Pitt, Duquesne, RMU among local basketball teams stuck in a rut

At a watering hole in Pittsburgh’s Greenfield section over the weekend, Guy Fieri’s “Tournament of Champions” was showing on two TVs.

At the head of the room on a main screen, The Players Championship PGA Tour event was in plain view until someone changed the channel to ION, which was airing a crime drama rerun. Yet another TV screen was dark.

Elsewhere in the country, people were starting to dance. College basketball’s conference tournaments were winding down with an eye toward setting the 68-team field for the NCAA Tournament.

Welcome to “The Burgh,” where basketball takes a backseat, even when March Madness is in town.

“I just never really got into basketball,” said one patron, who wished to remain anonymous. “I like college basketball, but I don’t watch the NBA.”

When reminded Saturday of the impending Selection Sunday show to be aired the following day at the conclusion of Division I’s conference tournament finals, the man shrugged and said, “I miss the Big East,” presumably referring to Pitt’s days in the conference, when the Panthers regularly challenged for an NCAA Tournament bid.

The annual Sunday evening March Madness bracket show revealed a blockbuster lineup for first- and second-round games in the South Region at PPG Paints Arena.

On Friday, Ohio State takes on Loyola Chicago, Villanova faces Delaware, Illinois plays Chattanooga and Houston meets UAB, with the winners advancing to play again Sunday in the second round.

Nothing doing

These days, there’s not much to cheer about in local college basketball.

Pitt, Duquesne and Robert Morris all concluded 20-loss seasons with a whimper in their respective conference tournaments. Only RMU managed a victory in the Horizon League but was bounced in the second round.

While all three coaches received votes of confidence recently from their schools, they know they’ve got to get it right — sooner than later.

“We’ve got to get way better, so we’ve got a lot of work to do,” Robert Morris coach Andy Toole said after the Colonials’ second-round 83-67 loss to Cleveland State. RMU finished its second Horizon League season at 8-24.

Pitt’s Jeff Capel and Duquesne’s Keith Dambrot echoed the sentiment.

“We have to get better players … we have to recruit better,” Capel said in the aftermath of Pitt’s 66-46 loss to Boston College in the ACC Tournament first round, setting the Panthers’ final record at 11-21.

At Duquesne, Dambrot saw the Dukes (6-24) lose their final 17 games to tie a school record for the longest losing streak. While they almost ended the skid in a first-round Atlantic 10 Tournament game, Rhode Island held on for a 79-77 victory.

“We have a lot of work to do as a staff and a program to get back to where we were (21-9, 11-7 A-10 in 2019-20),” Dambrot said.

It’s a regional drought

Is it a wonder why interest has waned and arena seats are empty at the Pittsburgh market’s three main Division I schools?

It’s bad enough that basketball, even in its better days, generally doesn’t rule in these parts (Remember the ABA’s Pittsburgh Pipers, who won the league’s first championship and promptly left town amid horrendously low attendance figures?).

Robert Morris earned a ticket to the NCAA Tournament in its final year in the Northeast Conference in 2020, but the event was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic.

A year later, the school moved to the Horizon, where it just completed its second season.

So while the wait is on for success to return to the “Big 3,” what about a regional view?

Taking the circumference wider, any luck with West Virginia and Penn State? Nope, both failed to make any postseason tournament beyond their conference this season. West Virginia has had the most recent success — making the NCAAs last season and every year from 2015-18 — and Penn State did manage an NIT championship in 2018.

St. Francis? Forget it.

Only Youngstown State is able to keep playing this season. The Penguins (18-14) will host Morgan State (13-14) Wednesday night in a first-round game in the obscure collegeinsider.com Tournament.

It all further intensifies the malaise surrounding a Western Pennsylvania fan base that clearly abhors losers (Even winners in basketball appear to be nothing more than novelties.).

Former Robert Morris coach Matt Furjanic said he believes Pittsburgh fans are known for their love of a winner. With the city’s teams floundering, they don’t enjoy coming out and battling for parking spots and paying for what goes along with it — tickets, concessions — when there is more access to game telecasts and social media.

“The losing teams just don’t draw,” he said.

But does that hold true for every sport?

Remember when?

It’s not just Pitt that has had such a hard time putting together victories. The Panthers, at times, have been quite good — certainly better than the present version — since their failed bid in 2011 to make a serious run, when they lost a one-point decision to Butler in the second round.

That was 11 years ago.

Duquesne hasn’t been dancing in 45 years, though the Dukes had been respectable until this season under Dambrot, who just completed his fifth year.

Robert Morris, since capturing the NEC championship in 2020, has struggled in the Horizon, winning a total of eight games in two seasons.

Since that 2011 season at Pitt, where the top-seeded Panthers were eliminated in Washington, D.C., when Butler’s Matt Howard sank a free throw with 0.8 seconds left, there has been very little to dance about.

Penn State and West Virginia joined the Panthers in the NCAA Tournament in 2011. Since then, Pitt has made three more appearances with little to show.

Robert Morris qualified twice, in 2015 and 2020, and West Virginia reached the Final Four in 2010.

Since joining Division I, Robert Morris made its first two NCAA Tournament appearances in back-to-back seasons in 1982-83 under Furjanic, who said it was just a different era.

“It was a time when we were starting the whole ‘City of Champions’ mantra,” he said. “Some of what is going on today, I believe, is that the interest level has waned because the local teams haven’t been able to recruit locally as much as before.

“You just don’t have the high school players that coaches can battle over in recruiting.”

Never fear, the Pittsburgh Penguins are in the Stanley Cup conversation again and the USFL Pittsburgh Maulers are back. Now, if the Pittsburgh Pirates could ever get their act together, maybe college basketball will follow.