As the year of hard luck and tough losses continues for the Duquesne men’s basketball team, at times it can seem difficult to find a silver lining. Yet, with many more games to go and a young team set to play through it, head coach Keith Dambrot really doesn’t have another option.
The Dukes fell once again on Friday night, this time by a final of 62-48 on the road to Saint Bonaventure. The loss drops Duquesne to 3-5 on the season, and 2-4 in Atlantic 10 play, putting them at 12th place in the conference standings.
After all that the team has been through this season, some could understand if they were to hang their heads or maybe even start to feel sorry for themselves.
That just isn’t how the head coach operates.
“We are what we are right now,” Dambrot said. “ ... At this point in the year, what we have to do is look for little victories until we’re all the way where we want to be.”
If Duquesne is looking for ‘little victories’ there are certainly ones to be found, especially on the defensive end of the floor. This season the Dukes have limited opponents to shooting just 28.3% from three-point range.
The opposition is shooting 42.1% from the field as a whole against Duquesne, which is below the conference average of 45.2%. Dambrot took pride in his team’s defensive performance on Friday where they held the Bonnies to 36.4% from the field and just 2-of-16 from behind the arc.
“I told our guys afterwards, we’ll be in every game playing that kind of defense,” Dambrot said. “Now the question is, can we make anything?”
It’s no secret that the majority of the Dukes’ problems revolve around the offense. Dambrot’s team has scored more than 30 points in just one of the last eight halves of basketball it’s played.
While St. Bonaventure was bad from the field, Duquesne was worse, shooting just 35.8%. The stat sheet shows little improvement from Wednesday’s loss at Dayton. However, Dambrot believes the game film will.
“I don’t think we took too many bad shots,” Dambrot said. “I thought we had better looks. [St. Bonaventure] came into the game number one in the league in defense.”
Dambrot had been vocal this week about players needing to step up and contribute more in a scoring role. His message may have finally reached senior center Michael Hughes.
Hughes led the Dukes with 14 points on Friday. He and Marcus Weathers finished in double figures in scoring, becoming the first Duquesne duo to do so since the departures of Sincere Carry, Lamar Norman Jr. and Maceo Austin.
“I thought [Hughes] played the right way,” Dambrot said. “He did a good job of rolling through on the ball screen which he hasn’t been doing. I thought we did a good job finding him on his roll throughs and he certainly wasn’t our problem.”
Regardless of how well veterans like Hughes, Weathers and Tavian Dunn-Martin play, they can only do so much. In order for Duquesne to get back on track, multiple younger players must step up.
Some could view that as a challenge while others could also qualify that as another ‘little victory.’ Successful or not, the Dukes are now playing four to five freshmen a game.
Two of them - Chad Baker and Toby Okani - have started the past three contests. While short term this might not be the answer, Dambrot understands that his program will be better off in the long run.
Perhaps the most notable ‘little victory’ Dambrot can claim is his team’s mentality. A 3-5 start was fairly common for the program before he and his staff took over. After four years at the helm, it seems like that is no longer the case.
“We haven’t been three-and-five since I’ve been here,” Dambrot said. “They’re not used to this. They’re getting adjusted to playing with different people. I’m not used to it.”
Following a stretch that included two long road trips in three days, the Dukes will get some much needed downtime. Maybe with some rest and some more time at the practice facility, Duquesne can turn the handful of ‘little victories’ its head coach found, into a big one in its next contest.