"Mob mentality": and "we are not a cult".
.Styles1299 really......
Labeling people who disagree with your viewpoints as a "Mob" and or belonging to a "Cult"...  is just plain stupid.....Styles1229 please indicate the exact time and place when all us pathetic, uninformed Duquesne fans "Drank the (Dambrot-Joyce)  Koolaid" ?
 

Last edited by CalDuke (3/29/2024 5:23 pm)

CityDuke wrote:

I absolutely love this for our program! Dambrot did what he said he would do. Amazing. Leaving a great foundation but just enough room for Dru to work his magic. Great decision by Gormley and Harper. Bring on Druquesne!!

CityDuke, thank you for all your positivity and contributions to this board.  I agree 100% with this.  KD has accomplished what some people have called the impossible mission, and as a long-suffering Duquesne fan I am truly grateful. I am looking forward with excitement to DRUquesne. Go DRUkes!
 

PhoenixRising2 wrote:

DuqBlue wrote:

phil95 wrote:

There is no debating the success enjoyed by KD in the last 3 weeks of his time at DU. Further, he has left the program in infinitely better shape than he found it. I am happy for him, his staff, the players, Dave Harper, the university community at-large, and, most of all, we long suffering fans. However, he most certainly did not do what he said he would do.

Upon taking the job he spoke repeatedly of multiple championship banners being hung, winning big with or without a new arena,erasing all the built-in excuses for not winning, & said, specifically, that he would have failed if 5 years in Duquesne was a "middle-of-the-pack" A-10 program. There is also no debating that he habitually used construction delays effect on his team's success & exageratted player injuries as excuses for poor results, his average finish in the conference regular season was 8th (never better than 5th), & had the team dead last after 5 years.

I am posting this now because I know that for years to come I will have to read how awesome the entire Dambrot era was to be a Duquesne fan just as we do for the RE years. I am trying to get my frustration with such rubbish out my system early.

Great post. The only coaches that I can recall being fired with leaving the program better than when they found it were Carroll & Everhardt.

Dambrot is the first coach to retire and not be fired and I cant recall the last coach. I don’t know DU history before Rice.

Even though he may not have lived up to all of what was promised, he markedly improved the program. And fulfilled his biggest promise. Ending the drought and winning a tournament game.

I think that the program really turned around with his hiring of Dru. I am quite comfortable with Dambrot’s tenure on whole. Of course, in late January I would have had an entirely different answer to that question. Two months made a world of difference.

The last coach to retire was Red Manning in 1974.  His assistant, John Cinacola, took over the program.
The last assistant coach to be promoted to head coach was Mike Rice; this took place in 1978 after John Cinacola was fired.
 

Wasn’t Darelle Porter promoted from being an assistant coach of the Dukes?   

1974.  Wow.  We were a coaches graveyard.  That is in the past.   I want don’t ever want Dru to leave but if he does I want it be to because of all the success he had a Duquesne and a big school comes calling.

coffee wrote:

Everyone has a right to be negative… I just feel sorry that they will never be happy or satisfied with relative success and improvement.

The only time it hurts me is when those who are so negative cost the job of a coach who came within 5 points of a bid gets canned and we had to hire a guy who wasn’t half the coach and the Duquesne Train goes off the tracks again.

If KD’s dad didn’t play for Duquesne, what we did to RE may have kept him from even considering the job. RE and KD talked before he came to Duquesne and credit RE for not bad mouthing the school entirely.

GOOD LUCK DREW! Most of us are pulling for you!!

RE did things here with less and won more then his recent past. KD came to the graveyard of coaches and until he won, me included,wanted to move on. KD brought in Dru and the last two years didn't look like the first 5 years. I thank KD for bringing in Dru.I really thank the admin for both bringing in KD and going longer than I would with him, but I'd like to thank KD's commitment to giving us Dru. KD's first 5 years looked like all the rest, but these last two years were far more different. Dru Joyce changed KD's life years ago, and now,  KD just changed DU's BB program. Let's all look forward to Dru's DU BB team. I'm pretty sure that's what each of us are saying here, just from different perspectives is what I just expressed. Especially mine. Go Dukes and Go Dru Joyce.Heck we just won the A-10 and a NCAA game. Let's give Dru a couple of years before he wins the NCAA Championship. (No pressure here Dru) LOL. Let's all lighten up.

luckymcd wrote:

Styles1229 wrote:

KD brought us an Atlantic 10 Championship and an NCAA tournament win. Nothing can take that away. Let’s not pretend he didn’t also deliver a 6-24 season and 4 one and dones in the A-10 tournament out of 6. We never finished the A-10 regular season higher than 5th. 20 win seasons meant something when teams played far less games and 20 wins all but guaranteed you an NCAA tournament bid. So let’s quit touting that. I will always treasure the last few weeks but I’m not going to pretend that for 95% of his tenure we were anything more than an average to below average A-10 team. That’s not being negative. That’s just being realistic.

Let's also not pretend he was taking over the Kentucky job. 4 of the 6 winningest seasons for the Dukes over the last 43 years were coached by Dambrot despite only coaching 7 of those 43. That's going by win percentage too, not just number of wins. If you want to go by conference record to negate non-conference scheduling, it's still 4 out of 7. Now I recognize that being the best Dukes coach of the last 40 years is somewhat akin to being the tallest midget. His tenure was far from perfect. The 6 win season was an enormous waste of talent. The one regular season game I made it to this year was the game at Fordham, and even as recently as late February I was disappointed in what appeared to be another waste of talent. Saying 95% of his tenure was simply average is a gross overstatement to me though. You obviously have high hopes for the Dukes, which is great, but let's not forget what Dambrot walked into.

I meant average as compared to other A-10 schools and College basketball in general.  A middle of the pack conference team. Nothing to be ashamed of and nothing to laud as a big success, these last few weeks not withstanding.

And “little person” is the preferred nomenclature

This is the best way I can put it. Ben Howland came to Pitt in a similar situation that KD came to Duquesne.  He immediately had Pitt competing for and winning conference championships and making noise in the Big Dance. THAT was remarkable.  4 short years in arguably the most competitive conference in the country and he won multiple titles when Pitt hadn’t sniffed one in forever.   No one should be held to that standard so I’m not holding KD to it, but when I read some of the posts about his tenure it almost sounds like some believe that is what happened here. Furthermore, when Jamie Dixon was hired to replace him, many many Pitt faithful were reticent to applaud the hire.  He was just an asst and they believed Pitt could do better. As I am reticent to applaud the Dru hire. It worked out for Pitt for sure. I’m hoping it will work out for the Dukes.

luckymcd wrote:

Styles1229 wrote:

This is the best way I can put it. Ben Howland came to Pitt in a similar situation that KD came to Duquesne. He immediately had Pitt competing for and winning conference championships and making noise in the Big Dance. THAT was remarkable. 4 short years in arguably the most competitive conference in the country and he won multiple titles when Pitt hadn’t sniffed one in forever.

Howland did a fantastic job at Pitt, but the two situations aren't even comparable. The year before Howland arrived in Oakland, the Panthers beat a top 5 Kentucky team and came a buzzer beater away from knocking off #1 UConn. It was pretty much all downhill from that point on, but Howland had a similar end to his first season. In fact, in Howland's first two years at Pitt they were barely over .500 and didn't make any NCAAs.

One thing we can agree on is how questionable hiring Dixon appeared at the time. He ended up having an even better tenure than Howland, and in hindsight probably didn't get enough credit for shaping the Panthers in his time as an assistant. Hopefully we'll be saying the same thing about Coach Dru.

I don’t want to split hairs but the Howland/KD arrivals are much more similar than you are letting on. Pitt was a bottom feeder in the Big East when Howland arrived as was Duquesne when KD arrived. Both tasked with dragging a once proud program out of the dark. Howland had Pitt in the NIT in his 2nd season without the luxury of the portal mind you. But yes, the larger point I intended to make was how Dixon succeeding him, even after a much more successful tenure of Howland, was still seen by most  as a potential bad move. While Dru succeeding KD I has been met with almost unanimous approval. It certainly did work out for Pitt. I’m hoping it works out for DRUquesne - but I am not thinking it is a slam dunk. That’s all

Wildwood13 wrote:

No one has no idea what kind of job Dru is actually going to do, but I will be rooting for a positive outcome. I see both sides of the discussion. Dru has never coached a D1 team, he was not given the Cleveland St job when it opened, he was not brought along with the former Cleveland St coach to the new school. On the other side, there may not be a roster shake up, there may be money coming into the NIL with his relationship with LeBron. All speculative. What I do like, is the last third of the season, the team definitely turned around defensively and offensively. It has been rumored that he was running the team in KD’s absence while attending to his wife. If that is the case, he added zone defense and the ball and player movement increased significantly on offense.

  As far as KD, he definitely left the program in a better place. I was his harshest critic, having pointed out that his 20 win seasons were inflated due to the easy non conference schedule, his inept record in A10 tournament play and never finishing higher than 5th place in the regular season and his offensive sets and plays were horrendous. A few of these were erased with the outcome of this season. Now the question remains, was this epic ending of the season due to Dru or KD. It really doesn’t matter much and hope it was a combination of the two. Because that would mean our future looks brighter. In retirement, I can only wish KD the best and thank him for his accomplishments. I hope is wife is on the road to a successful recovery.
  As far as us fans are concerned, I hope Dru finds suitable replacements for the huge holes that need filled for next season. Good fortunes to all.

I agree with all of this.

These last 4 posts are exactly the kind of discussion despite differences in opinion that really enhance the board experience. Bravo.

Wildwood13 wrote:

What I do like, is the last third of the season, the team definitely turned around defensively and offensively. It has been rumored that he was running the team in KD’s absence while attending to his wife. If that is the case, he added zone defense and the ball and player movement increased significantly on offense.

All I’ve seen is that Dambrot said he turned practice over to his assistants in his absence. He said one handled defense and one handled offense. Dru was definitely one, I think the other was Weigand, but I don’t remember for sure. I’ve wondered since then which coach handled which side of the ball. I’d feel much better about Dru’s chances of success if he handled defense. The improved defense was what brought us to the tournament. The offense, at least statistically, got worse.

It is way too early to start questioning DJ. Love the debate, but for goodness sake he was just hired.  Most of us at some point had bad things to say about KD.  We can dislike him as a person as much as we want, and maybe he is or was a bad guy to many of the players that ran in and out of here.  However, we just did something not accomplished in many decades and he was the coach. This is a fact.  He left on a high note and delivered on getting the Dukes to the NCAA.  

The test for DJ began this week.  There is a culture with the team that just won the A-10 and won an NCAA game.

We have the following scholarship players able to return:

Dixon - 2 years remaining
Barre - 2 years remaining
Necas - 3 years remaining
Hronsky - 2 years remaining
Barba - 3 years remaining
Rozier - 2 years remaining
Nicholls - 3 years remaining
DiMichaele - 3 years remaining - assume he gets a scholarship now

This is the culture of the Dukes basketball team that just made us all happy.  The first test for DJ is to keep this group intact.  Think about this - If DJ can say to all portal recruits that he was able to keep every returning player and keep the winning culture, this will go a long way to getting people to believe what he is selling. If he starts running players out this week, others may question his integrity, as this seems like a very tight group of young men. Same thing holds true if 2 or 3 of these kids leave.  It is critical to keep this group together.  

This leaves 5-6 scholarships to find top-tier players to replace what we lost and to upgrade some positions.  This is plenty.  We do not want to go right back to what KD was doing and turn most of the roster over again,

Secondly, he needs to name his staff, and he needs to do this quickly.  Keeping most of the current staff likewise retains culture.  Would love to see him add his brother or a young proven recruiter with national contacts.  

It was clear that coaches other than KD had a say in what was happening this year.  KD even said so.  Do not underestimate the impact these coaches had on this season.  How else do you think DJ got this job?  He had to have a positive influence on this outcome.  Harper would not have given DJ this job just because KD said so.

We are going to know very quickly what kind of start DJ is off to.  

Good luck to DJ, the Dukes, and all of us as fans!
 

phil95 wrote:

What was the consensus among the DU fan base about Satalin's hiring? 
 

I wasn't happy when Mike Rice was fired, but I was not surprised.  He and Father Nesti, the school's president at the time, were like oil and water. I've always said think of Mike Rice as that aggressive jock in HS gym class who teased and bullied the most timid kid in the class.  Donald Nesti was that timid kid. One losing season was all that was needed for Nesti to fire Rice due to various behind the scenes issues that I won't go into here.

The Dukes were poised to hire Gary Williams away from American after Rice was fired.  A contract was tentatively agree upon and Williams flew to Pittsburgh to iron out the details.  Mossie Murphy and Red Manning picked up Williams at the airport and on the way into town let Williams know that they intended to continue to have great influence over the program.  Williams didn't want that type of interference and the deal fell through.  He would later coach Boston College, Ohio State and Maryland.

Jim Satalin was attending the Final Four in 1982 with no thought of leaving SBU.  While sitting in the stands during a game he was approached by someone representing Duquesne (I can't remember who, but this was told to me directly by Jim himself) and he was offered a contract for so much more than he was making at SBU that he couldn't turn it down.  The Dukes had a new coach.

I like Jim and thought he did a good job given the circumstances.  He was greatly hindered by the false accusations of rape against 4 of the players.  I won't go into detail here but I will say that I know more about what happened than the average Dukes fan of the time.  All 4 of those men had their lives disrupted by a young woman's lies.  Those lies damaged our program for years.  Another thing that hindered Jim was that Duquesne was not St. Bonaventure. At SBU Jim had that alum's passion about the school in recruiting that he just didn't have for the Dukes. 
 

Iron Duke,
We could discuss futility forever, but I think the hiring of Danny Nee was worse than Jim Ferry.  Plus his record was worse.  Plus there were even less folks in the stands!  Plus... (:

go dukes