Duquesne loses 2 more players but defeats Fordham
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Keith Dambrot has experienced a variety of emotions in what might be the strangest week of his 23-year coaching career.
His Duquesne team lost two of its past three games, barely salvaging a 48-45 victory against Fordham on Saturday at La Roche University.
Yet, the dominant issue six games into his fourth season centers on starters Sincere Carry, Maceo Austin and Lamar Norman Jr., who left the team this week with most of the season still to be played.
Norman wants to transfer, and Carry might or might not return, Dambrot said. Austin is taking some time off for “personal” reasons.
“He’s not going to transfer as far as I know,” the coach said of Austin, a sophomore from Kennedy Catholic. “Unless something has changed in the past 24 hours.”
All three players had started 121 games at Duquesne, leaving a huge experience void.
Carry, a junior point guard, was a preseason second-team All-Atlantic 10 selection and the player who triggered Duquesne’s offense. Austin is a fundamentally sound player who plays good defense. Norman was an effective 3-point shooter.
“I’m a little surprised by it,” Dambrot said. “I’ve never had three starters leave at the semester.”
The biggest loss is Carry, who was averaging nine points and four assists per game, numbers that were down a bit from last season (12.2 and 5.3). Without him, Duquesne committed 14 turnovers against Fordham.
Why would a player with such an important role on the team decide to leave? Especially when the early part of the season, admittedly disrupted by covid-19 concerns, hasn’t been a disaster. Duquesne left La Roche on Saturday with a 3-3 record, 2-2 in the Atlantic 10.
“Obviously, he wasn’t happy,” Dambrot said. “But neither was I. I’ve been unhappy, too. It’s hard to be happy when you don’t win, you don’t play great.”
But the 62-year-old coach doesn’t hold a grudge. He said he hopes Carry returns, but he doesn’t know if he will.
“These kids have a right to be unhappy, and they have a right to go somewhere else,” Dambrot said. “They have a right to make their own decisions.”
With the NCAA granting transfers immediate eligibility, Dambrot said there probably will be similar situations all over the country.
“I think you’re going to see a new norm in college basketball,” he said. “It’s going to be like this. You better have depth in your program.”
While trying to figure out how to proceed — he used five freshmen among 11 players Saturday — he also wonders if he could have done better.
“If guys aren’t all in, that’s all on me,” he said. “Every problem in the program still should come back to me. I’m mad at myself because I actually like those guys who aren’t here. I do. I think they’re good people. I keep looking in the mirror and say, ‘What could I have done better?’
“We have to figure out where we failed. Why it happened. Is it an aberration? Is it situationally, or did we not do a good job in certain aspects?”
He did admit that commitment “may be a lost art nowadays.”
“When you have both feet in and you have resolve, when things go poorly, you still fight,” he said.
Under the circumstances, he was pleased to see his players play hard Saturday, especially on defense, while breaking their two-game losing streak.
“Had we not played great defense, we don’t win the game, simple as that,” he said.
The first order of business was moving senior Tavian Dunn-Martin from shooting guard to point guard. Dunn-Martin led the team with 11 points, including a big 3-pointer with 28 seconds left that gave the Dukes a five-point lead.
Dunn-Martin had been 1 of 6 from beyond the arc, but he still had the confidence to shoot in a tight game.
“My guy lost me, so I just wrapped around and Mike (Hughes) saw me and coach believed in me to shoot the shot. So, I shot it. As long as they have confidence in me, I have confidence in myself.”
Dambrot added, “The other part I’m proud of is the ball’s been in Sincere’s hands the majority of the time in his two years here. Tavian made a quick transition from the mad gunslinger to running the club. I give him a lot of credit, and he did a good job defensively. He likes to sling that thing.”
The Dukes scored 48 points for the second consecutive game at La Roche and shot only 31 percent (31 of 99) for two games. So the challenges on offense are still there. Freshman Chad Baker scored eight points, and Hughes and Ryan Murphy six each. Hughes, a senior center, tied career highs with 14 rebounds and five assists.
There are plenty of bodies to enable Dambrot to put the team back together, but with so many new faces, it won’t be easy. It also disrupts Dambrot’s rebuilding program when the team seemed to be making progress, winning 21 games last season.
“It’s tough because I’ve worked my tail off to make Duquesne competitive again,” he said. “I felt like we lost one wall of our house, but our foundation is still pretty strong. I’m extremely proud of our guys.
“My expectation level hasn’t changed. I don’t give a darn if I have eight freshmen and no seniors.”