Motor wrote:

grammudder wrote:

As Myron Cope used to say "A little birdie told me....." there is a chance that Joe Reece will be given an  added year of eligibility due to circumstances while he was at his prior University and had either a medical or some other 
"legitimate" reason for missing a year of action.  A success by Reece would surely change what KD and his staff do with the portal eligibles. 

Thanks Gram and if he does get another year would it count against the scholarship count?  Since the extra 
Covid year allowed players to use that year and not count against the limit.

Interesting about Reece. I had wondered if he might be able to get another year of eligibility since he only played 15 minutes across 6 games his freshman year (2018-19) at Old Dominion. By comparison, Tevin Brewer played 10 games (starting all 10) his first season (2019-20) at Florida International (after two years in JUCO) before losing the rest of the season to injury. That season didn't count against his eligibility, he played two more years at FIU, then one at Duquesne. I'm not sure that Reese was ever injured that season, I think he was just a true freshman at the end of the bench on a deep team. But the NCAA does seem to give a lot more leeway than it did on redshirts. And NILs plus graduate degrees (Reese is really smart from what I've read) make another year of college basketball a better deal for a lot of kids than turning pro overseas or entering the job market.

If he gets another year of eligibility and stays at Duquesne to use it, I'm pretty sure he would count against the scholarship limit. Only 5th-year seniors who stayed put for the 2021-22 season didn't count against their teams' scholarship limits, I'm not aware that that one-off was extended beyond that season. If Reese gets another year and stays, then we'd have six scholarship players leaving (Brewer, Carney, Easley, Gunn, McGriff, Rotroff) and only two coming in (Drame tw

I'm thinking Conference USA probably deserved more than one bid this year. Florida Atlantic makes the NCAA Final 4, UAB and North Texas both make the NIT Final Four, Charlotte wins the CBI. 4-0 against the Power 5 in the postseason. Good conference for the Dukes to schedule non-conference games against. 

Virginia too. Always happy to see Power-5 and Big East teams go down to the mid-major and small conference teams, now more than ever as they rig the game in their own favor. May we see more upsets like this.

I'm fine with NIL and I think it was great that Duquesne was one of the first schools--if not the first--to hire a consultant to help our players take advantage of NIL, market, brand themselves, etc. Those are skills that will serve them well beyond their time at Duquesne. But surprise, NIL opportunities are actually quite limited for kids at Duquesne and most other smaller schools. Do any of you folks in Pittsburgh ever see Duquesne student-athletes in local business' advertising campaigns? Or any other evidence of NIL deals these kids have? I remember seeing Rotroff and Gunn on Facebook going out for coffee somewhere, whether that was an NIL deal, I don't know.

Enter the donor collectives to fund those opportunities. The booster slush funds of another era. That is what we're talking about here, isn't it? Any ideas on specifics of what the Red & Blue Collective will fund for these kids? Or are we just to be shamed into opening our wallets if we ever want Duquesne to succeed? What's the target for how much the R&B Collective wants to raise and what will those funds accomplish? Or are we not supposed to ask such questions? Who's even running the R&B Collective? I know Duquesne put out an announcement about it last week, but I believe these collectives have to be run outside the schools, no? 

Meanwhile, Duquesne athletics just raised $266,701 on the Duquesne Day of Giving, almost 42% of the total raised and about 4X what any other part of the school raised. Men's basketball was over $31K of that, I even got a personalized thank you note from Keith himself. So it gets a little tiresome to hear that we're not giving enough and we need to put our money where our hopes and aspirations for the program are. Many of us have been doing that for years. 

 

DuqBlue wrote:

Bilgy wrote:

What is Duquesne's all time record vs. Rice?

2-0. Won at Rice in 2007, won at Palumbo in 2008

Would be 3-1 then as we played them twice in the John Carroll Era: a 70-68 home win in 1989-90 and a 95-83 road loss the following season. 

scduke wrote:

Read an article about tournament expansion. If it expanded to 96 teams, every Big 12 team would get a bid. It would benefit Power 5/6 teams more than mid-majors. It's looking more and more like a club that excludes the A-10. It's bad enough that we can't get these teams (including Pitt) to play in Pittsburgh. They put us off, then they put us down!

Absolutely right. You need only look at the at-large NIT bids to see who would benefit from an expanded NCAA tournament. Net ratings are a self-reinforcing model. That's how a team like WVU can be four games under-.500 in their conference and win as many road games as Duquesne did and yet still make the NCAA tourney. According to NET ratings, they're the 25th-best team in the country. I don't really care how good your conference is, if you can't at least break even in conference play, you're not an NCAA tourney team. There are plenty of good mid-major teams that could get wins against Power 5 teams if they could get home games against them. 

All is not lost for the A10 however. The Mountain West (remember the A10-Mountain West Challenge?) is sending four teams to the NCAA and another to the NIT.  Of course they're also an FBS football conference, so maybe that's not really a good comparison anymore.

As I mentioned in the other thread, we now have just six wins in 25 trips to the A10 tourney since 1996. Six coaches, 25 seasons, six conference tourney wins between them. Just to put that in perspective, Jim Satalin, hardly a hall of fame coach, the guy who pretty much presided over the beginning of Duquesne basketball's long decline into irrelevancy, still managed to win 6 conference tourney games in his seven years at Duquesne. He even knocked off top-seeded WVU in '85. As many conference tourney wins as Dambrot, Ferry, Everhart, Nee, Porter and Edgar have combined. Incredible. I can't imagine there's another school that's been as inept in its conference tourney over the same time period.

Wow. I know I pointed out that Duquesne always loses in the A10 tourney, but I really thought they could win this game. But the 3s weren't falling, that was apparent early on and this team just isn't very good if it's not hitting from outside. Grant scored 13 of the first 17 points then went 0 for the rest of the game. 5 points from our supposedly deep bench? It was like playing 4-on-5 with Gunn or Williams on the court. And the ole' defense, which has been a problem most of the season, reared its ugly head once again. I mean, 54 points allowed in the second half, twice as many as in the first half? Which team was playing for the second day in a row? Didn't Dambrot teams used to pride themselves on their defense?

Yes, I like the nucleus coming back, but who knows how many will be back. Sure they won 20 games and that's a lot better than winning 6 games, but the end result was the same as it is almost every year: one and done in the conference tourney. And it's not like this was a rebuilding year with lots of underclassmen. This was a roster with three 6th-year seniors, one 5th-year senior and two 4th-year juniors. It was built to compete right now and for the most part, it did. But going 10-8 in a weak A10 and bowing out in the first conference tourney game for the umpteenth time doesn't really give me much of a sense of satisfaction. We saw flashes of brilliance this season of course but nothing that could ever be sustained.

Yes, Dambrot's earned another year but has he earned an extension? Does he want to continue to coach in a college basketball landscape that has changed so drastically? He'll be 65 before the start of next season and admitted he considered retiring after last season's debacle. As the late great Duq81 would always say, you can't let a coach come back with only one year left on his contract. You either extend him or let him go. So something's gotta give here pretty soon. If he stays, his ceiling appears to be a good MAC roster that can be compet

Tony84 wrote:

I hope we get a 3rd match up with them also, but I bet Fordham would LOVE to face the Dukes as well. let's hope we get that far.

VCU pulling away from GW, so looks like you'll get your wish. Unless I'm screwing up the tiebreakers, Dukes would be 6th and would draw Fordham in quarterfinals if they win Wednesday. If Davidson wins tonight, we get the LaSalle-Rhode Island winner in the second round. If Davidson loses, we get the Richmond-Rhode Island winner. I think...
 

Motor wrote:

These TV games are set up months ahead of time. They are based upon last year’s results for Winning teams and those winners are probably the ones getting most games. Unlike the NFL who has the monster bucks to dictate changes this would be great to see but it’s not happening now.
When next years TV game contracts are negotiated Duquesne and Fordham will probably get their fair share of those based on this year’s results.
Let’s just win this one.
Go Duke’s

All true. But I don't think it would really be that hard to make the switch. It's not like they'd have to re-route a massive production crew, I'm pretty sure they mostly use local contractors in this day and age, no? Would just be a matter of re-assigning the announcers. I swear I recall in my own college years (late '80s-early '90s) they would routinely add new TV games to the schedule as the season went on. Oh well, their loss. I'm sure the half-empty Mullins Center in middle-of-nowhere western Mass. will look good on national TV vs. a jam-packed, rocking Rose Hill Gym in the nation's biggest media market.

BTW, Saturday's game at Rose Hill is sold out. Don't see any tickets on the main resale sites either. If you're planning to go, I hope you got your tickets in advance. Prior to last year's 1-point loss there, Dukes had won 6 in a row and 8 of 9 at Rose Hill. Place will be rocking on Saturday though. Too bad it's not on national TV. Instead the A10 Saturday tripleheader on USA has Bonaventure-UMass in that slot. Brilliant. 

Yes, that's true, beat UMass and we can finish no worse than 7th. Top half of the conference for a team picked last in the preseason is pretty good. I'd say we're in the NIT conversation at 21 wins (no A10 team with 21 wins has ever not made the NIT, unless it made the NCAAs) and likely in at 22, but curious why you think it would take 23, FAM?

If the Dukes beat UMass and Fordham and Fordham loses at George Mason Wednesday, then yes, the Dukes would win a head-to-head tiebreaker with Fordham and get the double-bye. We would just need St. Louis to not be part of that tiebreaker and they would be if they lose their last two, to VCU and Dayton. Then we'd be in a three-way tie with St. Louis and Fordham and would lose out to both based on the three-way head-to-head tiebreaker. We'd be second in a three-way tiebreaker with Dayton and Fordham but that would require Dayton to lose at home to LaSalle, which I don't see happening. So go Dukes, go Patriots and go Billikens, I guess.