Dick Vitale has tweeted about Duquesne basketball twice in the last couple of weeks.
Say what you want about Dickie V, but the man doesn’t give shoutouts to just anybody. Well, maybe that’s not entirely accurate. His last mention of the Dukes came alongside five other A10 teams, but it can’t be denied that the Dukes have garnered some extra attention as they’ve gotten out to their 15-2 start to the season.
With each successive week, it seems there are more and more media outlets at Duquesne’s media availabilities, hoping to understand how this team has won 15 of its first 17 games and get a feel for just how good the Dukes could be in the long run.
Still, the coaches and players themselves hold no delusions of grandeur quite yet.
“I don’t know if the rest of the league really thinks we’re good or not,” coach Keith Dambrot said Tuesday. “I don’t think they really have any fear of Duquesne, but at the same token, it’s our job to make sure that we earn everything we get. So we’ll be ready to play against Rhode Island.”
What makes Dambrot say that?
“Just gut feeling. Why should they? Why should they believe?” he said. “After 45 years, 100 years of not playing in the NCAA tournament, why should they think Duquesne’s not gonna fold.”
While that is an honest assessment from Dambrot, it also has its advantages.
He seems to have a chip on his shoulder no matter what, but that attitude has permeated to his players, and they claim it works as a means to keep them focused on the task at hand — that the only way to prove Duquesne belongs is to just worry about the present.
The only logical place for that feeling to come from is Dambrot. Junior forwards Michael Hughes and Marcus Weathers, junior guard Tavian Dunn-Martin and fifth-year senior forward Baylee Steele are all transfers-turned-major-contributors. It’s not like they grew up with intimate knowledge of the Dukes and their past struggles.
Any preconceived notions of Duquesne, then, were small jokes from the past.
“In some ways, everyone has somewhat of a disrespect for Duquesne,” Hughes said. “My freshman year, when I was at Akron, I knew nothing about Duquesne, and I think someone had a great game against Duquesne, and Tavian was like, ‘Dude, somebody went for 70 against ‘Doo-quees.’’ And I was like, ‘What?’ And that’s just the craziest thing. We go from not even being able to pronounce it to now going here.”
The important thing, as far as the current Dukes are concerned, is not that outsiders or opponents believe in them, but that building belief is just a product of on-court results. If Duquesne continues to win, people will take notice and begin to believe that this season is different from past ones, in which the Dukes have gotten out to strong starts only to falter and fade at the end of the season. If they falter and join past teams, then it’s back to work next season.
The next step in that process comes Wednesday, when Duquesne will travel to Rhode Island to take on the Rams (12-5 overall, 4-1 A10), who were picked to finish fourth in the conference in the preseason poll. A win there, in a hostile environment, would almost certainly be the Dukes’ best win of the season.
And that’s the scope of Duquesne’s focus right now: working on what is directly in front of it.
“Whenever you get caught up worrying about what’s next, when you have something in front of you that needs to get taken care of now, is whenever you start to deal with problems,” Hughes said. “So really keeping it moving and focusing on right now, each day and being our best every day is the biggest thing for us.”
Hughes was asked if he believes his team can change how the Dukes are discussed at large. The big man pointed to the front of his shirt as he gave his answer.
“It spells out Duquesne right here,” Hughes said. “Duquesne’s never been respected and never probably will. So we really just shock the world. That’s the only way we can do it.”
Mike Persak: mpersak@post-gazette.com and Twitter @MikeDPersak
First Published: January 21, 2020, 10:03 p.m.
