Here is perhaps the most telling statistics for this season:

Duquesne averages 21.4 personal fouls per game, which ranks them #354 out of 365 NCAA Division I teams during the 2025-26 season (meaning they commit the 12th most fouls per game nationally).

CLK, I beg to differ. There's no way the team's struggles could be more than 98% on the coaches.😆

Last night was truly disappointing. Also, I found Dru's facial expressions, tone of voice, & body language during the post-game presser concerning. I liked the substance of his comments, but he looked like a defeated man to me. Scary.

Thanks, this a spot on analysis of last night, and this team. I want to remain positive on this team and Coach but it's wearing me down. The lack of discipline, the lack of focus, the lack of fundamental coaching was on full display last night. We will see how the rest of the season plays out but as of right now this season is a major disappointment for me. Maybe some of you guys feel differently, but to me this is totally on the coaches. Same issues and mistakes over and over again with this team. Dru, was gifted a golden opportunity but so far he's b

Great to see a Duquesne legacy player Pete Suder is a star player at Miami of Ohio!  As some may know Pete’s father, Rick was a great player at Duquesne, and one of the best shooters, and smartest players ever to wear the Red and Blue! The last time I looked the Hawks were 22-0 and ranked in the top 25!  I don’t know if Duquesne ever offered Pete, but I know his name was discussed on this board.   I wouldn’t be surprised if our coaches passed on him out of high school because he wasn’t strong enough.  He is now 6’5” and 215-lbs. and one of the key players for the Hawks!  I badly wanted our coaches to make a push to sign Pete. Perhaps Duquesne offered and Pete wasn’t interested, but if they ignored him that would be shameful.

Last night's game was extremely disappointing again. 

- Duquesne's defense and player development jump out to me as the main issues.

- Defense - Allowed 80 points or more in 12 of their 21 games, and some of the other games were 78 pts, 75 pts. etc.  There is absolutely no commitment to defense.  Dru has tried man-to-man. He tried the 3-2 zone.  I am sure Dru stresses this to the players, but it is brutal to watch them play defense. The 2 guards from last night had a field day.

- Necas is the same player he was as a true freshman when they went to the NCAA Tournament.  No improvements in his offensive game.  He plays hard, plays well on defense, needs to be more aggressive, but he does not have a feel for post play, seems like he is a tweener, and we don't know what to do with him on offense.

- Dixon, I love as a player, 4 years at Duquesne, love it.  I love his energy and passion, and maybe it is what it is, but he is the same player as he was two years ago, and that is fine. Maybe he has reached his ceiling. But I feel there is more there from Necas.

- I wish Duquesne could receive more student support. I was talking to some of my alumni last night at the game about it. Can Greek life look to be more involved?  Can it be stressed more on campus (although I am not walking around campus anymore, being 39)?  Just zero support from students.  But I also feel they need to win games at home.  Duquesne's last home win was against Cleary on 12/27.  Losses vs. VCU, Dayton, St. Louis, and St. Bonaventure.  There were good crowds for VCU and Dayton, and you lose, you have to win one of these bigger games at home.  The home wins this year are: Niagara, Sacred Hart, Queens, Central St. OH, Stony Brook, Canisius, and Cleary.  That is brutal.

I feel this team is better than their record, which makes it extremely frustrating.  I am at a loss for words I think anymore.
 

So to round things up : Duquesne has too many players who aren’t very good, coached by a guy who doesn’t know what to do, at a school whose students could care less.  Hard to find a silver lining.

NapaDuke wrote:

Mike Ignelsi wrote:

So to round things up : Duquesne has too many players who aren’t very good, coached by a guy who doesn’t know what to do, at a school whose students could care less. Hard to find a silver lining.

RE on that winning streak, filled the Pens Arena with 6000 plus,  and beat the heck out of Dayton. DJ will not. DJ should look at some game film of RE's team beating the heck out of 10th ranked Temple, up 22 to nothing before Temple got it's first points on a foul shot. I was there. Real coaches coach. JD has way better players than RE got, but JD is clearly,under coaching this team this season. Too many players running in and out and not playing the starting 5 past 4 minutes into the game?

Remember that game well. Think they slipped into the Top 25 in USA today poll after that one. Think they won 8 or 9 straight at that point. 

I don't think RE as a coach or the 10-11 Dukes as a team merit much study from a young coach looking for a way to create & maintain a winning culture.

That win streak was awesome! I actually cut a vacation to the DR short to get to Pittsburgh for the Dayton game you mentioned. That is the biggest crowd I can remember the Dukes drawing at the big arena in my 30+ years as a fan. Don't quote me on this, but I seem to remember the crowd being 8-9,000 strong. I took my now deceased father-in-law to that one. It was a great day & time to be a Dukes fan.

Unfortunately, that team went 3-8 down the stretch & lost their first A-10 tournament game in OT to a 12th seeded St. Joe's team that had played the night before with Saunders, Clarke, & TJ in the lineup. Responsibility for this soul-crushing team implosion belongs primarily on the shoulders of RE.

Because Everhart was 15+ years into his D-1 head coaching career by this time & in year 5 at Duquesne, the totality of his performance that season had me more upset than Dru's does now. After the Ajax season, a decent season the next year, & the first 22 games of that 10-11 season, I just knew that despite signs of struggles in earlier seasons, RE was the leader that would make Duquesne a consistently strong program for years to come.
When the wheels came off in the last 3rd of that season, I was then certain that he wasn't going to get DU over the hump. As a long time head coach he had never taken a team to the NCAA tournament was 0-3 in his 3 NIT games. I should have known better.

In terms of team success, I am every bit as disappointed 21 games into this season as I was at the end of that season. However, I am not as upset about the current coaching situation as some other posters because I thought hiring Dru was not the best option & last year's outcome made me wary of his long term  prospects as the Duquesne coach. This season is going only a little worse than I expected it to because I foolishly gave more weight to the Hugley signing than I should have. (Washing out at 3 schools in 5 years was a dead give away. That got lost in the excitement of possibly pulling of a portal miracle.)

If Dru's crew can't get it together over these last 11 games & doesn't add 5ish games to next year's win total, he has to go before the "new" facilities aren't so new anymore and/or the team posts a season record of less than a dozen wins.

NapaDuke wrote:

Mike Ignelsi wrote:

So to round things up : Duquesne has too many players who aren’t very good, coached by a guy who doesn’t know what to do, at a school whose students could care less. Hard to find a silver lining.

RE on that winning streak, filled the Pens Arena with 6000 plus,  and beat the heck out of Dayton. DJ will not. DJ should look at some game film of RE's team beating the heck out of 10th ranked Temple, up 22 to nothing before Temple got it's first points on a foul shot. I was there. Real coaches coach. JD has way better players than RE got, but JD is clearly,under coaching this team this season. Too many players running in and out and not playing the starting 5 past 4 minutes into the game?

phil95 wrote:

I too want Necas to be stronger with the ball when trying to score on the interior.

Although, I wonder why nobody seems to give Dixon grief about the same issue. The amount of times he catches the ball on the post while being defended, but also having a quality opportunity to make a power move or take the jump hook he was bringing along at the beginning of last season that go to hell is way too high. The same goes for second chance points situations. Seeing him keep the ball high after an offensive rebound & powering straight back up is a rarity. He frequently pump fakes, brings the ball down, & gets pestered by defenders into less than optimal passes back to the perimeter or turnovers. I would guess that he has completed more alley-oops than any Duke in history, but I would make a large wager on the fact that he has also muffed as many solo dunks & alley-oops as any Duke in the last 30 years.

What is up with the once per game under the basket, no-chance, pirouette, flip shots he has attempted in each of the last 3 games?

He is at his best when he keeps it simple & doesn't think too much when he has scoring opportunities. I wish he would do so more often.

Finally, the 3pt shot is NOT a viable option in his offensive arsenal.

Rayrich wrote:

Why Necas releases layups below his shoulders is beyond me. The dude is 6-10. Goes up so soft. Drives me crazy. All on the coaching as the guy has been here three years now. Misses so may bunnies as well as the entire team. Its crazy that this team is 11-10 and is 0-4 at home in conference play. Somebody needs to light a fire and it's not going to be their head coach. He hasn't even taken a technical with all the BS reffing these players go through game after game. Got to have your players back once in awhile. Shoot Mark Schmidt bitches to the refs every play even when he knows he has nothing to Complain about. That's successful coaching 101. Got to play the refs once in awhile if you want to get calls especially at home. 

phil95 - couldn't agree more.  I could probably count 6-8 times just vs. St. Bonnies where Dixon/Necas are so soft down low or they get a rebound, they always like to take 1 hard dribble and try to go back up, and they either lose it, tie up jump ball, or miss.  

Why can they just go up hard and create body contact and get a foul at least?  Once again, what to say I like both players and they play hard, just don't understand the softness, and they are no longer freshmen, we are talking about a senior and junior with extensive playing time.


 

levon1975 wrote:

NapaDuke wrote:

Mike Ignelsi wrote:

So to round things up : Duquesne has too many players who aren’t very good, coached by a guy who doesn’t know what to do, at a school whose students could care less. Hard to find a silver lining.

RE on that winning streak, filled the Pens Arena with 6000 plus,  and beat the heck out of Dayton. DJ will not. DJ should look at some game film of RE's team beating the heck out of 10th ranked Temple, up 22 to nothing before Temple got it's first points on a foul shot. I was there. Real coaches coach. JD has way better players than RE got, but JD is clearly,under coaching this team this season. Too many players running in and out and not playing the starting 5 past 4 minutes into the game?

If this is the same year I’m recalling under RE the Dukes were on fire and on an 11 - game winning streak and undefeated in the A-10 when they lost a game at SBU on a last second shot. They returned home on a Sunday afternoon to face Xavier at the PPG Arena in front of a crowd of around 9-10,000 fans. It was a very competitive game that Xavier won with some late clutch 3-point shooting.  It was one of those very rare, great college basketball atmospheres in Pittsburgh. Unfortunately the Dukes collapsed at that point and lost a bunch of games. The once-promising season evaporated.  When I spoke to folks close to that team after the season, they all felt that RE wore that team out too early by playing an up tempo style with a short team and a short bench. He just never letup in practice or in games and the team collapsed. 
I bring this up because of some of the comments about those days in contrast to DJ’s approach.  I’m not endorsing the current practice of playing ten or more guys this deep in the season, but I think the problem is that as a coach you don’t have eight guys that you can count on show-up for each game. Let’s be real here; the talent level on this team is not as good as some folks on the board would have you believe. I think the roster is made up of a lot of guys of a similar talent level, all with flaws in their games.  You just don’t have eight guys with the kind of talent that shows up consistently regardless of the opponent. So I think as a group we have overestimated the talent on the roster. You can talk about defense being about desire and will to compete, but when I see one consistent problem game after game that being a simple inability to stay between your man an the basket, I wonder if this group of players does not possess the athletic ability and quickness needed to defend at this level.  We are a step slow in many cases all season!
If this scenario is accurate it doesn’t exonerated to coaching staff but instead calls into question those who constructed the roster.  Is Duquesne, for reasons that may or may not be obvious to the fan-base, incapable of attracting the level of talent needed to compete for a championship in the A-10; or is it a matter of doing a better job of finding talented players who will consider Duquesne as an option?. What are your thoughts on this question?  What are some of the intrinsic issues that make it more difficult for Duquesne to attract the necessary level of talent?  Two seasons ago Duquesne won the A-10 title.  We all hoped that this was an opportunity to advance the program on a longer term basis.  That apparently didn’t happen and we now seem to have lost all of the momentum gained by that Championship. It now clearly appears to have been a fluke! If the “powers that be” at Duquesne were ever going to be willing to make a renewed commitment to becoming a serious contender annually in the A-10, would that not have been the time to do so? Instead we got a new coach, and not much else in terms of taking a giant step with the program.  I think, at this point that I would like to see a substantive evaluation of the progress and intentions for this program.  Right now, it’s looking more like the future is closer to St. Francis than it is to Dayton or St.Louis!
Your thoughts, please.

You got most of my point. RE could not recruit top talent, so he looked for pretty fast undersized players that likely were over-looked. Damien was 6'7", Billie Clark was 6'5" and the rest were smaller, yet they finished forth in a very good A-10. RE beat teams away from the basket to off-set the size advantage. We stole the ball so often that we were in the top 5 in the country in steals.  I got to be good friends with RE those years he was there and he did run them a lot to get in shape, but likely, didn't let up enough late in the season. They were very fit to start, but the season wore them down. Ron was smart at building fan appeal. Those games at the Pens Arena were a big drawl. He scheduled WV, Penn State, Xavier, Dayton because they travel well and helped to fill a large arena. Way more Duquesne fans came just because of that bigger arena to see the Dukes play. DU should play Pitt there every year because, now,  both Pitt and DU could really use that boost in fan appeal. My point on looking at that Temple game is that it was the best example of a smothering defensive effort against a superior opponent that anyone could ever see. I'd suggest that the coaches and the players should watch and review just what the best defensive effort can look like. To watch it is like saying, One picture is worth a thousand words. Ron was also voted coach of the year at the end of that season by the other coaches in our district. The first since Red Manning. 

Last edited by NapaDuke (Today 4:53 pm)

My first thought is, thanks for the historical context you have provided about the 10-11 season.

Hugley, Max, JWill, & TG are, from a talent perspective, top tier A-10 players.

Dixon & Necas are good enough to start & be very solid contributors on any A-10 team. (I am not saying they WOULD start on every A-10 team. For instance, Big Dave couldn't possibly displace Avila at SLU.)

Coming into the season, Jake & Cam both had both demonstrated
the ability to perform, over a large portion of a season, as productive A-10 starters. I would guess that most of the Duquesne faithful expected these two to build upon their past successes while competing with each other for playing time.

The last 35 games Alex played at Furman were a strong indicator that he could/would be at least among the top 50% of A-10 players.

Bus showed some good stuff in limited minutes as a big, bruising center with a head for the game while a freshman at SLU. He had more than a year to rehab & work on  his game at Charleston & Duquesne. It was a reasonable expectation that he would be a competent backup for Hugley & Dixon for 6-7 minutes a game while gaining valuable experience for future campaigns.

In the event that Bus couldn't do that, it seemed that Milosevic would be able to step in.

Due to his being a freshman & his size, I had tempered expectations for Aekins. However, by all reports, he had an excellent prep year against top competition suggesting it was possible that he would be a competent if low minutes backup PG.

I didn't really know what to expect from Hall, but thought that his having been in & around the program for more than a year had to be worth something.

All this is to say that at least 4 players expected to make major contributions haven't. That tells me that there is far more talent on the roster than in the games for a number of reasons not the least of which is that the recruiting is better than the coaching.

Last edited by phil95 (Today 6:00 pm)