No. 11 Duquesne upsets No. 6 BYU, earns 1st NCAA Tournament win since 1969

Duquesne’s players weren’t ready for their coach to retire just yet, and Thursday, playing in the school’s first NCAA Tournament in 47 years, they showed him why.

Now, Keith Dambrot is stuck coaching them again.

“If we keep winning games, they’re going to make me an old man,” said the 65-year-old Dambrot, who announced earlier in the week his plans to step down at the end of the season.

A season that marches on for Duquesne (25-11) after the Dukes turned back Brigham Young, 71-67, in a first-round game at CHI Health Center Arena in Omaha, Neb.

The 11th-seeded Dukes will face No. 3 seed Illinois in Saturday’s second round for a chance to advance to the Sweet 16.

“They just won’t let me retire,” Dambrot said of his team. “I’m trying to get to the promised land, and they’re making me keep coaching.”

Dae Dae Grant scored 19 points, including four clinching free throws in the final 10 seconds, and Duquesne got its first tournament victory since 1969 in the Dukes’ first appearance since 1977.

The last time Duquesne won a game in the tournament was March 15, 1969, a 75-72 decision against St. John’s in College Park, Md., in the East Region’s third-place game.

“It’s a blessing and high appreciation to be under Coach’s wing and to be here for a couple years and be under the legacy and learn so much,” Grant said. “It’s very gratifying and just exciting. To build the love and relationship means a lot. We’re trying to keep it going. We’re not satisfied.”

The Atlantic 10-champion Dukes (25-11) won for the ninth straight time after losing a 14-point, second-half lead.

BYU (20-13), which entered the game ranked second in Division I in 3-point shots made, is winless in three straight tournament appearances.

“Tons of congratulations to Duquesne. They’re on a great run,” BYU coach Mark Pope said. “They certainly fought like crazy and earned the win.”

You could say the Dukes put up their dukes.

“We made them work for everything they got.” Dambrot said.

The game was bruising, which should suit a team in the rugged Big 12. But BYU, which just this season made the move from the West, couldn’t match Duquesne’s physical play.

The Cougars were jolted just minutes into the game by contact that bloodied the nose of Dallin Hall, then later witnessed Rich Saunders getting knocked to the floor and holding his head.

Moments after the start of the second half, BYU’s Noah Waterman battled Duquesne’s Fousseyni Drame for a rebound, with both players winding up aggressively grappling on the floor before officials broke things up and assessed technical fouls on both players.

“Well, we weren’t going to win a finesse game,” Dambrot said. “They’re very, very finesse-ful. That little scuffle at the beginning of the second half kind of showed everything about what we’re about. We’re going to compete at a very high level in a very clean way, but we’re going to compete and make people earn every inch of the court.”

It was a victory — Dambrot’s first in four NCAA Tournament appearances — that the outgoing coach dedicated to his late father, Sid Dambrot, a member of Duquesne’s 1954 NIT runner-up team.

“It’s clear, my dad kind of taught me years ago, that, ‘Hey, if you don’t play great defense, you’re not going to be a good team.’ And so I’ve kind of used that throughout my whole career, and these guys really bought into it.”

Freshman Jakub Necas added a career-high 12 points, and Jimmy Clark III scored 11 for Duquesne.

It has been clear that Dambrot’s final college team has rallied around his hard-nosed approach. The Dukes banged their way through the A-10 Tournament, defeating four teams in five days, including then-No. 24 Dayton, to win their first league championship since claiming the 1977 Eastern Collegiate Basketball League title.

At least one member of that team, former Los Angeles Lakers star Norm Nixon, was among the Thursday crowd that witnessed his former team’s second victory over a nationally ranked opponent in a week.

BYU entered the contest No. 21 in the Associated Press Top 25.

Jaxson Robinson, the Big 12 Sixth Man Award winner, led all scorers with 25 points for BYU, but none came in the final 5 1/2 minutes.

Duquesne took a 46-32 lead on freshman Jake DiMichele’s 3-pointer with 16 minute, 48 seconds left and stayed in front until BYU eventually caught up and tied the score at 60-60 on a dunk by Fousseyni Traore with 1:47 remaining.

Clark scored five straight points, converting 3 of 4 free throws in a 38-second span and following with driving layup with 26 seconds to go, to give Duquesne a 65-60 advantage.

Duquesne’s Necas and BYU’s Hall traded a pair of free throws before Grant, one of the top free-throw shooters in the country at 94%, sank a pair to push the Duquesne lead to 69-64.

BYU wasn’t done. Hall’s 3-pointer got the Cougars within 69-67 with six ticks left. But Duquesne held on, forcing BYU to foul, and Grant converted two more attempts to secure the victory and provide Dambrot and the Dukes with another game.

Duquesne led at halftime, 38-30, after trailing just once overall, briefly at 20-19 in the first half on a 3-point shot by Robinson.

But DiMichele, the former Our Lady of the Sacred Heart star, answered with a 3 to put Duquesne back in front, and the Dukes never again fell behind.

Hall, Traore and Spencer Johnson added 11 apiece for BYU, which was averaging 11 made 3-point shots per game. Against Duquesne, the Cougars were just 8 for 24 (33.3%).

Johnson finished with a double double for BYU, adding 16 rebounds as the Cougars led on boards 35-29.

Duquesne, which shot 46.4% (25 for 56) and held BYU to 38.6 overall, blocked seven shots, including three each by Necas and David Dixon.

Clark, whom Dambrot refers to lately as “the Pittsburgh stealer,” got four of the Dukes’ seven thefts.

“It’s definitely a blessing playing for Coach. He gave me an opportunity along with other guys,” Clark said. “I’m just learning so much from him, day-in and day-out, whether that’s with basketball or in life. So I feel like those things helped us come together more and built this team together.”