Keith Dambrot doesn’t believe coaching Duquesne’s basketball team is the same as beating his head against a wall, but he’s prepared in any case.

He is hard-headed enough to keep pushing his team toward its potential, even if the players insist on going kicking and screaming.

When Dambrot was a baseball player at Akron, he was hit by a pitch 18 times in one season.

“Too many hit me in the head,” he said. “That’s how I ended up in coaching, rattled my cage a little bit.”

No matter how frustrated he gets with his team, which has lost three of its past five games heading into Saturday’s game against Saint Joseph’s at Palumbo Center, Dambrot can take it.

“I’ve been fired. I’ve been through the mud. I can fight with the best of them,” he said.

Dambrot was a patient slap-hitting infielder who said he didn’t swing until he got two strikes and, then, seldom struck out. He also wasn’t afraid to let the pitch hit him so he could get on base.

“I’m still No. 4 all-time in on-base percentage (at Akron),” he said. “For a guy who’s not a great athlete, that’s pretty good.”

That’s called commitment, a quality Dambrot would like to see more often from his basketball players.

“Commitment is a lost art,” he said. “We have to get better at commitment. If I have to butt heads to do it, massage to do it, I’m going to do whatever I got to do.”

The Dukes’ final practice Friday before the St. Joseph’s game was not the team’s best of the season, and Dambrot let his players know it.

“He has to be tough on us. He has to stay on us,” sophomore center Michael Hughes said.

“That’s what Dambrot is. He’s not going to take any slacking.”

Duquesne (10-5, 1-1 Atlantic 10) defeated Fordham, 66-61, at home Wednesday night, but it was more of a struggle than Dambrot wanted. He liked the defensive effort — Fordham (9-6, 0-2) shot only 36.4 percent and scored the second-fewest points by a Duquesne opponent this season — but Dambrot was not happy with his offense.

“Had we made an open shot or two, we could have put them away, but we never did,” he said. “That’s the most concerning thing for us: our ability to make shots to pull us ahead. It hasn’t been there most of the year.

“We’re a good enough team to win. We just have to play together, understand how hard we have to practice and play with no agendas.

“We just have to come out and practice every day and make sure that we make the right play every single day. If we get a little bit better at those things, we’re going to win our share of games. If we don’t, we won’t.”

Dambrot is concerned about Saint Joseph’s (7-8, 0-3), which was picked to finish second in the A-10 but has averaged only 54.3 points against league opponents. Forward Charlie Brown is averaging 19.6 points.

“They’re very talented, but they’re struggling,” Dambrot said. “They’re not playing very well together yet.

“They shot the ball well in the preseason, then they got in A-10 games and they haven’t been able to make a shot. Scary. You’re talking about a veteran coach with good players that got their backs against the wall.”

One point that can’t be argued: The coaches know how to win.

Between Dambrot (439) and Saint Joseph’s Phil Martelli (437), they have 876 wins in 45 seasons.

“I’m not used to not playing at championship quality, so it’s my job to teach them,” Dambrot said. “They have to get on board.”

Jerry DiPaola is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Jerry at jdipaola@tribweb.com or via Twitter @JDiPaola_Trib.

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