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OMAHA, Neb. — Keith Dambrot never wanted to make it about himself.
The 65-year-old Duquesne coach who coached a rising prodigy named LeBron James during a storied career at St. Vincent-St. Mary Catholic High School in his native Akron, Ohio, announced his retirement Monday, which just happened to be the day after the Dukes snapped a 47-year drought with their first NCAA Tournament appearance since 1977.
Dambrot insists the news conference was always planned for Monday, the result of an athletic director and university president who wanted to set aside a day for the head coach who promised a return of Duquesne basketball to its glory days when he first took the job in 2017 after winning three Mid-American Conference titles at Akron.
"I've never wanted it to be about me," Dambrot said Wednesday before the Dukes' first practice at the CHI Health Center, where they will face sixth-seeded BYU on Thursday (10:40 a.m. MDT, TruTV). "By the same token, I wanted those guys to be 100% sure what they were dealing with in the future.
"So there's never any great time to announce something like that," he continued. "I thought about doing it after the Davidson game earlier in the year, and then I just didn't. Dave Harper, our athletic director, thought this was a good time to do it. But this isn't about me. It's about a bunch of guys that withstood an 0-5 start in the league, showed enough resilience to power their way back. And that's what it's about."
Seven years ago, Dambrot took over his father Sid's alma mater with the hopes — and the promise, he even said at one point — of bringing Duquesne back to the NCAA Tournament.
In a circular turn of events, the Dukes' first game in the dance will be against a team that last faced Sid Dambrot, who led Duquesne to a runner-up finish in the NIT in 1954, at the second annual Holiday Festival at Madison Square Garden in 1953, a 69-47 victory.
"My dad was in the box score," deadpanned Dambrot, whose father died in 2021. "He missed two free throws. He made two. But I'm going to have to get on him about that in my prayers."
Dambrot's retirement shifts the storyline around the Dukes' inaugural tournament bid in nearly a half-century.
Duquesne clinched its 24th victory with a 57-51 win over VCU in the A-10 title game Sunday afternoon, learned their draw Sunday night before leaving Brooklyn, and held Dambrot's retirement press conference Monday in Pittsburgh.
By Tuesday night, they were on a plane bound for Omaha and practicing under the lights by mid-morning.
"It's been kind of a whirlwind of emotions the last couple of days," Duquesne freshman Jake DiMichele said. "But, again, I think it works for us in a positive way because it just bonds us closer together, increases our brotherhood. I think it kind of gives us another incentive to win this game because we want to send him out in the right way. He's never won an NCAA Division I tournament game, so we want to get that for him."
The Dukes (24-11) are led by their back court, specifically senior guards Dae Dae Grant and Jimmy Clark III, who both shoot better than 40% from the field and 38% from the perimeter for 16.7 and 15.1 points per game, respectively.
But Duquesne mostly prides itself on defense, a team that ranks 167th nationally in KenPom's adjusted offensive efficiency but 29th in adjusted defense.
"Those two guards, I have no idea how to slow them down actually, so we'll just see if we can do our best," said BYU coach Mark Pope, who leads the No. 11 offense and No. 50 defense in the same metric. "They're explosive. They score at all three levels, and they make plays for their teammates in huge ways."
Dambrot compared BYU to "VCU in our league," a team coached by former Utah State boss Ryan Odom, in its "3-point oriented, very fluid, challenging" offense.
"They can stretch you out, but they can also score inside with the big guy (Fousseyni Traore)," he said. "Then the other big guy (Aly Khalifa) is a pick-and-pop guy, which puts pressure on you as well. Solid point guard, big and strong."
While Duquesne will be motivated to win a game in the tournament for their retiring coach, BYU has its own motivations in its first trip to the Big Dance in three years.
"This is the first time for a lot of guys," said BYU's Spencer Johnson, who went with the Cougars to the all-Indianapolis area tournament during the COVID-19 pandemic. "It's certainly the first time in a post-COVID era. So we're just excited to be here, man, and just to feel the environment and the atmosphere. That's super motivating in that we have worked so hard this whole season, this whole offseason to put ourselves in a really good spot.
"Now that we're here," he added, "it's like we did all that work, but now we're here and it's time to really show out."
