Kentucky basketball: Five things to know about the Duquesne Dukes

Five things to know about the Duquesne Dukes, Kentucky’s men’s basketball opponent on Friday night at Rupp Arena:

1. The Dukes won their opener by 28 points

Snapping a 17-game program losing streak, Duquesne got the 2022-23 season off on the right foot with a convincing 91-63 thumping of the Montana Grizzlies on Tuesday.

The Dukes jumped to a 45-19 lead at halftime. They finished the night shooting a sizzling 64.4 percent from the floor. They were 10-of-24 from three-point range, outrebounded the visitors 36-23 and held Montana to 38.5 percent shooting from the floor.

By the way, Montana was picked to finish third in the Big Sky Conference.

2. Duquesne has 10 new players

After a 6-24 finish last season, including a 1-16 mark in the Atlantic 10, Duquesne flipped its roster. This year’s edition features five transfers and five true freshmen.

Dae Dae Grant, a 6-foot-2 guard who led the Dukes with 25 points in their opener, came to Duquesne from Miami (Ohio), where he averaged 17.5 points per game last season. Grant was a perfect 8-for-8 from the floor, 6-of-6 from three-point range and 3-of-3 from the foul line against Montana.

Joe Reece is a 6-8 transfer from Bowling Green who began his college career at Old Dominion. He started Tuesday and scored 12 points and grabbed five rebounds. He was 6-of-12 from the floor on offense and blocked two shots on defense.

Quincy McGriff is a 6-6 sophomore who played last season for Salt Lake Community College. He started at point guard on Tuesday and scored 10 points in the Duquesne win.

McGriff started because the Dukes’ expected point guard, Tevin Brewer, is out indefinitely from complications after appendectomy surgery in October. The Fort Smith, Ark., native transferred to Duquesne from Florida International, where he averaged 11.5 points per game.

Among the true freshmen, Matus Hronsky scored 13 points off the bench in the opener. Hronsky is a 6-foot-8 froward from Poruba, Slovakia, who played at Wasatch Academy in Utah.

3. Coach Keith Dambrot is in his sixth year at Duquesne

The 64-year-old Keith Dambrot was 20-34 in two seasons (1991-92 and 1992-93) at Central Michigan. From 2004-05 through 2016-17, Dambrot was the head coach at his hometown of Akron, where he was 305-139 overall and 155-65 in the Mid-American Conference.

He left for Duquesne, where his grandfather Sid had played college basketball. The Dukes improved from 16-16 in Dambrot’s debut season to 19-13 and 21-9 until a 9-9 mark in the COVID year of 2020-21. Then the Dukes took that nosedive in 2021-22.

Overall, Dambrot is 71-71 at the Pittsburgh school. He’s 36-49 in the A-10 but was 35-33 before last season.

Dambrot nugget: He was LeBron James’ first high school coach in Akron.

4. Duquesne hasn’t made the NCAA Tournament since 1977

The 1976-77 edition went 15-15 overall and 4-7 in the Eastern Collegiate Basketball League, but won the conference tournament to make the Big Dance in 1977.

Alas, it lost 73-66 to VMI in the first round of the tourney. VMI then lost 93-78 to Kentucky at Cole Fieldhouse in College Park, Maryland. Kentucky then lost to North Carolina 79-72 in the East Regional finals.

Since that 1976-77 season, Duquesne has been coached by John Cinicola, Mike Rice, Jim Satalin, John Carroll, Scott Edgar, Darrelle Porter, Danny Nee, Ron Everhart and Jim Ferry without making it back to the NCAA Tournament.

The Dukes did go 21-9 in 2019-20; 21-13 in 2008-09 and 20-10 in 1980-81 but did not make it into the Big Dance.

5. Duquesne’s geographic connection to John Calipari

Why does Kentucky Coach John Calipari want to play Duquesne? Pittsburgh, that’s why. As we all know, Calipari is from Moon Township in Pittsburgh. And Duquesne is a private research Catholic university in Pittsburgh.

It first opened as the Pittsburgh Catholic College of the Holy Ghost in 1879 with an enrollment of 40 students and six faculty members. It now has enrollment of over 9,300 and an endowment of $472.1 million. It was ranked as the nation’s 132nd-best university by U.S. News and World Report.

Famous Duquesne alums: Late Pittsburgh Steelers owner Art Rooney and son Dan; ex-NBA player Norm Nixon; former CIA director Michael Hayden. Current Indiana Pacers guard TJ McConnell played two years for the Dukes.

Kentucky played Duquesne once before under Calipari, beating the Dukes 93-59 on Nov. 20, 2016.

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