. Duquesne had a stretch from 1994 until 2007 where they didn’t win more than 12 games in a season, most years in single digits. This is just the 11th winning season since 1977.
“We believed in each other from day one,” Grant said.
The win over Dayton, then St. Bonaventure to the championship against VCU secured the Big Dance appearance for the 24-win Dukes.
Even this season was a challenge for Duquesne. Following an 8-2 start, the Dukes had dropped back to 9-8. However this team kept battling relying on a strong defense.
“I super-proud of our team’s resiliency and toughness,” said head coach Keith Dambrot. “We were in so many games and we had so many disappointments early in the year, we learned how to win even when things didn’t go well for us.”
They overcame it in the ACC championship game, shooting just 29 percent from the floor, as Dambrot quipped, ‘you aren’t going to win many games shooting 29%’. They made up for that 18 offensive rebounds and 12 steals.
As he was cutting down the net in the Barclays Center in Brooklyn reflected over a coaching tenure that saw his worst season, 6-24 two years ago, the loss of his father and his wife being diagnosed with breast cancer.
He was also asked about what convinced him to leave Akron for what had been a revolving door of coaches over the last 47 years. He had one question for relatively new athletic director Dave Harper.
“How badly to do you want to win?” Dambrot said. “Because I wasn’t going to leave my hometown where I had a pretty good situation if they really didn’t want to win.”
“Dave did an unbelievable job of rallying the Duquesne administration and had unbelievable support from President Ken Gormley and our Board of Trustees. He convinced me they really cared about winning.”
“I knew it was going to be really challenging. It’s a tough league. I had the ties because of my dad (Duquesne graduate). I was proud of the school because of how progressive it was when my dad was here. My dad is sick of seeing Duquesne lose. He was still alive at the time. I was like, ah what the heck, why not.”
Dambrot took over a 10-win team and went 16-16 the first year, then 19 wins to 21-9 in 2019-20 before the NCAA shut down. His next full season was the disastrous 2021-22 year finishing 6-24. He would rebound to 20 wins the next year and a CBI berth and now into the NCAA Tournament with the most wins at Duquesne, 24, since 1953-54.
“Happy for my family and our players and the fans, Dave Harper and (Duquesne President) Ken Gormley. All the people that stuck with me when things weren’t going great. Our players for sure because they battled through this and really became a good team.”
Generations went by never seeing this day. Now the Dukes return to the NCAA Tournament.