Duquesne hopes to build on positives from pre-conference schedule as Atlantic 10 play begins

As their Atlantic 10 Conference schedule begins at 7 p.m. Wednesday night at UMass, the Duquesne basketball team should feel like it is on familiar ground.

And in an appropriate spot.

The Dukes made it through the two-month pre-conference schedule at 9-3. Their only losses came on the road at a Big Ten school (Nebraska), at home to a Sweet 16 team from the 2023 NCAA Tournament (Princeton), and at a neutral site (Las Vegas) against a Santa Clara team that won 23 games a year ago and has beaten three opponents from the Pac-12.

Meanwhile, they have a neutral site win over Charleston (who went to last year’s tournament), a road win at Marshall (won at Duquesne last year), and a victory over UC Irvine (who beat USC and nearly upset NCAA runner-up San Diego State).

“We’ve shown that we can play with everybody on our schedule,” coach Keith Dambrot said Saturday. “I don’t think we have played our best basketball by any means. I think we are still way away from where we can play. At some point, you have to say, ‘Is that the best you can do?’ Or am I wrong? Maybe we are playing the best. But I don’t think that we have.”

A year ago, the Dukes were 10-3 heading into the Atlantic 10 schedule. They finished in sixth place at 10-8 (20-12 overall).

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In other words, the Dukes are probably right about where they were expected to be and certainly on pace with the rest of the conference. Twelve of the 15 teams in the A-10 got to New Year’s Day somewhere between 8-5 and 11-2.

The Dukes are in the middle of that pack, with the sixth-best pre-conference win percentage. Dambrot’s team was projected to finish fourth in the conference before the season began.

“The non-conference schedule was good for us going into the conference,” guard Jimmy Clark III said. “We faced some pretty good teams overall. We went about them in the games the right way. There are certain areas we need to critique. But if we focus on that, we’ll be fine.”

Perhaps the biggest question for Dambrot and company is how to take the pre-conference rotation and tighten it up for conference play. Dambrot was able to play the entire bench in a 95-47 blowout of Cleary (NAIA) to end the pre-conference slate on Saturday. But even as recently as the Santa Clara game on Dec. 23, the Dukes worked 12 players onto the floor (11 with at least five minutes of action) in an 81-73 loss that was tied with just under seven minutes left.

“We’ve got a new team. We have eight seniors and grad students. That presents issues that we continually have to work on,” Dambrot said.

Dambrot says those issues are easy to identify.

“We aren’t consistent enough,” Dambrot said. “We make too many mistakes defensively. We probably make too many mistakes with the ball. We try hard, but we are making too many. We are a little bit erratic sharing the ball at times. I’m not happy where we are. But if we get a low block presence, that will solve some of our problems. It’ll even things out a little, so we aren’t relying so much on driving it and shooting it.”

One player who can help Dambrot down low is Dusan Mahorcic. The 25-year-old NC State (via Utah and Illinois State) transfer is just getting back into the lineup after spending most of the first two months recovering from knee surgery. He scored two points in five minutes against Santa Clara and 15 in seven minutes against Cleary in his home debut.

& another one for Dusan ???? pic.twitter.com/ArbslNJQ1Q

— Duquesne Basketball (@DuqMBB) December 30, 2023

“It was a big game for me in the sense of getting back out there and playing more, how the game flow goes. Getting ready for the conference. It helps with my conditioning,” Mahorcic said.

And he could be a big piece to the puzzle for Dambrot too. A puzzle that doesn’t have a lot of missing pieces right now. But one that still needs some assembling as conference play tips off.