Members of '09 Dukes who let NCAA bid slip away enjoying ride with current team

Pittsburgh’s namesake school is usually the big man on campus during March Madness, but this year, the Duquesne Dukes are stealing the show, appearing in their first NCAA Tournament in nearly a half-century.

While it hasn’t happened often, it might have 15 years ago had the Dukes gotten the right bounce.

“You don’t see many banners in that gym, so when you get a chance, you want to show you belong,” said Aaron Jackson, the leader of a 2009 Duquesne team that let an NCAA Tournament bid slip away with a five-point loss to Temple in the Atlantic 10 championship game.

Meanwhile, up the road in the city’s Oakland section, Pitt was a shoo-in to make the Big Dance, despite suffering a first-round loss to West Virginia in the Big East Tournament.

The Panthers shook it off and went on to a stellar 31-5 season after a strong NCAA Tournament run that ended in the Elite Eight with a heartbreaking 78-76 loss to Villanova on Scottie Reynolds’ last-second basket.

“It’s just a game that could have gone either way,” then-Pitt coach Jamie Dixon said.

But it was a game that demonstrated the contrast of emotions associated with a time known for churning out unexpected moments.

Duquesne has produced a number of those moments lately, getting hot down the stretch of the regular season and winning the Atlantic 10 championship to clinch its first NCAA bid in 47 years.

“I’m pretty sure these guys feel they do belong,” Jackson said.

The 11th-seeded Dukes (25-11) were going for their 10th straight victory Saturday night in Omaha, Neb., as a heavy underdog in a second-round game against Big Ten champion No. 3 seed Illinois (27-8).

The Dukes advanced Thursday with their first tournament victory in 55 years, a 71-67 decision against No. 6 seed Brigham Young.

“One thing Duquesne has that not many teams out there have is their depth,” said Ron Everhart, the coach of that 2009 Dukes team that finished 21-13 and settled for an NIT bid.

The Dukes lost a 116-108 overtime decision to Virginia Tech despite Jackson’s best performance of his college career.

He scored a career-high 46 points, hitting 15 of 25 shots, including 8 of 13 from 3-point range, and was 8 for 9 at the free-throw line. Jackson, a Hartford, Conn., native, also had four assists and finished with the fourth-best single-game performance in Duquesne history.

“Aaron became a great scorer for us,” Everhart said. “I look at this Duquesne team, and they’ve got two terrific guards in (Dae Dae) Grant and (Jimmy) Clark. This team is a little bit deeper than (2009), and this team hangs it hat on being tough. We were, too. But this team is playing with a lot of confidence, and when your team is confident, it doesn’t matter who you’re playing.”

For Jackson, who is in his second year as a Los Angeles Lakers scout, his phone hasn’t stopped buzzing.

“I’ve heard from people I haven’t heard from in a long time,” he said. “I have people coming up to me and saying, ‘Hey, how about Duquesne?’ ”

He has joined with a number of former Duquesne players on a group chat to share the joy of their alma mater’s current success.

At the insistence of Duquesne associate head coach Dru Joyce III, Jackson sent a video to the Dukes before the start of the A-10 Tournament earlier this month in New York.

“I just told them, ‘You guys got a chance to win it,’ ” Jackson said. “ ‘I remember losing that A-10 championship (to Temple, 69-64), and it hurt me so much. You don’t want to feel it.’ ”

Jackson felt another kind of pain three years earlier. Then a sophomore, he was among five Duquesne players wounded in an on-campus shooting at a dance in Everhart’s first season as coach in 2006.

After his graduation, Jackson went on to a 10-year pro playing career mainly overseas, though he managed to appear in one NBA game in 2018 for the Houston Rockets.

Duquesne’s 2009 team, led by Jackson and a pair of high-scoring forwards, Damien Saunders and Bill Clark, was just the second time the Dukes reached a conference tournament title game.

The 1977 team had earned the school’s most recent NCAA Tournament bid by winning the Eastern Athletic Association, or Eastern 8, which eventually morphed into the A-10.

While Jackson laments the blown opportunity, he couldn’t be happier for Duquesne’s current players. He said he has been in contact with a number of former teammates.

“There’s a group chat, and we’ve all been talking about it,” he said. “It’s been fun, and we’re all about today’s game.”

Some of the names Jackson mentioned were Saunders, Bill Clark, Gary Tucker, Reggie Jackson, B.J. Monteiro, Chase Robinson and Melquan Bolding.

He said he also has been in touch with Shawn James, another former teammate wounded in the 2006 shooting. James, who played two seasons at Duquesne after transferring from Northeastern, where Everhart previously coached him, is the scouting director for the Utah Jazz.

“I know I’m leaving guys out,” Jackson said, “but it’s been a good feeling to share this time. We’re all excited for this team.”