If you haven’t been paying attention to the Duquesne women’s basketball team, now may be the time to start.
After a week that saw the Dukes defeat crosstown rival Pitt in the City Game and destroy a very good Dayton team to begin their Atlantic 10 conference season, the Dukes sit at 13-1, owners of a 12-game win streak. They also have been very dominant at home, riding an 18-game win streak A.J. Palumbo Center.
That’s good for the best start in program history as well as the longest home winning streak in history.
They will look to continue that success Thursday night when they travel to George Mason.
“We’ve done it in dominating fashion,” said head coach Dan Burt. “We’ve won by double digits every time out. We feel we are a very good team.”
What the Dukes have accomplished this season is no fluke as Burt’s team is one of only a handful of teams in the nation that can say they have won 20-plus games in seven consecutive season.
After Duquesne put together a very successful 2014-15 season, but were slighted from the NCAA Tournament, this Dukes team plays with a chip on their shoulder and expects to win every time they take the floor.
That’s a mentality that Burt has instilled into the Dukes in his two-plus season as Duquesne head coach.
The Dukes were predicted to finish seventh in the Atlantic 10 Conference a season ago but finished third and turned one of the most successful years in program history recording the most conference wins (12) in team history. The 23 victories they recorded were the third-most for the program all-time. And for the first time since 2006, the Dukes advanced to the semifinals of the Atlantic 10 Championship.
That winning mentality has continued to this season.
“It’s an everyday process,” Burt said. “Everyone holds everyone accountable. Our standards are very high. When I came into the locker room after the Pitt game it was dead silent. Not a word. And that was after beating our crosstown rival by 14. We didn’t play well for about seven minutes of that game and you could tell they weren’t happy about it. That says a lot about us.”
While the Dukes have had success on the court as a team, they have also been noticed by the league as Duquesne has had either the Atlantic 10 Player of the Week or Rookie of the Week nine times on the season already.
That includes senior guard April Robinson, who is averaging a team-high 14.9 points per game, just one of five Duquesne players averaging double figures on the season. Robinson was named conference player of the week for the third time already on the season after a week in which she scored 24 points on 9-of-14 shooting against Pitt. In the A-10 opener versus Dayton, Robinson recorded the third triple-double in school history with 17 points, 10 rebounds and 11 assists.
Freshman guard Chassidy Omogrosso was named rookie of the week as the Dukes swept the A-10 weekly awards for the second time this season. She averaged 14.0 points per game and shot 52.9 percent (9-17) from the field, including 62.5 percent (5-8) from beyond-the-arc during the week.
“It’s great as a coach to see your players get recognized,” said Burt. “Individual attention is nice. It’s good for the players. It’s good for the program and it is good for recruiting. But at the end of the day I think our kids are most proud of what we are doing as a team.”
The Dukes are a fun team to watch and not your typical women’s team. They play an up-tempo game can shoot the ball with the best of them. This is a team that should appeal to not only the die-hard women’s basketball fan, but the casual fan as well.
“We have 14 kids that can score and they all have the green light to shoot the three,” Burt said. “We aren’t the type of team that grinds out 52-48 games. We are averaging 77-78 points per game. We are going to play fast and in that you get to see what the beauty of basketball is. We keep it up tempo and we are a fun team to watch.”
Yet even though they are having success on the court, the Dukes aren’t getting the respect around the nation that they should.
That alone fuels this team and gives them that chip on their shoulder that they take into every game.
One of those instances could have come in the preseason when Robinson was only voted second-team all-conference.
“You can’t tell me there are five better players in the conference than April Robinson,” said Burt. “That was shocking.”
“We have an expectation,” Burt said. “We have a bigger chip on our shoulder this season. We are motivated by what people say and do.”
Sometimes when a team is experiencing success they can become complacent with that success.
You can bet that won’t happen to this Duquesne team as everywhere you look they don’t get the respect they deserve. If you think they played with a chip on their shoulder before, wait until you see what happens after they only received two votes in the latest AP Poll, which is a joke in itself.
“How do we not become complacent?” Burt added. “Just look at the fact that we only received two votes in the latest AP Poll. That’s motivation right there. That’s just us not getting respect. We already have wins against four top 100 teams and three against the top 50. It’s about us going out there and proving people wrong.”
That’s something this Duquesne team is likely going to do the rest of the season.
There’s a lot of basketball in the city of Pittsburgh and Burt’s Duquesne team very well could be the best team in the city, men’s or women’s.
“I’m honored to hear that,” Burt said. “For me on a personal level it is almost strange. You know my story. I grew up playing basketball in a barn. But from a team perspective we believe that.”
Photo Credit: Duquesne University
