The Daily Pennsylvanian is a student-run nonprofit.

Please support us by disabling your ad blocker on our site.

Dave Duke, center, has moved up to the position of full-time assistant to Penn head coach Fran Dunphy. (Alyssa Cwanger/The Daily Pennsylvanian)

In this, an age when people change careers like shoes , Dave Duke is a refreshing sight. He's a basketball coach -- it's as simple as that. This is the job that he's always wanted to do, and he's made his living at it for the last 25 years. His career has run the gamut, from a decade of paying his dues on the high school level, to eight years as a Division I head man, all the way to a two-season stint as a volunteer assistant at Penn. Dave Duke has gone through just about everything a basketball coach can. And it hasn't been easy. Sure, he had tons of success early. He won a Philadelphia Catholic League title as a high school coach and attracted accolades as a precocious head coach at Lehigh, leading the Engineers to an 18-win season in 1989-90 and a 19-win campaign the following year. Dick Vitale even called Duke "one of the brightest young coaches in America." Then the going got tough. Duke had a losing record in each of his final five seasons at Lehigh and resigned after his second 4-23 campaign in four years. But that was five years ago, and Dave Duke now has a new job. With the departure of Steve Donahue -- who left Fran Dunphy's staff to become head coach at Cornell earlier this fall -- Duke has been promoted to a full-time assistant for the Quakers. "I think his level of experience is what makes him an asset to our basketball staff," Penn coach Fran Dunphy says. Although he seems perfectly comfortable in his cramped office at the Dunning Coaches' Center, Duke is not your typical bench aide. "I'm not as driven as some guys who are so focused on becoming a head coach," Duke says. "I was fortunate to be a head coach at a pretty young age, so that's not motivating me so much." It's not a desire to become a superstar that drives Duke anymore. He knows that he's never going to be Bob Knight or John Wooden. Instead, it's his love for the game of basketball that keeps him working hard. "This is what I've always done and what I've had a passion for," he says. "I've learned from a lot of good people, and this is what I do." * Duke grew up in Clifton Heights, Pa., in nearby Delaware County, and has always had a close connection to Philadelphia-area basketball. "I spent a lot of my Wednesday nights and Saturday nights right here at the Palestra watching Big 5 doubleheaders," Duke reminisces. In high school, he was a three-year starter and two-year captain, averaging 15.2 points for his career. When it came time for college, Duke stayed close to home and enrolled in Villanova. In his four years on the Main Line, the short-of-stature Duke only made the Wildcats team once, getting cut his other three years. Although he wasn't winning accolades on John Kraft's or Rollie Massimino's teams of that era, Duke was already sowing the seeds of a career on the sidelines. "While I was still at Villanova, I started coaching CYO in my spare time, because I knew this was something I was interested in doing," he says. And so Duke started in the mailroom, teaching hoops to kids who hadn't even taken algebra. But pretty soon, he started to make his way up the ladder. First, he went to take a job as an assistant coach at Cardinal O'Hara in nearby Springfield, Pa., working his way up to the head position at St. John Neumann High School in South Philadelphia. It was in his five-year term at Neumann that Duke really starting turning heads. In 1984-85, his final season in high school coaching, Duke marshalled Neumann to the championship of Philly's notoriously tough Catholic League, and he was subsequently honored as The Philadelphia Inquirer's Coach of the Year. Duke was in his early 30s, and he was a mentor on the rise. It didn't take long for colleges to start calling, so in the fall of 1985 Duke headed north to Bethlehem, Pa., to be a head assistant and recruiting coordinator under Fran McCaffery at Lehigh. After Duke spent just three seasons as a right-hand man, McCaffery bolted to Notre Dame to become one of Digger Phelps' assistants. Dave Duke was put in charge of the program. * The Lehigh Engineers do not exactly have a storied basketball tradition, and Duke makes that clear when he talks about his former employer. "Lehigh was a tough place to coach," Duke says. "You wind up getting overshadowed by wrestling and football, and it's somewhat tough to recruit. Here at Penn you have the city of Philadelphia and a bunch of different programs. Up at Lehigh, people tend to think it's only an engineering school. It's just a lot tougher." History seems to confirm Duke's claim. A number of talented coaches have led the Engineers and wound up with pretty unattractive records. Pete Carril, who led Princeton brilliantly for 30 years, went 11-12 in his one season at Lehigh, and Brian Hill, a long-time NBA head man, finished up with a 75-131 career mark with the Engineers. In fact, Duke's career record at Lehigh -- 90-134 over eight seasons -- is really quite impressive by the school's standards. The only Engineers coach with more career wins is Tony Packer, the father of CBS analyst Billy Packer, who rang up 112 victories in 16 seasons. In Duke's third season as head coach, Lehigh basketball moved to the Patriot League. With a scholarship-laden Fordham team leading the league and a gifted program at Holy Cross right behind the Rams, things got a lot rougher for the Engineers. "We had some tough years," Duke recalls. That's a fair estimation. Although Lehigh's 1993-94 and 1994-95 seasons saw Duke go a respectable 21-33, they were bookended by awful 4-23 campaigns. In the March immediately following the second of those 4-23 seasons, Duke resigned as the head of the program. In the Lehigh press release, the outgoing mentor said he was leaving to "pursue other coaching opportunities." It was clear that there would be no more opportunity in Bethlehem. * After leaving a less-than-perfect situation with the Engineers, Duke decided to try something new. "When I left, I wanted to be an NBA assistant," Duke said. "The way you usually become an assistant is to work your way up, first being a tape guy or something like that. I decided to go into the USBL." The United States Basketball League has its season in the spring and summer and includes players with NBA aspirations. Duke joined the Atlantic City Seagulls as assistant coach and director of player personnel, and his NBA longings were paired symbiotically with those of his players. He was a vital component of a Seagulls team that won back-to-back titles in 1997 and 1998. Soon enough, however, Duke realized that the USBL was not the optimal place to work. Having known Fran Dunphy since his early days of high school coaching, he became aware of an opening at Penn. "I enjoyed the situation in the USBL," Duke recalls. "We had a very good owner, but I missed college coaching, and I knew the Big 5 and the whole area. I just couldn't pass it up." Ivy League rules prohibit teams from having more than two paid assistants, so Duke had to work for free in his first two years at Penn. His wife, Maureen, worked throughout this period, and the Duke family -- which includes his two teenage daughters Christine and Kelly Ann -- was able to make ends meet without a coaching salary. In addition to a variety of responsibilities with the varsity program, Duke was in charge of the Quakers junior varsity team during his two years as a part-time assistant -- a task in which he took pleasure. "Those guys just love to play," Duke says. "That's what it's all about. There are no crowds at their games, they just want to play.... I loved those guys." Perhaps one of the reasons Duke loved the Penn JV team so much was because he saw a little bit of himself in those gym rats. Maybe he saw that same unabiding love of the game that has kept him in it for a quarter century.

Comments powered by Disqus

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.