If you started to lose faith in Duquesne coach Keith Dambrot after last season when the floor fell out for the Dukes and they finished 6-24, then shame on you. You obviously don’t know a lot about Dambrot and what makes him tick.
Dambrot is the ultimate grinder, the ultimate survivor and most of all the ultimate fighter. He is gritty and feisty, and there is no way in heck he was about to let his final chapters be written like that.
He has built a career of working harder, preparing more and never taking no for an answer. That’s why it isn’t a surprise that the Dukes have bounced back and are putting together a really nice season.
This might not be the dream season Dambrot was brought to deliver — an NCAA tournament bid — but this is the kind of season he needed to show he hasn’t lost his fastball and is more than capable of getting the Dukes to the promised land.
And here is the other thing: Don’t count the Dukes out when it comes to the discussion about who can win the Atlantic 10 tournament and get the league’s automatic bid.
They are good. They are really good, actually. They have all the elements.
Wednesday, Dambrot won his 500th career game. That’s impressive considering he hasn’t exactly worked at college basketball’s blue bloods. And he is one of those coaches who worked his way up the ladder, drove the buses for his Division II teams, coached high school, was out of the profession.
He won 300-plus games and got to three NCAA tournaments as the coach at Akron, which is incredible. The Zips have been to five NCAA tournaments in their history. Three of them came under Dambrot’s watch.
He has been the Duquesne coach for six seasons and has only had a losing record once. That in and of itself is incredible given how bad Duquesne basketball has been for at least 40 years.
The 500th win Wednesday was an incredible milestone for Dambrot, but that was also a big win because it means the Dukes got their 16th win of the season. Dambrot’s teams have generally been a lot like him — tough, hard-nosed, talented and willing to fight to the end.
Dambrot’s formula for success has been a mix of tough love and hard work. He has always been a bit of an old-school coach; his teams thrive on playing big and defending hard. But he also has a soft and genuine side, and that is just as important to his success.
“I have a lot of empathy and compassion for people,” Dambrot said. “I think you had to be tough, but you have to be loving, as well.
“I have a good work ethic, too. Nothing has come easy for me; I've had to work for everything I've gotten. And I've been able to sustain the work ethic, which a lot of people can't do over time. I always felt like I had something to prove, so that kind of drives me.”
The thing that is impressive about the Dukes this season is it required Dambrot to embrace the way college basketball is played these days in terms of the transfer portal and how rosters at places like Duquesne are built.
Some older coaches are struggling to adapt, but Dambrot clearly isn’t. He has a good mix of veterans, transfers, homegrown players and even some talented freshmen. He, like many coaches, has had to manipulate his roster annually, and that has meant a lot of changes, but it seems as though he has found the right mix.
This is probably Dambrot’s best team at Duquesne and very few people probably saw that coming considering how poorly last season went. They are a versatile team that can win in a lot of ways, and that goes a long way to winning in a one-and-done elimination setting like conference tournaments.
The most telling thing to me, though, about this team and why I believe the Dukes have a chance to win the Atlantic 10 tournament is they have played 24 games and have battled in every single game.
They have only been blown out once in their eight losses, and that was early in the season to Kentucky, but other than that, they have been right there with a chance to win in pretty much every single game. They compete and they can play with anyone in the Atlantic 10.
VCU, for instance, is in first place. The Dukes beat them already. The Dukes played St. Bonaventure, Fordham and Dayton all tough. Those are three teams immediately ahead of them in the standings.
The Dukes obviously haven’t won all of those games, but the fact they are competitive is important because most years they are saddled with multiple embarrassing blowout losses that suggest they are miles away from the top teams in their league.
That’s not the case this year as they have proven they can compete with anyone. At that point, it is just a matter of finding a way to execute down the stretch in order to win games and advance.
Dambrot hasn’t yet gotten the Dukes to the promised land and that probably bothers him more than anyone in or around the program, but Rome wasn’t built in a day. We knew it was going to take time to resurrect the Dukes from the dead.
And it is clear he has them back on that track and they are headed in the right direction again after a year of setbacks. The NCAA bid might not come this year, but it is coming. They will always have a chance with Dambrot on the bench.
You can doubt that based on Duquesne’s history, and that’s understandable, but you shouldn’t doubt Dambrot based on his history as he is a proven winner and has never not finished a job he started.
