It’s true some Pittsburgh Penguins players were donning Duquesne jerseys before a recent game at PPG Paints Arena.
After all, what’s wrong with a little neighborly love?
The Atlantic 10 is hoping to see a host of team jerseys this week when the annual A-10 men’s basketball tournament returns to Pittsburgh — Duquesne’s included.
The tournament runs from Wednesday through Sunday at PPG Paints Arena.
“It’s the birthplace of the league,” former A-10 associate commissioner Ray Cella said Monday. “The city is the roots of the Atlantic 10.”
The conference was formed in 1976 as the Eastern Collegiate Basketball League, commonly known as “The Eastern 8,” with a home office based in Green Tree.
In conjunction with the 50th anniversary of its founding, Pittsburgh will be hosting an A-10 Tournament for the seventh time and first since 2017.
“We are excited to return to Pittsburgh to celebrate the league’s history in a city that was integral to the beginning of the Atlantic 10,” outgoing A-10 commissioner Bernadette Glade said. “Pittsburgh is an amazing city with a very rich sports history.”
The tournament kicks off with a pair of games Wednesday matching No. 12 seed La Salle against No. 13 St. Bonaventure at 11:30 a.m., followed by No. 11 Richmond against No. 14 Loyola Chicago at 2 p.m.
No. 7 Duquesne drew a first-round bye and will open play at 5 p.m. Thursday against No. 10 Rhode Island in one of four second-round games.
The teams split a pair of decisions during the regular season.
A conference tournament champion will be crowned following Sunday’s final, and the winner will be included in the NCAA Tournament’s 68-team field later that evening.
No. 2 VCU is the defending A-10 Tournament champ.
Cella, who served in several front-office positions in the conference from 1990-2009, fondly recalls many tales from his trips to the Golden Triangle. He said Duquesne, whose Uptown campus aligns with the Penguins’ home arena, always has been a suitable member for the A-10.
“It was very important that they were a part of it,” he said. “They’ve had their moments, and they’ve been having their moments lately. You wanted the Pittsburgh market to be part of the conference.”
Aside from one wayward season in 1992-93, when Duquesne bolted for the Midwestern Collegiate Conference (now known as the Horizon League), the Dukes have been a part of the A-10’s fiber all along.
So, it’s fitting the tournament returns to Pittsburgh some 50 years after the area first housed the league’s headquarters.
Duquesne won the first tournament championship, too. In 1977, the Dukes, led by future NBA star Norm Nixon, outlasted Villanova, 57-54, at what then was known as The Spectrum in Philadelphia.
The tournament arrived in Pittsburgh the following year for the first time and stayed at the former Civic Arena for five seasons from 1978-82.
“I went to those games when I was an undergrad at Pitt,” retired longtime Duquesne sports information director Dave Saba said. “A bunch of us went down there, and those games were intense. There were a lot of fans, I remember — Pitt fans, Duquesne fans. There were West Virginia fans there, too. It was a good atmosphere. It really was.”
Pitt won back-to-back championships, beating Duquesne, 64-60, in 1981, and West Virginia, 78-72, in 1982, before making a jump to the Big East.
Villanova (twice) and Rutgers also won titles during Pittsburgh’s first go-round as host.
In 1983, the tournament shifted back to The Spectrum for a season, then rotated sites, including twice at WVU Coliseum in Morgantown, W.Va. — in 1984 and ’87.
The tournament’s longest continuous stay at one site is six seasons from 2007-12 at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, N.J.
In 2017, PPG Paints Arena hosted its first A-10 Tournament, won by Rhode Island.
Other than 1977, Duquesne has won just one more title, in 2024.
The early years of the A-10 were magical for basketball fans in a region seemingly more attuned to the sport then than now.
Imagine a college basketball league that included Pitt, Duquesne, Penn State and West Virginia. Today, they are scattered among five conferences.
Still, Duquesne remains in the A-10.
“The Pittsburgh market was always important to the league because of those schools,” former assistant A-10 commissioner Ron Bertovich said. “It’s important now because of Duquesne.”
Bertovich, a Bentleyville native who also served as the A-10’s director of communications, later became commissioner of the old Mid Continent Conference (now The Summit League) and also was deputy commissioner of basketball for the Colonial Athletic Association (now known as the Coastal Athletic Association).
“Duquesne was important to the A-10 for a number of reasons,” he said. “They helped open the doors for us for that whole market with (the inception of cable channel) KBL. They had a relationship with KBL, which wanted programming for Penn State and West Virginia, as well.”
KBL Entertainment Network, as it was known, eventually evolved into the present-day SportsNet Pittsburgh.
This year, the A-10 Tournament’s first- and second-round games Wednesday and Thursday will be televised nationally by USA Network, which also will air three of Friday’s quarterfinals. The other will be carried by CNBC.
Saturday’s semifinals at 1 and 3:30 p.m. can be seen on CBS Sports Network. Sunday’s 1 p.m. championship game is on CBS.