Duquesne MBB 2023-24 Season in Review

What a historic season it was for the Duquesne Men’s Basketball Team, a 25-12 mark overall and 10-8 in Atlantic 10 play.

All of that was a footnote when compared to the run in March when led to the first NCAA Tournament berth since 1977 and first tournament win since 1969.

It was an experience which all of the emotions experienced throughout the season appeared to give way to overall gratitude as Keith Dambrot ended his coaching career on an extremely positive note and has since handed the proverbial keys to Dru Joyce III.

Below in sequential order are Duquesne’s five biggest wins this season.

1. College of Charleston W 90-72 Nov. 10 – Expectations for this team were quite high and the media appeared to finally respect Duquesne in the preseason poll. An opening win against Cleveland State was a bit more thrilling than fans would have desired, but this game was circled on a lot of calendars.

Was Duquesne’s hype real?

The players certainly felt that way but in order to generate excitement and get more fans in seats, it is a transactional business. The “if you build it, they will come” mantra expressed in Field of Dreams has proven to be very true for Dukes fans. The first game of the season almost has felt like Groundhog Day. Fans line up in excitement with hopes that this will be the year, and for countless years, Duquesne fans say it to themselves although perhaps in the past it was more convincing than actual.

This year there was a different feeling and heading to Maryland to face College of Charleston, a 31-win team in the previous season raised the stakes a bit.

A 15-0 run in the first half really distinguished the two teams and Duquesne played with a confidence which would define much of the season.

Dae Dae Grant recorded 22 points in the game, but it was Kareem Rozier’s career-high 20 points in 37 minutes which was a major difference. Rozier was newly minted in the starting five this season and as a sophomore was the unquestioned leader of the team.

For him to shine on a big stage, be the voice interviewed after the game to encourage Duquesne fans and just do it all with a smile provided a legitimate feeling nationally that this Dukes team has the goods.

Not to mention coach Pat Kelsey has since moved on to take the Louisville job, further legitimizing this win.

2. St. Bonaventure W 54-50 Jan. 23– With apologies to the Atlantic 10 Championship semifinal game, this triumph was the most important of the trio of wins against the Bonnies.

Duquesne beating St. Bonaventure three consecutive times when a lot of years one victory is difficult speaks to how special of a season it was this year.

The first meeting of the season was the most important because it started the Duquesne story.

All season, Duquesne viewed itself as a prize fighter, but early on in A-10 play it got knocked down. Once it got back to its feet it was off to the races and this Bona game was that opportunity.

Duquesne was not panicking when it started conference play with an 0-5 record, but it had to do some analyzing and soul searching.

Dae Dae Grant had missed three contests with a concussion and the Dukes were undergoing a bit of an identity shift under Joyce’s direction, where a team unsure of what it was decided to get back to Dambrot’s bread and butter and figure it out on the defensive end first.

Duquesne was having its struggles inside of the final few minutes because it could not piece positive plays together and to boot, the rotation patterns were inconsistent.

Grant was back for this game, but Jake DiMichele had started emerging and cracked the starting lineup. Grant was becoming more defensively sound.

Prior to the game after encountering both Fousseyni and Hassan Drame, each had a gleam in his eye feeling that this would be the contest that turns things around.

Rozier had promised that his team is on the road to greatness, and it was important that after he was the lone player voice available for reporters following the Jan. 16 Richmond game, he came back in to explain that he was good on his word.

“Well, I guess we’re not dead yet,” Dambrot remarked.

3. @ VCU W 69-59 Mar. 5– Dambrot’s decision to play chess and not checkers proved the most important one of the season and made this win possible.

After playing George Mason over the weekend, it would have been easy to come back to Pittsburgh and allow his team to sleep in its own beds for a couple of days, but during spring break, there were other ideas.

Dambrot wanted to simulate the A-10 Championship, being away from home, embracing the uncomfortable and dialing it in for the stretch run.

There was a different level of focus and compete for Duquesne in this one and with VCU having its senior day, the crowd easily could have been a factor. It never really was.

Playing zone has long been Dambrot’s nemesis, but Joyce convinced him it was the right idea to put into play in the second half and it really baffled VCU.

When the Rams did figure it out, Dambrot immediately called timeout and VCU never recovered.

Duquesne was one step ahead of VCU all game long. The Rams tried to foul Tre Williams with 1:23 remaining in regulation, playing the long game, with a player shooting 46.2% from the free-throw line but he sank both.

The Dukes were deadly from three-point range in the moments that mattered, providing their own noise.

This win placed Duquesne over .500 in conference play for the first time all season and also put a dent in VCU’s chances of getting a double bye. Rams fans likely overlooked this game in favor of the nationally televised game at Dayton later in the week, but after that loss played into the fifth seed.

“Those guys hung in there,” Dambrot offered. “We’ve been running up hill all year trying to get over .500 and they’ve done an unbelievable job. I give our guys a lot of credit, a lot of teams would have collapsed after that start we had. You come into this arena and look at all of those NCAA banners, nobody understands it better than me. When you can come in here and win, you’ve done something regardless of how they play, whether they’ve got injured guys or whatever. It’s a hard place to play and sold out 500 million times in a row. I’m proud of our guys and our composure when they got on a run. We made plays when it mattered, and we won it on the defensive end again. We had to go out there and out tough them.”

4. VCU W 57-51 Mar. 17– The rematch was decided before the tip, when Jimmy Clark III saw Max Shulga’s name on the Atlantic 10 All-Conference First Team. Clark finished on the second team, but it was clear that he wanted to guard Shulga.

Despite Duquesne winning the matchup between the two teams 12 days prior, it still was regarded as the underdog because of VCU’s championship acumen and people discrediting the Dukes triumph because Shulga did not play.

The first half proved to be an absolute masterclass with the 14-point halftime lead not a true showing of how far apart the teams were.

Duquesne was burying shots again, but its defense was clearly causing problems that VCU could not solve.

The second half saw the Dukes go on an 8:32 scoreless streak as the Rams began crawling back in, but the run was not nearly as explosive as it could have been because of Duquesne’s defensive efforts.

With 1:36 remaining in regulation both teams were separated by a single point.

Dambrot’s wife Donna, who battled breast cancer all season traveled down to Brooklyn for what could have been her husband’s final game and had been a good luck charm all week.

That would not change.

Clark found DiMichele for a layup and when VCU could not find an equalizer, Duquesne made free throws to secure a historic NCAA Tournament berth.

5. BYU W 71-67 Mar. 21– It was clear how much Duquesne was enjoying being in Omaha for the NCAA Tournament, but everyone made it known that this was not a trip to sightsee, there was business to take care of.

Duquesne’s defensive disposition remained through the ebbs and flows.

Fousseyni Drame’s early-game rebounding helped set the tone that Duquesne came to play and would not be intimidated by the moment.

Drame was involved in the game’s biggest play, 20 seconds into the second half. He got into a tie up with BYU’s Noah Waterman that saw both sides approach as words were exchanged.

Though he received a technical foul, Drame encouraged fans while an official tried to move him away from where the dead ball occurred.

“That got me,” sophomore forward David Dixon admitted. “Knowing that one of our players is laying his body on the line trying to get the loose ball and he’s playing his hardest. I’ve got to do the same thing for my brother.”

This game also introduced a national audience to Jakub Necas. Necas and Matus Hronsky would routinely show up an hour before practice to get work in and those extra shots paid off in this game.

Down the stretch of this game, BYU found a way to tie the game, but Clark went on a personal 5-0 run and both Necas and Grant stood tall at the free throw line.

This game would be Mark Pope’s last on the BYU sideline as he is now Kentucky’s bench boss.

When the buzzer sounded, Duquesne fans went ballistic, knowing their trip was extended a couple more days and the team led everyone in “let’s go Dukes” chants.

“Just under the circumstances of everything, it’s unreal really,” concluded Dambrot. “To be 0-5 and come all the way back and do the things we did just tells you a lot about those guys. I think that 0-5 start in the league has helped us become what we’ve become.”