Coach Keith Dambrot, Duquesne going for historic win over BYU in NCAA Tournament

This is it for Keith Dambrot.

This is the cherry on top for the diminutive Duquesne basketball coach, who is standing tall in his seventh and final season at Duquesne, where he’ll cap an impressive 22-year run as a Division I head coach.

He has won 440 games in Division I and 528 in a career that includes four seasons at schools in smaller classifications.

At the very least, he wants one more.

“Like any other week for me,” Dambrot said Wednesday on the eve of Duquesne’s first NCAA Tournament game in nearly a half-century. “(I’m a) pretty high-strung guy to begin with, (but) just go to work every single day, try to be the best I can be, get our team ready to play, try to get enough sleep at my age to make sure that I’m on my A-game.”

Days after announcing his retirement, a matchup with No. 6 seed Brigham Young (23-10) awaits Dambrot’s 11th-seeded Dukes (24-11) at 12:40 p.m. Thursday in Omaha, Neb. It’s a bittersweet time for the 5-foot-8, sometimes-fiery floor general, who perhaps is staring at his final game on Duquesne’s bench.

“Pretty personal for me, obviously, when my dad played there from 1950 to ’54,” he said at Omaha’s CHI Health Center, one of three East Region first-round sites. “We’re really excited to be here. It’s been a long time coming for Duquesne basketball.”

Forty-seven years, in fact.

Duquesne last appeared in an NCAA Tournament game in 1977, losing to VMI in the first round after getting in by winning the Eastern Collegiate Basketball League Tournament championship.

It will be Dambrot’s fourth NCAA appearance — his first three resulted in first-round losses with Akron in 2009, ’11 and ’13. He’s hoping to dedicate a victory to honor the memory of his late father, Sid Dambrot, who played for Duquesne in the 1954 NIT national championship game and died in 2021 at age 90.

“I think it kind of gives us another incentive to win this game because we want to send him out in the right way,” Duquesne freshman guard Jake DiMichele said. “He’s never won an NCAA Division I Tournament game, so we want to get that for him.”

To do it, Duquesne will need its defense to take over, that same unit that earned some respect while the team went on its Atlantic 10 Tournament championship run last week in New York.

“What (Dambrot) has done in terms of getting his team to buy into the physicality and the consistency of effort and kind of ball-hawkishness DNA of that team is pretty special. It’s a terrific team,” BYU coach Mark Pope said.

BYU, which is averaging 81.8 points and ranks second nationally in 3-pointers made (370) and attempted (1,063), will offer a stern challenge for Duquesne.

Four players, led by Jaxson Robinson’s 13.8 points per game, are averaging double figures for the Cougars, who are one of eight Big 12 teams in the tournament.

Duquesne, whose dynamic backcourt of Dae Dae Grant (16.7 ppg) and Jimmy Clark III (15.1) have carried the Dukes during their current eight-game winning streak, is limiting opponents to an average of 66.0 points and ranks in a virtual tie for first in the A-10 in defensive 3-point field-goal percentage (31.7).

“It’s important for us to stay true to who we are as a team,” said BYU’s Spencer Johnson, who averages 10.3 points and leads the team in rebounding (6.0 rpg). “We played a couple of games in the 60s. It’s not very common, but we’re our most comfortable when we can get out and run in transition and make teams play at our pace. It should be interesting.”

Duquesne grinded out a 57-51 victory over VCU in the A-10 Tournament championship game Sunday. Dambrot said the Rams, more than any other A-10 team, remind him the most of BYU.

“It’s hard to characterize teams because Duquesne will get out and run,” Pope said. “When they have opportunities off steals, off misses, off opportunities, they get out and run as good as anybody in the country.”

Dambrot said he likes Duquesne’s chances better when it performs like “mud-wrestlers” or “rock-throwers.”

Pope offered his own idea of the Dukes, simply referring to them as “nothing short of a great team.

“The reason maybe sometimes the game feels a little slower is because they’re so relentless on the defensive end. They’re so physical. They’re so scrappy. They’re so dialed in.”

The winner meets No. 3 seed Illinois or No. 14 seed Morehead State in Saturday’s second round.