Duquesne radio announcer Ray Goss — now in his 56th year as the “Voice of the Dukes" — says he’s connected with friends he hadn’t heard from in years since the team qualified for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament on Sunday.
“It’s been amazing,” said Goss, 87, during the Dukes on-court workout Wednesday at CHI Health Center in Omaha. “I didn’t realize so many people knew me. I’ve been getting phone calls, texts and everything. People out of the woodwork.”
Not only did the Dukes qualify for their first NCAA tourney berth since 1977 — when Goss called the game against Virginia Military Institute from Reynolds Coliseum in Raleigh, N.C. — but Dukes head coach Keith Dambrot announced the day after that he’s retiring after the tournament.
Dambrot said he toyed with the timing of the announcement before making it official.
“There’s never any great time to announce something like that,” said Dambrot, who’s been coaching the Dukes since 2018. “I thought about doing it after the Davidson game earlier in the year [Feb. 7], and I just didn’t.”
But after the home loss to Davidson, the Dukes won three of their next four games to reverse themselves and start an upward trend.
Still, even after the Dukes finished the regular season with four straight wins, Goss had questions about whether they could string four wins in four days in the A-10 conference tournament.
They did.
“Every game I felt, ‘I don’t think we’re going to win this one. Boy, are they going to be disappointed when we go back to the hotel and watch the [NCAA tournament] selection show and VCU is the team,'" Goss recalled. “But it was us. It shook me up.”
Since Dambrot’s announcement, the players have called the past few days before their first-round game against Brigham Young University (12:40 p.m. ET) “emotional” and a “whirlwind.”
Jake DiMichele, a freshman guard from McKees Rocks, said he senses the impact of the Dukes’ tournament berth and Dambrot’s announcement because his roots are close to Pittsburgh.
“It just means a lot to me,” said DiMichele. “I know going forward, even when I’m older, I feel like I’ll still get recognized for that accomplishment — helping bring Duquesne back to the [NCAA] tournament.”
That, after all, is the story, in Dambrot’s opinion.
“I’ve never wanted to be about me,” the coach said. “But by the same token, I wanted those guys to be 100 percent sure about my future ... what they were dealing with in the future.”
For the moment, No. 11 seed Duquesne (24-11) is dealing with the sixth-seeded BYU Cougars (23-10), a team that finished tied for fifth with Kansas in the Big 12 Conference.
