It's easy to see how and why Dru Joyce III was hired as Keith Dambrot's successor as head coach at Duquesne.
Forget for a moment that Joyce was a Dambrot disciple or that he remains good friends with arguably the most famous basketball player in the world. That only accounts for so much in the grand scheme, and it couldn't have been enough for him to be chosen by the administration at Old Main to lead the Dukes after Dambrot's retirement, an Atlantic 10 championship and a run in the NCAA Tournament.
Joyce comes from a basketball family. That basketball family instilled those values into him. Those values are what he wants to reflect on the Division I basketball program that is now his.
"It was my mom and my dad making me understand that each day requires you to try to be the best version of yourself," Joyce said in a one-on-one interview with DK Pittsburgh Sports Thursday at the UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse. "That requires certain disciplines, requires honesty and integrity about how you go about doing things and to be someone of high character. That doesn't mean that I won't have my downfalls and I won't fail, but to get back up and keep going, they've always been there preaching that message and I've seen it within their own lives, their ability to manage, to grow, to keep going, to keep adapting and adjusting."
Joyce's father, Dru Joyce II, and mother, Carolyn, put those values into their son when he took a liking to basketball at a young age. Joyce II is a well-traveled coach who helped LeBron James get into competitive basketball. He was a member of Dambrot's staff when Akron (Ohio) St. Vincent-St. Mary High School won three state championships from 1999-2003. Joyce III and James were teammates on those teams, and Joyce III and James maintain a close friendship to this date.
Influences can only take someone so far, and Joyce III had to do it himself at some point. Those teachings from his parents that meshed with the influences of Dambrot, James and former Cleveland State coach Dennis Gates are what makes Joyce who he is.
Those values made the 39-year-old the right fit for Dambrot and, now, Duquesne.
“You think about winning and championships and all that and those things are great. but more importantly for me is the success of the individuals within the program that, from a staff, from a player, they all have goals, they’ve got dreams," Joyce III said. "How do I help foster that? How do they reach what they would like to become? How do I help them when that doesn't go as planned? Can I be a beacon? Can I be someone useful to help them get to their next stop and destination? Because it's life there, there's something way bigger at stake than basketball. We're just fortunate to be able to play this game, to be able to learn and coach it. And that's a special thing. It's sacred. But it could be a moment, not a lifetime and for me, yeah, I'm super competitive. Yeah, I want to win badly. But I do know that I've always been raised that the game is way bigger than just basketball. So I'm never going to let that part from me.”
Joyce III began his coaching career upon retiring from international competition in 2019. He joined Gates' staff at Cleveland State and helped the Vikings to two Horizon League regular-season titles, a Horizon League tournament title and an appearance in the NCAA Tournament from 2019-'22. Gates left for Missouri after the 2021-'22 season, which led Joyce back to a familiar face in Dambrot at Duquesne.
Joyce helped Dambrot complete the build of a winner. The program went 9-9 in the 2020-'21 season and a forgettable 6-24 in the 2021-'22 season before Joyce arrived. Duquesne posted a 20-13 mark and finished sixth in the Atlantic 10 in the 2022-'23 season.
The season after that -- which would be Dambrot's final upon retirement -- achieved history not experienced since before Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon.
Duquesne rebounded from an 0-5 start in Atlantic 10 play to win the conference tournament and reach its first NCAA Tournament since 1977. That same team that went 6-24 two seasons prior won an NCAA Tournament game for the first time since 1969, when the Dukes defeated BYU March 21 in Omaha, Neb.
Joyce helped Dambrot accomplish his mission. Now, he gets to guide Duquesne on his own mission. He is going right into the fire just as Dambrot would want it.
“Our relationship isn't that way," Joyce said. "He wasn't a guy who was going to nurture you through the process. He's always going to be there to help you, but his style was, ‘I’ll throw you in the fire.’ He's not doing that with me now, not directly, but it's great to be able to call him still for us to have dialogue and conversation, whether it's around basketball, whether it's just what you doing today, you know, ‘how are you?’ I think that's more important than beating him up for knowledge.
"Man, I spent a lot of years around him. I should have picked up some good things already. He's going through a transition as well, so I want to be respectful of that and not just, ‘I’m the only one that's dealing with something.’ Well, ‘what's going on with you, coach,’ because this is something new that you're experiencing as well too. So I think that's important.”
Joyce kept and brought along some trusted basketball minds to his staff. He is retaining Rick McFadden, Steve Wright and Ari Stern but has added Chase Goldstein and Julian Sullinger this offseason. Goldstein was an assistant alongside Joyce for Gates at Cleveland State, and Sullinger spent six seasons as an associate head coach at Kent State.
"When I think about, OK, what's best for the program, what's best for me, because I'm only gonna be as good as my staff," Joyce said. "I understand it as they have to embody the same values that I do because this is the message I'm gonna need them to put out and if they don't have that type of buy in or belief, the guys will see right through it. I was a player. You instantly -- for some reason -- we have a feel for what's fake and what's phony. Now, we could be wrong, right? That doesn't mean we're 100% right, but it's something that our senses are trying to figure out. They're no different than all of us sitting in that chair 20, 30 years ago of trying to figure out who's really in, all the way in, who's really buying into this message."
He has been busy in the transfer portal, just as Dambrot was while building his winning teams. Joyce has added five guards through the portal: Jahsean Corbett (Chicago State), Cam Crawford (Marshall), Tre Dinkins (Canisius), Max Edwards (George Washington) and Alex Williams (Furman). Corbett averaged 15.4 points and 7.7 rebounds per game, and Dinkins averaged 15.4 points and 3.6 rebounds per game last season.
It might be easy to look at this transition and expect a return to the NCAA Tournament given the continuity along the bench and with the aggressiveness within the transfer portal. Joyce will be without star players Dae Dae Grant and Jimmy Clark III, among others from this last run with Dambrot, but that expectation will remain the same with Joyce in charge.
“From a basketball standpoint championships are always gonna be the outlook," Joyce said. "I don't mind people's expectations, their thoughts. That's fine and they're allowed to have those. As far as the program goes, what I understand about it is and what they didn't get to see is now we have to talk about every day as a step by step process. We ended holding the trophy, but the goal was a day by day. What did we do today? How did we get better today? Were we better than we were yesterday? And if not, let's recap, let's figure it out and let's get back on track."
He paused.
"To me, we just have to continue to build, continue to take the same approach of staying in the present of what can we do right now with this allotment of time. That's the most important thing. I can't hold a trophy right now. They're not handing it out. It's about building us into the form of winners, building us into the form of champions and, like I said, the outlook will always be to hold that trophy. I'm not going to cut our dreams short because I'm in my first year. That's not fair to those guys in the room. That's not fair to those players. They want to win a championship. So it's up to myself and our staff to figure out how we can do that. Does that define how successful we are? No. It won't be the final definition of Year 1, were we successful or not? But, it will feel great to hold the trophy.”
