Duquesne succeeds by buying into team mentality

With his coach crouching against a wall, Joe Reece stood in front of him on the block several feet from the rim at Duquesne’s practice facility at UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse and watched an entry pass with a spin of English from freshman point guard Kareem Rozier bounce off his hands and out of bounds.

The slender, 6-foot-8 Reece immediately grabbed his head with two hands in disbelief and walked disgustedly to the side.

In a moment’s notice, Rozier and others were on the scene rallying their teammate, friend and brother.

Afterwards, Reece, a senior forward who transferred this season from Bowling Green, shook off any talk of a letdown as college basketball’s season roared into another dance with March Madness.

“The transfer portal was a gift and curse for a lot of programs,” said Reece, one of five current Duquesne players who have joined the program through the NCAA portal since its inception.

“For us, we all had a bunch of guys who played against each other, from different conferences, different age groups,” said Reece, who was coming off a career-high 26 points in Duquesne’s 91-74 victory over La Salle on Wednesday. “Coming in, we all knew we had different side missions. I call them side quests. The thing we said in the summer is we need to come together and make sure we push all that to the side and focus on the main goal.”

Meanwhile, the practice resumed on this recent day, but it wasn’t long before coach Keith Dambrot was jumping up and chirping his whistle. He stepped onto the playing surface and strode through a crowd of players with a purpose in mind.

The fiery, diminutive Dambrot, who earlier this month earned his 500th career victory, visibly was annoyed. His high-pitched voice strained to be heard above the commotion in the hollow gym.

“This won’t win us a championship,” Dambrot said, glaring at his group, which by now was at attention. “Set a pick,” he said, demonstrating a move to junior forward Tre Williams, two years ago himself a transfer from Indiana State and one of just two returning players from last year’s debacle of a season that saw Duquesne limp to a 6-24 record by finishing on a 17-game losing streak.

It was Dambrot’s first losing record as a coach since 1993 and clearly had his attention heading into the offseason.

“It looks good to me as far as their camaraderie, their togetherness,” Dambrot said of his staff’s rebuilt roster that turned over a like number of players to other programs through the portal and has generated an ultra-competitive unit this season. “It doesn’t feel like anybody’s on an island.

“The hard part about this is, while it’s a team sport, it’s still an individual sport. Guys are always going to care about themselves. But what they have to realize is to help themselves, they’ve got to care about the team.”

Reece said, like all of his teammates, he values deeply the concept of team unity. It is an age-old concept that appears to be working well for a success-starved program that’s been among the surprises of college basketball this season.

Duquesne (19-9, 9-6) was picked to finish last in the Atlantic 10, but late into February covets an opportunity to secure a top-four spot in the A-10 standings for a double-bye to open the conference tournament in two weeks in Brooklyn, N.Y.

“We’re on target,” Reece said. “We’re working hard every day beyond the required time. We have worked so hard to get to this point. This is the fun part. This is the part where you see all the work you put in, and it shows.”

In a different year, perhaps the scenario on the practice court last week, where Dambrot questioned his players’ mind state, may have riled some players. But this isn’t a typical year on The Bluff.

“You never know about people until they’re under stress,” Dambrot said. “And then, that’s the telltale of whether your territory is good or not. Usually, everybody handles success. They’re happy when they’re successful. But when they’re unsuccessful, when they get hit in the mouth, that’s the true test. I felt like we were under stress many times this year, and we handled it.”

The next stress test for the surprising Dukes comes Sunday afternoon at UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse in the annual Chuck Cooper Classic against defending regular-season champion Davidson (13-14, 6-9).

It is the first of three remaining regular-season games for Duquesne and, indeed, there is a lot at stake. A Dukes victory would be their sixth in seven games during February. It also would:

• Give them 20 wins in a season for the third time since 1981 but second under sixth-year coach Dambrot.

• Mark the sixth time (but third under Dambrot) that Duquesne would win 10 A-10 games in a season.

• Clinch a winning A-10 record for the eighth time and third under Dambrot.

• Tie a school record for home victories in a season (set at 16-0 in 1950 and tied at 16-1 in 1972).

“For me, when I saw Duquesne, I knew the coaches were really good at what they do,” Reece said. “Coach Dambrot’s resume speaks for itself. I knew Tre Williams and some of the other guys that were here. We talked and said, ‘Look, man, we have a goal here. We want to change what’s going on.’ When we got here, all the new guys said, ‘Let’s turn it around and make the Dukes what they’re supposed to be,’ and that’s a winning program.”