For years, the Duquesne women’s basketball program has waited for its first NCAA tournament bid, a quest that has brought it agonizingly close and painfully elusive.
It’s a wait that will continue for at least another year.
Despite winning at least 20 games for the seventh consecutive season, making it one of only 19 Division I programs to do so in that time, Duquesne did not see its name revealed Monday night in the NCAA tournament bracket.
“It’s frustrating,” coach Dan Burt said. “It’s crushing.
“It’s something that hurts and anyone who tells you differently is lying. We thought we had a 50-50 chance, so I had a tempered enthusiasm about [Monday] evening.”
Heading into Monday, Duquesne was listed by ESPN.com as one of the first four teams out of the tournament, but was not included in that group by the NCAA selection committee upon the release of the bracket.
The night, however, was not a complete loss.
With the Atlantic 10 Conference’s top two teams, George Washington and Dayton, making the NCAA tournament, the third-place Dukes (21-10) automatically qualified for the Women’s National Invitation Tournament. They will play Thursday at Youngstown State (21-10). The time of the game will be released today.
The WNIT appearance is their seventh in as many seasons, the past two of which have come with Burt as head coach.
Though the exclusion from the NCAA tournament stung, Duquesne’s position as a bubble team was a testament to a late-season run from a team that was picked seventh in the A-10 before the start of the season. The Dukes won 10 of their final 12 games to finish 12-4 in a conference that was rated as the sixth-most difficult in Division I.
While it might be difficult for Duquesne to bounce back from the sting of not making the tournament, there are some goals it can reach, as three more wins would tie a program single-season record for victories. In each of its previous six appearances in the WNIT, it didn’t win more than two games.
“I don’t know how our kids will react,” Burt said. “But if I think I know them as well as I do, I think we’ll move past this hurt and hopefully we’ll use this to propel us to some victories in the WNIT and we’ll be able to extend our season as long as possible.”
First Published: March 17, 2015, 1:38 a.m.