Duquesne coach Keith Dambrot ‘having a difficult time’ finishing schedule, swallowing loss of City Game
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Pro sports and college football coaches are dealing with the pitfalls of trying to launch a season during the coronavirus outbreak.
So are college basketball coaches. But they are also doing so while still coping with the premature ending to their previous seasons as a result of the same pandemic.
Many NCAA men’s teams have resumed workouts this week, including the Duquesne Dukes.
“We’re back at the Powers Center,” head coach Keith Dambrot said of the Dukes’ seemingly permanent temporary practice home. “We’re allowed to get eight hours a week with them. Four hours of practicing and four hours of conditioning.”
Dambrot can only chuckle on our Thursday “Breakfast With Benz” podcast as he is reminded of his team’s trip out to Brooklyn in advance of its first Atlantic-10 tournament game March 12. They bused out the day before, only to turn around and drive back long before the scheduled 8:30 p.m. tipoff after the conference canceled their tournament, along with so many others.
That was supposed to be a tournament where the Dukes could’ve made some noise, having finished the regular season at 21-9.
But it wasn’t to be. At least eight program veterans with three years’ experience are back with the program. So now Dambrot has to ready his club for another year of barnstorming around Western Pa. since the lockdown froze construction on the UPMC Chuck Cooper Field House.
Dambrot didn’t have an update on that progress, simply offering that the hope exists to get in it by “January or February.”
“But I never count on that,” he said. “Being out of the building for two years isn’t easy on a team.”
It was also difficult for Dambrot to see Pitt back out of “The City Game.”
“I felt like, had Pitt just come out and said, ‘The reward isn’t worth the risk, we’re trying to build our program.’ I could live with that,” Dambrot explained. “We really weren’t told that. And that’s the disappointing thing to me.”
Instead, Pitt’s athletic director, Heather Lyke, simply said that Pitt playing Duquesne was not part of its “non-ACC scheduling model.” Yet she said back in 2019, “We look forward to resuming the game with great anticipation in 2020 and 2021.”
Dambrot remains disheartened by the void on the schedule.
“The second thing is, this a game for the kids and the fans,” Dambrot continued. “We’re relying on the players and the fans. And I think if you surveyed the players and the fans, they’d rather play the game. That’s something we always have to keep our mind on.”
The Dukes athletic department is still having a hard time rounding out the 2020-21 nonconference schedule. That’s in part because of Pitt leaving an open date. Plus, uncertainty of scheduling exists due to when the season may begin thanks to the coronavirus.
“We’re having a difficult time,” Dambrot admitted. “We’ve called probably every high major in the country and we are having trouble getting games with them.”
The Dukes have two more games to fill, as Dambrot insists this is the deepest into a calendar he can remember with games needing to be scheduled. But other teams are in the same boat, so Dambrot is holding out hope to schedule more quality opponents.
And it’s not just coronavirus paranoia over scheduling games that may not happen.
“People want to get paid,” Dambrot said. “Schools are hurting financially. So they want to get bought. So there is a glut of people wanting to get bought and not a lot of people buying games. That puts people like us in a hard position.”
So far, Duquesne has managed to lock up the likes of Belmont, Hofstra, Rider and Winthrop. They’ll also be in “The Maryland Showcase” with the Terrapins, San Jose State and Cal Baptist.
Along with those topics, Dambrot and I discuss the team’s new recruiting class, the return of depth up front, and how a certain coach may have to get used to yelling at his players in practice with a mask over his mouth.