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PROVO — BYU's first-round opponent in its first NCAA Tournament in three years has been waiting a lot longer — by about 44 years — and will be motivated to send longtime coach Keith Dambrot out a winner.
The coach of Duquesne since 2017 announced he will retire following the 2023-24 season Monday, a day after the Dukes earned their first trip to the NCAA men's basketball tournament since 1977 — just as he promised he would do when he took over the program of his father's alma mater in 2017.
"I didn't want to cheat (the job)," said Dambrot, according to the Associated Press, while surrounded by his players, athletic director Dave Harper and university president Ken Gormley. "And I just felt like I could see myself losing that edge at some point. And that's why I said, 'I don't want to end like that.' I'm not built that way."
That's why the 64-year-old Dambrot simply said, "I think it's time" in revealing a decision he said he made "80% sure" last summer that moved to 100% when his wife Donna was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Dambrot said the news conference announcing his retirement was planned several months ago, but that he didn't tell any of his players, a roster that features eight countries— including former Wasatch Academy forward Matúš Hronský from Slovakia — and top scorers Dae Dae Grant (16.7 points per game) from Lorain, Ohio, by way of Miami (Ohio) and Jimmy Clark III (15.1 ppg) from Covington, Georgia.
"My personality type is not good to coach into the 70s," Dambrot told the AP. "I'm too involved in it. I'm still worried about where the guys are on time for the bus, you know? It's just it's hard to explain, right? Maybe. Maybe a little neurotic."
The Dukes will open the 2024 NCAA men's basketball tournament Thursday morning against sixth-seeded BYU (23-10) at the CHI Health Center in Omaha, Nebraska.
"It's a great team; they're the A-10 champs, and that's no easy feat," BYU coach Mark Pope said of Duquesne. "They've won eight games in a row and that's got to be a top-5 or seven longest winning streak in the country. That's elite-level basketball. We know personally how good this Dayton team is, and they kind of ran them out of the gym in the tournament. It's an elite-level defensive team that causes all kinds of mayhem with a really explosive backcourt."
Duquesne knows what it's getting in against a battle-tested BYU team that finished fifth in its first season in the Big 12. But they aren't backing down, either.
"It's an encouraging challenge for us. We'll be ready," said Grant, the Dukes' senior guard. "We'll go out there and compete and look forward to the game. We believe in ourselves and each other. We've played high-major teams before. We've played high-major players. Basketball is basketball and March is March. Anybody can be beaten. You just have to believe in one another."
At one point, Dambrot was perhaps best known as the coach of St. Vincent-St. Mary Catholic High School in Akron, Ohio from 1998-2001, where he mentored a budding superstar named LeBron James from 1998-2001.
After moving to the collegiate ranks at Akron and winning three Mid-American Conference titles from 2004-2017, Dambrot was successfully recruited by his father Sid's alma mater with a seven-year, $7 million contract in 2017 with promises of ending the Dukes' decades-long tournament drought, according to ESPN.
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— LeBron James (@KingJames) March 18, 2024
Under his watch, Duquesne also invested in its basketball program, opening the new UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse in 2021 — despite a 6-24 team that welcomed the 3,500-seat multipurpose venue in uptown Pittsburgh in the 2021-22 season.
But the veteran coach stuck with the program — and the private Catholic school with an enrollment with just over 5,000 undergraduate students stuck with him — in bouncing back with a 20-13 record last year. This year's job was even better, with a 24-11 overall record that included eight consecutive wins capped off by a 57-51 slugfest over VCU in the A-10 title game where the Dukes missed as many as 17-of-18 shots at one point in the second half.
"We got in a rock fight, which is probably good for us rather than a smooth, flowing game," Dambrot said of his team, which ranks 86th in KenPom and 28th in adjusted defensive efficiency. "We're one of the best defensive teams in the league, and if it's 57-51 that's good for us. We did a good job defensively the whole tournament, and I think that's why we won."
Thursday's tipoff is scheduled for 10:40 a.m. MDT on TruTV.
