Duquesne Has Reason to Be Optimistic About Future Despite Up-and-Down Year

WASHINGTON D.C. — Keith Dambrot took the Duquesne basketball team on a miracle run to win last year’s A-10 Tournament and helped win the program’s first NCAA Tournament since 1969. He retired afterwards and the school hired his assistant Dru Joyce III to man the team.

In his first year as the head man at Duquesne, Joyce and the rest of the Dukes went through major ups-and-downs as they started the season 0-6 before they capped it off by losing to St. Bonaventure in the A-10 Tournament despite holding a 13-point second-half lead.

“[St. Bonaventure] played hard, they didn’t give up,” Joyce said about what happened in the loss. “We weren’t in a game by ourselves. They started to make some plays. I think defensively, they trigger things with their defense. There’s 24 points from them off of turnovers and I think that’s where a lot of their play allowed them to find their rhythm.”

While the Dukes went through the motions this year, there is room to be excited about the program moving forward. First and foremost, the team never quit on Joyce even after the horrid start to the season. That is something that Joyce and the players prided themselves on and were able to be happy about despite the early departure from the tournament.

“I haven’t had any time to reflect but here’s the thing that I already knew, my guys from day one have been willing to adjust, to learn, to buy in and to go on a journey where you don’t know how it’s going to turn out,” Joyce said when reflecting on his first season as head coach. “You don’t know how this thing is going to play out for yourself, and no team does. You have aspirations, you have your goals.”

“Meanwhile, step-by-step, you battle challenges, you battle adversity, and you got to figure it out if that journey is worth it,” Joyce continued. “I commend each and every one on my roster and my program because they had unbelievable faith because there were many times, and I have been around a lot of teams and a lot of basketball, and many times where I’ve seen teams fold. They could have quit on me after we went 0-6 but they rallied. They fought, not only for me, but they fought for each other.”

With that, another reason that things can be better in the future under Joyce is his ability to recruit which was apparent last offseason. While the roster returned some pieces of Dambrot’s last team, Joyce overhauled the roster with his own guys. Most of the players he brought in have eligibility left which include Thursday’s starters Maximus Edwards, Tre Dinkins III and Cameron Crawford.

Edwards, a transfer from George Washington, had one his best games of the season on Thursday as he finished as the team’s leading scorer with 18 points on a 7-of-12 shooting day.

“For me personally, that’s just my teammates and Coach Dru and the whole staff believing in me,” Edwards said after the loss. “I know the last four minutes, we really didn’t get nothing going offensively but I was scoring but it wasn’t enough, man. It wasn’t enough.”

“Yeah, he was stinky earlier (in the year),” Joyce said jokingly about Edwards’ growth. “He wasn’t very good, but I knew he was a good player, and I think the main thing is we made an adjustment. … I don’t think he liked it. We had to have a couple more conversations, but he bought in, and it wasn’t an easy adjustment. But what he did was he didn’t quit on himself.”

In the present day of college basketball, it is uncertain who sticks around for Joyce next season but based on the way he spoke about his players and vice-versa, it should not be a shock to see the main core return next year and if all of them hold the same mindset that Edwards did this season, they can improve their game and stock.

“I think the biggest thing as a coach, it can go two ways,” Joyce said what positives that he can take into the upcoming offseason. ” A team can walk out on you and lose a team, or you’ve got guys that are willing to fight for you and I believe that I have a room of guys that are willing to fight for me. We didn’t lose our way, we stayed with our focus, we stayed together.”

One key player that could potentially leave is Dinkins, but Joyce spoke glowingly of his senior guard after Thursday’s loss.

“If this was his last game, he is another guy that didn’t quit,” Joyce said of Dinkins. “I challenged him. I didn’t start him in the first couple of games, I sat his butt on the bench because I thought he was stinky, too. He wasn’t practicing at the level that he needed to, so I wasn’t going to reward him with a starting position, he had to fight for it. I knew he was capable of being in that lineup, but I think it was more important that he made sure that he earned it, and he showed it every day.”

With a head coach that rallies around his players despite the rough ending, and his connections to the basketball world including his childhood friend LeBron James, players should still want to come play for Joyce and Duquesne in the A-10 which is one of the more prestigious mid-major conferences in the nation.

With the experience that Joyce and his players gained in the A-10 this season, year two should go better for Duquesne who played fairly well against conferences foes this year, going a respectable 8-10 in league play.

While the season did not go nor end in the fashion that they hoped, Duquesne is in a good spot moving forward under Joyce.