If you ask everyone on the Duquesne men’s basketball team when they knew they were going to win the Atlantic 10 tournament championship, you’ll get a multitude of different answers.
Jake DiMichele felt fairly comfortable when Fousseyni Drame hit a pair of free throws to go up by seven points with 14 seconds left. He didn’t believe it until the buzzer went off.
Kareem Rozier felt the momentum during the final media timeout. The Dukes led by eight points at that time.
Jakub Necas will tell you he knew after they beat Dayton, 65-57, in the quarterfinals on Thursday. He figured they took out the only ranked team in the league, so why couldn’t they win.
Fousseyni and Hassan Drame were sure after Dae Dae Grant tipped the ball out of George Washington’s James Bishop IV’s hand and slid to catch the loose ball. He passed it to Fousseyni, who then missed the layup, but Grant jumped over Bishop to finish the play.
But for Grant and Jimmy Clark III it goes even further back. All the way to October during the first media availability of the year. They both were adamant that this was Duquesne’s year. The Dukes were picked to finish fourth, but the two guards were confident even back then.
“We all already knew what the script was,” Clark said. “Everybody says this, but we already knew what it was. It was only one task at hand and we knew we could do it only with each other. We couldn't do it with nobody else.”
The confidence started mostly because of Grant and Clark returning to play a second year with Duquesne. They were the leading scorers back in 2022-23 and it helped that both had the complete trust from their coach, Keith Dambrot — a fact they pointed out in the press conference this past Sunday.
“Our relationship with coach individually is just tight-knit,” Grant said. “He can be straight up, straightforward with us. Everybody can't get that from a player/coach standpoint. So we're just appreciative of that.”
It’s one of the reasons Duquesne was able to find their footing out when things quickly started going south in January. The Dukes started 0-5 in A-10 play, falling to Massachusetts, Loyola Chicago, Dayton, Richmond and Saint Joseph’s in a 17-day period.
Rozier, the captain for the team, was in the press conferences following both of the home losses. It was evident the stretch was weighing on him, but he was still adamant they would get it together and have some wins.
It’s why when Duquesne finally won its first conference game — a 54-50 win against St. Bonaventure — he demanded to be in the press conference.
“I’m built for moments like this,” Rozier said. “My parents built up to lead teams at all times, not just when we were high, but when we got our lows too. The guys who got in that locker room, they didn't stop believing and they trusted me to lead them.”
That game served as a turning point for the team. Dambrot finally landed on a rotation after shuffling things constantly. They also figured out the recipe for their success. Dambrot called it mud wrestling — aka gritty but not pretty.
“That was probably the biggest key for us, just learning what kind of style was good for us to win,” Dambrot said. “It's probably different than any team I've ever had. I've been an inside out coach most of my career and like we don't play like that at all anymore. So, it was an adjustment for all of us.”
Part of that had to do with DiMichele who had played sparingly all season until the Loyola Chicago game where he played a career-high 18 minutes and scored a career-high seven points. He followed that up with a 12-point performance against Dayton and then entered the starting lineup as a walk-on against Richmond.
It was immediately clear the impact he would have on this team. He stole the ball from two of the best guards in the conference in Dayton’s Nate Santos and Javon Bennett. His ability to impact a game by diving for the ball or hitting a 3-pointer in transition served as a rallying cry.
“Our toughness level really improved when DiMichele started to play,” Dambrot said. “It's funny how one guy can affect another guy that can affect another guy. And pretty soon if you're not tough, you're kind of the odd man out. I think that's really what happened with our group.”
It could have been really easy for the players to have some tension simply because they’re competing for player time. Dambrot brought in four graduate students — all who started on their previous teams. Eight guards, and all but three were freshmen.
Instead it was the complete opposite. They had bonded through the adversity and formed a brotherhood who didn’t care who was playing more minutes as long as they were winning.
“One of the advantages our team is basically we have we have such a big group of guys who can make an impact anytime,” Necas said. “I'm just trying to be most helpful for my team. If I will not be that guy, someone else will be.”
Duquesne (24-11) closed out the regular season on a 10-3 run, to earn a No. 6 seed in the A-10 tournament.
The Dukes’ depth served to be the key when they got to Brooklyn. They handled Saint Louis in the second round and had a big matchup with Dayton. They hadn’t beaten Dayton all season but the combined effort of nine different scorers and a continued emphasis on defense pushed them ahead.
While it was a huge victory, it also came with its lumps. Starting forward Tre Williams went out with an injury and was ruled out for the remainder of the tournament.
Duquesne rallied around that though. A combined effort from all of the forwards — Dambrot joked that he was thankful they had so many — pushed them ahead of St. Bonaventure. It was fitting that they advanced to the championship game for the first time in 15 years against the team that served as the turning point for the season.
“This is what my brother (Hassan) tells everybody,” Fousseyni Drame said. “We don't really have like, ‘Oh this player cannot play.’ Duquesne recruits 15 players that can go five, five, five. All of those 15 players can go through them. Tre was not there for example. Tre was a star. So the coaches changed the route. We just have 15 players that can win.”
All of the adversity they faced — the 0-5 start, the numerous injuries, even Dambrot’s wife’s breast cancer diagnosis — prepared them for the biggest game of the year thus far.
The Dukes were up by 18 points in the first half against VCU. The Rams battled back to as little as a one-point game, but Duquesne held on to win it all.
“We knew at halftime VCU was gonna make their run,” DiMichele said. “Earlier in the year when teams made runs against us and came back we folded. We're a different team now. You can see that we held our composure together.”
All of this is why they’re confident they can make some noise in the NCAA tournament — the program’s first trip since 1977. Duquesne opens the Big Dance against No. 6-seeded BYU at 12:40 p.m. Thursday.
“It makes it so much more fulfilling,” Grant said. “It makes you so much more appreciative for the moment because everything that you put into it. You didn't do it for no reason. You know that you are working towards something throughout the entire year, but you got what you are working for right now and we're still pushing.”
Abby Schnable: aschnable@post-gazette.com and @AbbySchnable on X
First Published: March 19, 2024, 9:30 a.m.
Updated: March 19, 2024, 1:28 p.m.
