I and three of my daughters who also attended Duquesne had the pleasure of attending last nights game courtesy of our AD Dave Harper. I became a Dukes fan in the late sixties as a youth and went to the games at the Civic Arena when they played top teams and to large crowds. It was good timing for the Dukes, as the Steelers, Penquins and Pitt Basketball (excluding the Billy Knight years) were irrelevant. After graduating in 1980, I had season tickets through the 1990 season. Seeing the direction of the program and selection of coaches I did not consider purchasing season tickets again, that is until now. The direction of the program is definitely on the up tick, as the president, AD, and coach have a firm grasp on what it needs to be a winner. I realize the out of conference schedule was weak and the A ten is down this year. But the improvement of the leftover players is unreal as well as fabulous freshman Eric Williams. ( if half of next years freshman class come close to Williams abilities and the transfers are as good as advertised, look out A Ten and world) This coach can flat out coach all aspects of the game, while holding his players accountable for their play.

   Telling my daughters that I was thinking of getting season tickets again some weeks ago, they were very skeptical. After attending last nights game, they asked me how many tickets I was going to get, and I told them two. They said, dad why don't you get four as now that there last sister is in her final year of playing high school basketball, we would like to attend some more games. See I have played, coached, refereed and been a parent of a basketball player in high school for the past twenty years and it's all winding down for me but the amazing thing is these girls want to go to more games. When they attended Duquesne one played there and the other two were students and would only go to two boys games a year on the average. They really enjoyed that they saw former classmates and that I ran into classmates that I have not seen for over twenty years and that we all knew who we were. I suggest if you had children attend Duquesne during the lean years, which there have been many, give it one more shot and they will bleed the red and blue. I was coaching with Billy Zopf about twenty five years ago and he was running late for practice, so I figured I would give the boys we coached a history lesson. See, these boys looked at Billy just as an older man, not as I did, because as a youth he was a top player on a top team to me. As all these kids had Pitt gear because Pitt was on top of the Big East and they knew he played for the Dukes but they assumed Duquesne back in his day was the same as it was at that time. I educated them as I did my daughters about Duquesne basketball history and if you do the same, maybe we will see younger people attending the games. Because at last nights game, I would venture to guess that over fifty percent was Sixty years old and older. I am aware that the students are on Christmas break, but we need the late twenty to fifty year old people to attend.

Random thoughts on last nights game that I have not seen in awhile,

The coach and his assistant coaches are constantly coaching

The leftover players have improved on both ends of the court immensely

The team concept with the players is there on the court and the bench

The reason why Williams gets so many rebounds, is the bigs and Taylor box out extremely well and he gets the bounds because of his quickness.

Passing and offensive sets are vastly improved

I know competition has not been great or even good, but the Dukes team defense is the best I have seen in a while.

Don't forget there are four types of coaches

1. Coaches that are good with X's and O's and good communicators to the press, players and recruits

2. Coaches that are good X's and O's but terrible communicators

3. Coaches that are terrible X's and O's but good communicators

4. Coaches bad at both

We Dukes fans have had enough of coaches 2,3 and 4 We finally got a number 1