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Sunday, January 26, 2003

This is Duquesne, where the tradition of losing is so rich and thick that when the Dukes took a 12-point lead about eight minutes into the game, you knew it didn't make any difference.

This is Duquesne where the losses come easy, where the rebuilding never stops.

This is Duquesne, where hope springs eternal but never comes to fruition.

That 12-point lead became an 18-point deficit as the Dukes fell to St. Bonaventure, 86-78, last night at the Palumbo Center. The Dukes are 7-12 overall and 1-5 in the Atlantic 10 and headed for a ninth consecutive losing season. Since they were 17-13 in 1994, they're 90 games under .500. Before '94, they had a stretch of seven consecutive losing seasons.

If you're counting, that's one winning season in 17 years.

This is basketball purgatory.

St. Bonaventure buried the Dukes under an avalanche of 3-pointers -- making 10 in 15 attempts in the second half. But this wasn't just a case of brilliant marksmanship. Shabby defense was involved, too.

"We have to get out there on those shots and get a hand in their face," said junior guard Jimmy Tricco, who scored 17 for Duquesne.

Nor could the Dukes handle Marques Green, a 5-foot-7 guard who made a fashion statement by wearing his shorts halfway down his shins and showing almost no leg. Green made a basketball statement by scoring 17 points and dishing out 11 assists, a category in which he leads the nation.

Duquesne Coach Danny Nee was so impressed he said Green might be able to earn a living in the pros.

That's not something being said about the Duquesne players, who are an upgrade from the recent past but still not good enough to win in the Atlantic 10.

It's the league in which they play that makes the Dukes' inability to win so puzzling. The Atlantic 10 has come down several sizes in recent years. Where once an argument could have been made that the league was not far removed from the Big East, that's laughable these days.

The decline of Temple and Massachusetts, from nationally prominent teams to teams with records well below .500, has robbed the league of much of its prestige. The Dukes, for the most part, are playing in a league of comparable schools. But try as they might, they cannot escape their treadmill of defeat.

No disrespect to the likes of Rhode Island, St. Bonaventure, Fordham, Massachusetts, LaSalle and George Washington, but the Dukes should at least be competitive with those teams. In a league with that kind of competition, winning seasons shouldn't be nine years apart.

St. Bonaventure is a good example. Like Duquesne, it's a Catholic university that does not overemphasize sports. Unlike Duquesne, it's stuck in the middle of nowhere. But the Bonnies are not wallowing in defeat. They're working on three consecutive winning seasons and three consecutive postseason appearances.

The Bonnies don't see defeat lurking around every corner. They're not psyched out every time they walk into an opposing gym. If St. Bonaventure can have such a program, why can't Duquesne?

It's not from a lack of effort. Nee, who has proven he can win with successful stints at Ohio University and Nebraska, has decent talent on this team. Tricco, Kevin Forney, who scored 21 points, and Ron Dokes, who had 11 and a game-high seven rebounds, should form the nucleus of a team that can win.

Nee was asked if the constant losing makes it more difficult to keep his players' attention.

"It does," he said, "but I'm an old coach. I'm like a jockey. I know how much horse I have under me. We have some immediate goals and some long-range goals.

"You have to be sensitive to the players. That's why I'm giving them tomorrow off. I want them to watch the Super Bowl. I want them to be college students.

"But the losses do mount."

Tricco, who began his college career at Gonzaga, maintains the team isn't giving up.

"We're still competing. There's definitely a light at the end of the tunnel. We expect to win a bunch more ball games."

Maybe they will.

But if ever there was proof that losing is a hard habit to break, it's Duquesne.