Dru Joyce III grew up with a basketball in his hand. He’s played the game as a slick point guard at every level, and his father and brother are basketball coaches.
Joyce won state championships in high school alongside future NBA superstar LeBron James, to this day among his closest friends. He played college ball for and served as an assistant to former Duquesne coach Keith Dambrot, one of just a few of Joyce’s select mentors.
For a time, he even held the career assists record in Germany’s top professional league, Basketball Bundesliga.
On Thursday, Dru Joyce III’s first season as a head coach came to a screeching halt in Duquesne’s 64-59 loss to St. Bonaventure in a second-round game of the Atlantic 10 Tournament at Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C.
“I haven’t had any time to reflect,” Joyce said shortly after the defending-champion Dukes (13-19) let a 13-point, second-half lead slip away for their 12th loss of fewer than six points.
It was a painful ending to a season of uncertainty following the retirement of Dambrot, who, last March, led Duquesne to its first NCAA Tournament appearance since 1977, and the hiring of Joyce, whom Dambrot also coached at Akron (Ohio) St. Vincent St. Mary High School and later at the University of Akron.
While an emotional Joyce, in the immediate aftermath of the game, said he hadn’t thought much about anything, he wanted his players to know what’s been on his mind throughout a trial-and-error first year for him and his players, many of whom had transferred in for this season.
“I already knew that my guys from Day 1 have been willing to adjust, to learn and to buy-in, to go on a journey where you don’t know how it’s going to turn out,” he said. “You don’t know how this thing is going to play out for yourself. No team does, right?
“You have your aspirations. You have your goals. But, meanwhile, step-by-step, you battle challenges and adversity. Is that journey worth it? Do you still have faith in it? I commend each and every one on my roster and my program, because they had unbelievable faith.”
For nearly the entire game, Joyce’s faith was rewarded as Duquesne stayed ahead of longtime rival St. Bonaventure.
Then, the Dukes lost control.
Lajae Jones and Melvin Council Jr. scored 18 points apiece, No. 8 seed St. Bonaventure used a 13-1 run in the final 3 minutes, 47 seconds and the Bonnies came away with an improbable victory against No. 9 Duquesne to advance to the quarterfinals against top-seeded VCU at 11:30 a.m. Friday.
“We found a way to win. It wasn’t pretty,” said St. Bonaventure coach Mark Schmidt, who coached at Robert Morris from 2001-07 before taking the over the Bonnies. “We have tough-minded kids. They didn’t quit. If you don’t have mentally tough guys, you’re going to fade. We didn’t fade. Our goal is to win this tournament and go to the NCAA Tournament.”
Something Schmidt’s teams at Robert Morris fell short of but that three at St. Bonaventure have done in Schmidt’s 18 seasons at the Olean, N.Y.-based school.
Earlier this week, Robert Morris won the Horizon League Tournament to earn the conference’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
In the 137th meeting between the schools — the most games played against Duquesne by an opponent — St. Bonaventure (22-10) led for just 2 minutes, 4 seconds and fell behind by as many as 13 points in the second half before the Bonnies got hot down the stretch to take the lead for good and advance.
Council’s jumper with 2:19 to go pulled St. Bonaventure even at 58-58, bringing the Bonnies back from a 48-35 deficit at the 12:34 mark.
He sank a pair of free throws less than a minute later, and Duquesne’s advantage was gone.
Maximus Edwards led the Dukes with 18 points on 7-of-12 shooting. Matus Hronsky added 11, and Tre Dinkins III chipped in 10.
“We did get a little lackadaisical in the second half,” Dinkins said. “But overall, proud of the effort that we brought. We played hard, and guys fought and played for one another.”
Jakub Necas’ 10 rebounds paced Duquesne’s 40-30 edge on the glass, but the Dukes committed 18 turnovers, many during the late second-half collapse that saw St. Bonaventure’s pressure unnerve the Dukes.
Duquesne took its first double-digit lead when Edwards drained a 3-pointer with a hand in his face, giving the Dukes a 43-32 cushion with 14:25 left.
Edwards followed with a dunk to extend the margin to 13 points, and it returned to a 13-point advantage after Edwards connected on another 3-pointer following Jonah Hinton’s desperation 3 for St. Bonaventure at the shot-clock buzzer.
But the Bonnies chipped away and finally took the lead for good, holding Duquesne without a field goal during the final 4:16.
When Dinkins and Edwards, two players summoned to join Joyce at the postgame news conference, were permitted to exit following their question-and-answer segment, Joyce asked the moderator if they could stay.
“Sorry, don’t leave me up here,” he said to the pair. He then discussed Edwards’ situation in the player’s first year at Duquesne after transferring from George Washington as an example of the loyalty he received from a group that went through losing streaks of six and five games, derailing any hope of a third consecutive 20-win season.
Struggling to gather his thoughts, Joyce explained how he had multiple conversations with Edwards, a former A-10 Rookie of the Year at GW, about the player’s attitude toward the coach’s certain decisions.
The up-and-down Edwards began the season in Duquesne’s starting lineup but wound up with just 10 starts in 32 games while averaging 19.8 minutes per game.
“Max started a lot of games at GW,” Joyce said. “We had a conversation, and I told him I thought I needed to make an adjustment. He didn’t like to hear it, and we had to have a couple more conversations. But he bought in. It wasn’t an easy adjustment. There still were games where he probably felt like he should’ve played some more and I probably felt like he shouldn’t play anymore.
“What he did was he didn’t quit.”
With that, Joyce paused and became emotional, allowing the moderator to move on to another question.
“Second row on the aisle,” the moderator said, pointing.
Joyce responded, “Oh, I still want to answer that one because I just want to give (Edwards) the right praise he deserves. So many guys quit. I’m in the basketball world, and there’s so many players with things that don’t go their way. Or they’re unhappy. They just quit at the very first sign.”
Joyce looked at Edwards and, with a shrug, said: “The guy didn’t quit. Appreciate you.”
Quietly, Edwards responded: “Appreciate that, coach.”
With an entire offseason staring at Duquesne, Joyce said he already was looking forward to getting back to work.
“The biggest thing as a coach is it can go two ways: A team can walk out on you and you lose a team, or you’ve got guys that are willing to fight for you,” Joyce said. “I believe I have a room of guys that are willing to fight for me.
“We didn’t lose our way. We didn’t lose our focus. We stayed together. Ultimately, that’s a lot to take into next season. We’ve just got to continue to grow. I always challenge my players to get better. I’m going to get better myself. I just want to keep improving, and that’s what we’ll do. We’ll carry that momentum of trying to grow, trying to get better into the offseason.”
Categories: Duquesne | Sports
