Column: Duquesne rots from the head down

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Micah Mason launches a first-half 3-pointer over the Davidson defense Saturday. — DEJAN KOVACEVIC

BY DEJAN KOVACEVIC

Dominique McKoy deserved better.

He’s Duquesne’s only basketball senior and a coach’s dream beyond the standard experience and leadership a senior should bring. He can’t run or jump or shoot with the biggest or the best, but he’s all heart and soul, a 6-foot-8 forward with bouncing dreadlocks and an exposed, chomped mouthguard who huffs and puffs his way to an extra half-inch each night.

Saturday night, the Dukes’ finale at the Palumbo Center, was no exception: He pushed and pounded his way to 15 points, eight in a frenzied opening five minutes, as well as eight rebounds. If anyone would be intimidated by facing Davidson, the Atlantic 10’s finest, it wouldn’t be No. 3.

“Domo,” his coach, Jim Ferry would say later, “was outstanding.”

Two hours later, the LED high overhead read as follows: Davidson 107, Duquesne 78

Immediately below, McKoy, emotion on the sleeve as always, was disconsolate as he’d begun to walk off, then halted at the 15-foot blue and red logo at center court. His head was buried in his right hand. The dreads, however slightly, trembled. And it wasn’t until a teammate offered a gentle nudge a few seconds later that he finally headed off.

This isn’t McKoy’s fault. Or any player’s fault.

The climb goes way, way up to sniff out this rot.

Record regression

‘Duquesne picked to finish 11th in Atlantic 10′

I kid you not, different variations of that headline ran in multiple publications this past October, including not one but both Pittsburgh papers. And no, I’m not counting the Onion, if, indeed, the world’s most spectacular satirical journal had chosen it as classic spoof material.

Never mind that the conference actually has 14 teams. What counts is that the Dukes were the punchline. They were the ones embarrassed.

And that was before the Dukes actually finished … oh, you guessed it, 11th, with this dud Saturday.

With the Atlantic 10 tournament still to come — and another early exit all but a formality — the regular-season record wound up 11-18 overall, 6-12 in the conference. Depending on how your glass gets filled, that’s either a regression or status quo from 13-17, 5-11 a year ago. And it isn’t a whole lot better than 8-22, 1-15 the previous year, Ferry’s first on the Bluff.

One can fairly put forth excuses after one year, maybe two. Once it reaches three, sorry, it’s time to wear it. This mess is now officially on Ferry’s watch.

On that day in New York when the preseason poll was put out, Ferry told reporters: “We’re taking our steps. The Pirates have always had to deal with the successes of the Steelers and Penguins, and they’ve done a really good job. Clint Hurdle has done a fantastic job with that team, and his philosophy I think everybody has bought in. I think people are starting to see that with us, too.”

No, they aren’t. Not in any facet.

Ugliest of all is that Duquesne’s defense, the one aspect most in any coach’s control in any sport, remains … wow, what’s an adequate adjective here … disastrous?

I’m not even referring to Saturday, when a smooth Davidson machine amassed its 107 points, remarkably, by assisting on 35 of 40 field goals and crushing 20 of 36 3-point tries. The Wildcats might as well have begun calling bank shots off the bleachers.

“That’s one of the best offensive, best passing teams I’ve ever seen,” Ferry said.

That might be a bit much, but Davidson is 23-6, has won eight in a row and clinched the conference regular-season championship. It’s a good group.

At the same time, the Dukes’ defense is disastrous in any context. There are 345 NCAA Division I programs, and the their average of 75 points allowed per game ranks, um, 338th.

The worst question any reporter can ask a college coach is whether or not his team has improved as the season has gone along, because it can come across as an attack on their instructional skills.

I basically asked Ferry that question twice after this game …

This is on Ferry and his staff. Defense can be taught. Middling defense can be taught easily. Duquesne, which gave up 100 and 92 to St. Bonaventure, 87 to La Salle, 86 to Richmond, 81 to Dayton and 95 in the previous meeting with Davidson, isn’t close to being middling. And being that all of these games occurred in the past two months, this improvement the coach is describing must be happening in practice.

All that said, I like Ferry. His passion is there, his work ethic is second to none and, for all the shortcomings in preventing points, his Dukes have been pretty good at producing them. And before arriving, he led LIU-Brooklyn to back-to-back NCAA tournaments on the strength of superb offensive organization.

Ferry can do better, but this broader scene isn’t on him, either.

Old Main an old story

It’s not wholly on Greg Amodio, either, and I say that as anything but an admirer of his tenure at the university, which will forever be defined by his senseless killing of baseball, wrestling, golf and swimming in 2010.

Unless, of course, it ends up being defined by firing Ron Everhart …

Dqu 3-7

Yeah, ouch. I could have ditched this entire column and just run the graphic.

But since that wasn’t the plan, I instead spent significant time at Palumbo on this night learning what’s really wrong with the program, and this is what I gathered, in spilled-notebook form:

• The athletic administration adores Ferry. He’s in zero jeopardy.

• Amodio isn’t in trouble, either, even though his primary mission — as with any AD at Duquesne — should be to succeed in hoops.

• Private donations to the recently created Duquesne Basketball Excellence Fund have been generous and appreciated, but not nearly enough donors have come forth. My understanding is that it’s something like 10 donors at around $25,000 per year.

• The administration at Old Main talks a good game but backs it up with next to nothing in financing. What’s worse, the financing that is provided usually arrives in a haphazard way, meaning only when a situation becomes untenable. The one to blame here is the Rev. Sean Hogan, whose official title is executive president for student life but who actually has wielded a peculiar amount of authority for 26 years. He has no use for basketball — or, for that matter, another venerable Duquesne institution in the Tamburitzans — and has allowed both to disintegrate by staving off funding.

• The school president, Charles Dougherty, cares even less, if that’s possible. If he did, he’d have overruled Rev. Hogan forever ago and set basketball straight. But his tenure in general might was well be marked by one big shrug, certainly compared to that of his universally respected predecessor, the late Dr. John Murray, who was thought of so highly he was once entrusted to completely revamp Allegheny County’s archaic system of government. While city neighbors Pitt, CMU and Point Park have progressed and innovated, Duquesne has lost its identity.

Dougherty’s salary while devaluing the university’s best-known brands approaches $700,000, according to the Duquesne Duke. That’s third-most among all Atlantic 10 presidents.

Coaches have come and gone. ADs have come and gone. But the one constant has been Old Main’s unwillingness to upgrade basketball and, moreover, the blindness to not see the benefits.

Ask the people at Dayton how that school benefited — in every imaginable way — from its higher profile that followed that administration’s decision to pay up in hoops. I have, and they’ll tell you it’s been a godsend.

Well, here comes Duquesne’s godsend: Both Rev. Hogan and Dougherty are stepping down in the next few months.

Here’s hoping their successors recognize that finishing 11th stinks in any equation.

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