Been There Wrote This
Dismal Dukes
By John Mehno

Forget about steroids in baseball. Don’t worry about corruption in boxing.

There’s an investigation that’s just screaming for attention: How does Duquesne manage to post a lousy record in basketball year after year? If you’re reading this with bifocals, you may (repeat: may) remember when Dukes basketball was a big deal, the Nelson twins roamed the earth and the team was at least moderately successful.

The school had a long history of success through coaches like Dudey Moore, Chick Davies and Red Manning. When the silly names stopped, so did the winning.

The Dukes have changed coaches, addresses, conferences and nothing makes a difference. When your Christmas bills start coming in, you check the paper and the Dukes are at least half a dozen games south of .500. Clockwork.

You’d think it wouldn’t be that tough. Basketball has the smallest rosters and you only need a handful of players to turn things around. A guy who follows Duquesne always offers hopeful scouting reports that come with qualifiers like, “If this guy were a couple of inches taller. If that one were a step quicker. If the one over there had a better outside shot.” No one has the heart to tell him that players who are taller, quicker and more accurate shots wind up playing for Duke, not Duquesne.

For a long time the prevailing theory was a rape scandal that got three starters bounced from the team started the program downhill. But that was 20 years ago. Just about every team in the Atlantic 10 has been through several rides on the roller coaster in the time the Dukes have settled in the basement.

Almost every coach has come in with some pedigree. Jim Satalin had run a successful program at St. Bonaventure. John Carroll was P.J. Carlesimo’s right-hand man. Scott Edgar came with Nolan Richardson’s endorsement. The current coach, Danny Nee, had success at Nebraska.

Yet players who know nothing of Duquesne’s history fall into line with what’s become tradition. The Dukes have had four winning seasons in the last 25 years and none since 1993-94.

Aside from losing, the only other constant is the courtside middle-aged fans, who continue to shout, “Three seconds!” and “Call ‘em both ways!” even though it’s all fairly futile. The students stay away from the Palumbo Center, probably out of fear that what afflicts the basketball program might be contagious.

So these are the unanswered questions: How are the Dukes so consistently mediocre and how does the administration so passively tolerate the demise of what used to be Duquesne’s signature athletic program?

In other matters:

• The Pirates are about to start their annual quest for fourth place and that always brings the complaint that the deck is stacked so unfairly against small-market baseball teams.
  In that context, it’s interesting to take a look at the good old days, when there was no free agency, no salary arbitration and the reserve clause was in effect, binding players to a team for as long as management wanted to keep them. Wouldn’t that be a dream system in these troubled times? Maybe not. Under those generous parameters, the Pirates managed to win exactly one National League pennant in the 42 seasons from 1928 to 1969.



• Why were the Steelers so successful in 2004? They didn’t have to face the pressure of being graded by high school coaches in the pages of the Post-Gazette. That bad idea died mercifully with a change in leadership at the paper.



• The Steelers played only one night game this season but they’ll be all over prime time next year. Part of that has to do with this year’s success but TV loves compelling storylines and strong visuals. Ben Roethlisberger takes care of the first and Bill Cowher’s sideline histrionics fill the second requirement.



• In advance of an important game against the Green Bay Packers, Minnesota Vikings head coach Mike Tice slept on the floor of his office. What, the Vikings don’t have any sofas? The Vikings lost so perhaps Tice needs to sleep in the parking lot before the next big game.



• Chuck Noll has four Super Bowl rings and didn’t spend four nights sleeping in the office during his 23 seasons as Steelers’ coach.

John Mehno can be reached at: johnmehno@lycos.com