Duquesne begins defense of its Atlantic 10 Tournament men’s basketball championship Thursday with an early-bird matchup against a familiar foe.
The ninth-seeded Dukes (13-18) and No. 8 St. Bonaventure (21-10) will meet for the 137th time dating to 1920 in a first-round game at 11:30 a.m. at Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C.
The teams split their regular-season meetings, Duquesne winning 75-57 on Jan. 18 at UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse and St. Bonaventure prevailing 70-63 on Feb. 22 at Reilly Center in Olean, N.Y.
Who will win the rubber match?
“We’ve got to be ready,” Duquesne coach Dru Joyce III said. “It’s going to be a clash. Guys will have to step up and make plays. That’s the beauty of this time of year. Playmakers start to shine because everyone by now knows everyone’s sets, everyone’s likes and dislikes. Sometimes the coaches aren’t deciding what’s happening because the players are starting to dictate more. It should be a really good game.”
The winner gets top-seeded VCU (25-6) in the quarterfinals at 11:30 a.m. Friday.
Forget the regular season. Break out the March cliches. Everyone is 0-0.
“The spirit of March. There’s a certain fight, a certain motion tied to it,” said Joyce III, who was with the Dukes a year ago as their associate head coach during an inspiring postseason run that ended with an NCAA Tournament second-round loss to Illinois.
Now it’s Joyce’s turn to see if his first team can mimic at least a portion of the postseason success of his mentor, former coach Keith Dambrot’s squad.
Perhaps a peek at the scenario unfolding at nearby Robert Morris will conjure up memories of a magical time for Duquesne just last March.
The Colonials triumphantly returned Wednesday from Indianapolis to its Moon Township home at UPMC Events Center after a night earlier claiming the Horizon League Tournament championship and its automatic NCAA bid with an 89-78 victory over Youngstown State.
“I actually did watch Robert Morris play (Monday night in the semifinals, a 79-76 overtime victory over Oakland),” said Joyce, who joined Duquesne’s staff in 2022 from Cleveland State, where he spent three seasons as the Vikings’ recruiting coordinator. “It’s funny, because my first recruit ever (Jayson Woodrich) transferred to Oakland. I was actually watching him. He hit a big-time 3, and I thought they were going to pull the game off. It’s March, though, you never know.”
Joyce insisted that, much like his first regular season as coach of Duquesne, it’ll be a tall challenge to duplicate last season’s impressive run in the A-10 Tournament in what he called “one of the best conferences in all of college basketball, hands down.”
Dambrot, who coached Joyce at Akron (Ohio) St. Vincent-St. Mary and later at the University of Akron, retired after leading Duquesne to a 25-12 record in his seventh season with the Dukes.
“I’ve known the guy since I was 12 years old,” Joyce said. “We practiced hard and played hard. We competed. Every day was fun.”
Joyce, of course, has had a hand in the Dukes’ return to prominence. He’d love nothing more than for another improbable run to a conference title.
“It’s really everyone’s journey, either moving forward or coming to an end,” he said. “It has both qualities, both emotions — pain and joy. It’s just the essence of it. It’s pretty cool to watch. It’s dynamic, and it just kind of gets me in the spirit.”
Duquesne is making its 45th appearance in the A-10 Tournament, where the Dukes own an overall record of 25-42 (.373). But they’ve won four consecutive games, matching their longest winning streak in the tournament.
Before last season, the Dukes had won just one A-10 title — in 1977, when the league was known as the Eastern Collegiate Basketball League.
The journey for their third championship and second in a row begins today.
“It’s March. Anything’s possible,” said Duquesne junior guard Kareem Rozier, one of six holdovers who experienced last season’s wondrous journey. “We have a good shot at doing it again. There’s only one (conference) game we got whooped. We’ve been in every other one.”
The Dukes were blown out by Dayton, 82-62, on Jan. 21 at UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse but nearly beat the Flyers in a rematch Feb. 15 at UD Arena before losing 77-76.
In nine A-10 road games, Duquesne was outscored by a total of 14 points.
“That tells us enough,” Rozier said. “We can beat anybody, and I believe we can win it again.”
Redshirt junior guard Cam Crawford, one of seven transfers this season, felt a similar vibe this week.
“We know what we have on this team. We’ve shown that we can compete with anybody,” he said. “(Against) all the top teams in the league, we’ve shown we can compete with them. It’s just a one-game scenario (now). Anything can happen in one game. We believe, the players believe, the coaches believe and that’s all that matters.”
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