After a 22-month construction project that was delayed in 2020 by the covid-19 pandemic, Duquesne’s UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse will open its doors for the first time Tuesday for the Dukes’ men’s basketball game against Dayton.

The game starts at 9 p.m. and will be televised nationally by ESPNU, but athletic director Dave Harper said that’s only the beginning of what the $45 million facility means to the school’s sports programs.

Harper expects to see a boost to each program that uses Cooper Fieldhouse — men’s and women’s basketball and women’s volleyball.

“We can shop from some of the higher shelves in all our programs now,” he said. “We will see the development of student-athletes change significantly. We certainly will have more time, more space for them to work.

“You are going to see a higher caliber of student-athlete. That has to translate to competitive success. We’re all on the hook for that.

“It’s re-energizing for all of us. Hopefully, we’re able to take advantage of it.”

Harper said the Coop — what it might be labeled eventually in casual circles — will be “one-stop shopping” for student-athletes, whether they’re participating in practice or games, getting treatment for injuries or receiving tutoring.

Tuesday’s contest will be the first Duquesne basketball home game — by the truest definition of the word — since the end of the 2018-19 season. Since then, the Dukes have played their games at La Roche, Robert Morris and PPG Paints Arena.

The Dukes’ men’s and women’s basketball teams will play all of their February and March home games at the facility Also, women’s volleyball will play its spring schedule at Cooper Fieldhouse.

“It’s huge, man,” said Michael Hughes, senior center on the men’s basketball team. “I’ve been sitting around waiting for that Coop to be finally put together since the day that they kicked us out of there. It will be exciting to finally be able to step foot in there.

“Now, we don’t have to bus 15, 25 minutes just to play a game. We can just walk up the street.”

A sellout at Cooper Fieldhouse will mean 4,300 occupied seats, but access Tuesday will be limited to “essential” game-day personnel, immediate family members of participating student-athletes and about 50 Duquesne students. Future access will be monitored continually in conjunction with the state, city and Duquesne covid protocols.

“The opening is a little bit muted because we don’t have everything we normally have,” Harper said. “It doesn’t dampen our excitement. It doesn’t change what we’re going to get done in the future.”

Already, Cooper Field House is scheduled to be the venue for four NCAA events: 2022 D-III women’s volleyball championships, 2025 and 2026 D-II women’s basketball Elite Eight and 2026 inaugural D-II men’s and women’s basketball festival.

The facility, named after Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famer and Duquesne alumnus Chuck Cooper, maintained a portion of the structure that was the A.J. Palumbo Center, specifically the southern portion. Harper said Palumbo’s dimensions were widened for Cooper Fieldouse at the north, east and west ends.

Inside, the facility will feature six suites, 55 club-level seats, wide concourses, two high-definition Daktronics video boards and four lower-level ribbon boards.

It also will house the Folino Sports Performance Center, with nearly 10,000 square feet of training equipment, sports performance labs and a nutrition center for all student-athletes. Also, the Joe and Kathy Guyaux Player Development Center will include two regulation practice basketball courts.

Men’s basketball coach Keith Dambrot admitted he can be “critical,” but even he is impressed with the facility.

“They did a really, really good job with it,” he said. “I don’t think they could have done much better with the existing facility than they did with the money that they had.”

Dambrot said he already knows his favorite area.

“For the donors, it’s the suites and the neat, little sitting areas,” he said. “For me, it’s that back gym. You don’t know what that does for me in developing guys.”

But he also appreciates the fact that the team finally has a home to call its own.

“We’ve been basically a junior college for two years,” he said. “Maybe worse. We’ve had it hard. It should provide a pretty good stimulus for us.”

Harper’s favorite amenity?

“I love it all, but I’m a little different,” he said. “I’m going to look forward to looking at a scoreboard consistently where Duquesne has more points than the opponent.”

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