PITTSBURGH — Teaching is basically baked into Dru Joyce III’s DNA. His father is a basketball coach. His brother, too.
When Duquesne coach Keith Dambrot referred to as Joyce within the spring of 2022 and requested his former level guard to assist him flip round a program greater than 40 years faraway from its final NCAA match look, Joyce understood the project.
“I may have run from the scenario,” Joyce mentioned. “He was coming off the worst 12 months of his profession. I knew he solely had a pair extra years left … I knew it was a threat, however definitely worth the threat.”
One which paid off handsomely. For Duquesne. For Dambrot. And for the person now entrusted to make sure the Dukes’ electrical run to an Atlantic 10 title and the second spherical of the NCAA match final month wasn’t a one-off.
Combating again tears Monday whereas speaking in regards to the success of a lifelong journey, Joyce — employed final Thursday to exchange the now-retired Dambrot — harassed he is able to decide up the place his longtime mentor and good friend left off.
“That is going to be tough to repeat … [but] we will increase the trophy once more,” Joyce mentioned. “We’re simply getting began.”
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Joyce, 39, spent the previous two years as an affiliate head coach underneath Dambrot, who determined final summer season that the 2023-24 season can be his final. And whereas he did not have an official say within the resolution, Dambrot made it very clear to athletic director Dave Harper and everybody else at Duquesne that Joyce was primed for the job.
Even when Joyce wasn’t fairly so positive.
“You by no means actually know in case you’re prepared,” Joyce mentioned.
Possibly, however Joyce believes he ready himself anyway. Requested if he handled final season as an audition of kinds — it wasn’t uncommon for Joyce to run practices this 12 months whereas Dambrot helped spouse Donna in her battle towards breast most cancers — and Joyce nodded.
“You are at all times in an interview-type course of as an assistant coach … since you wish to put your finest foot ahead in case you aspire to be a head coach,” Joyce mentioned. “You do not have to try this blatantly, you simply do it organically by being who you might be.”
What the Dukes, who completed 25-12 and earned this system’s first NCAA match victory since 1969, see in Joyce is a youthful model of the relentlessly energetic Dambrot.
“They’re the identical,” sophomore guard Kareem Rozier mentioned. “He is nonetheless received that fireside lit underneath him and we see it each day. When Coach D wasn’t yelling or doing what he [does], [Joyce] made positive to take the torch and do it.”
Whereas Duquesne president Ken Gormley mentioned the varsity did a “thorough nationwide search,” in the end the selection wasn’t tough to make.
“There is not any query in our thoughts that Dru was the most effective individual, the right individual to proceed the upward trajectory,” Gormley mentioned.
Joyce’s private trajectory has been pointing up for the higher a part of 30 years. He and lifelong good friend LeBron James grew to become shut whereas in grade faculty, a bond they maintained throughout their highschool profession taking part in for Dambrot at St. Vincent-St. Mary’s in Akron, Ohio and have continued to take care of effectively into maturity.
It was James who formally broke the information of Joyce’s promotion final week, although Joyce laughed when requested if there’s an opportunity James — who at 40 has made it clear he does not count on to play for much longer — will function this system’s official “insider.”
“I feel he is received different issues to do,” Joyce mentioned with a smile.
So does Joyce, although it is the one factor others instructed him he was able to way back, maybe even earlier than Joyce knew it himself.
“I heard so many individuals inform me from a younger age, ‘You are going to be a head coach in the future,'” Joyce mentioned. “I am right here, and it feels as if I made them fortune tellers. I had an opportunity to make them proper and I am happy with that.”
