Duquesne Basketball
Duquesne Coach Keith Dambrot Has Good-Luck Charm in Brooklyn
NEW YORK — Of the four second-round games in the Atlantic-10 conference tournament on Wednesday, only the finale featuring Duquesne and Saint Louis didn’t come down to the wire.
Duquesne got a strong defensive performance, Jimmy Clark III was an offensive bright spot, as the team muscled its way to a 10-point victory over the Billikens, 83-73. Still, head coach Keith Dambrot said his team was fortunate to finish on the right side of the final.
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“In this league, it doesn’t matter where you finish from top to bottom, as you can tell,” Dambrot said. “Every game has been close. We were lucky to get out of here with a win.”
If Duquesne was indeed lucky, then it was probably because Dambrot brought his personal good-luck charm.
His wife, Donna, has been battling breast cancer all season and had surgery in February, causing Dambrot to miss significant practice time in the middle of the team’s second-half-of-the-season turnaround. She was able to attend her first game of the season at Barclays Center on Wednesday, cheering on Dambrot and the Dukes as their good-luck charm.
“I’m really excited about that,” Dambrot said. “If we didn’t win tonight, then she could never come to another game again, because that’s kind of how superstitious basketball players are. I’m thankful she was able to make the trip. It means a lot to me.”
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His frequent absences and his wife’s illness have led to questions about the 65-year-old Dambrot’s future as Duquesne’s head coach. Dambrot has deflected those questions so far, telling Pittsburgh Sports Now in Richmond last week that he hasn’t made any decisions yet.
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“We’re just going to see how my wife feels, how she’s doing, whether she can get healthy and then we’re going to decide what we want to do,” he said. “I will say she’s made a lot of sacrifices for me and she’s probably going to be the one that makes the decision for me, so if she’s not healthy then I won’t be back. If she is healthy, then we’ll think about it.”
For the first time this season, the Dambrots were in full attendance on Wednesday, and with a Duquesne win, they’ll be at it again on Thursday.
