Duquesne and Dae Dae Grant and Coach Keith Dambrot just won the A-10 tournament and are heading to the NCAA tournament. It had been 47 years since Duquesne made the Tourney. Pains me to say it, but Dae Dae made the right move.
Coming into today he had scored 1171 points at Miami in his 1st 3 seasons and 1034 points at Duquesne going into today, so 2,205 career points, which would have been second in Miami history behind only Ron Harper.
So not only has he been honored twice on A-Ten All conference lists, and gotten to the NCAA, he also got paid for doing it. ( I don’t actually know that for a fact, but Duquesne was the first G5 teams to hire a guy to run their NIL and that was earlier in the Spring the year Dae Dae transferred).
Interesting fact I heard today is that Keith Dambrot’s father played 3 years at Duquesne in the 50’s and they were top 10 all 3 seasons.
Congratulations to Dae Dae. If schools like Duquesne are paying that kind of money it’s only going to get harder for schools like us to hang on to players.
I’m not saying it wasn’t the right move for Grant, but why are we congratulating him? He chose to bail on Miami after we fired a coach who was nowhere near successful. I don’t wish him ill, but I can’t get excited for someone who left my alma mater to play for Dambrot.
He worked hard, did everything right, stuck it out for three years, and only left when we fired the coach who recruited him and put in process a total rebuild. He didn’t badmouth the program afterwards like Sibande did. He didn’t skip his academic requirements like Safford did. He didn’t quit the team early like Adaway did. He didn’t go to a rival. He didn’t leave too late to find a replacement.
I was obviously disappointed when he left, but I can’t begrudge him for it.
I am not going to criticize GuardHawk for his opinion, I think many probably agree him. Quinoaburger lays it out perfectly why l still follow DaeDae and not so much some others.
If Pistol Pete had spent all three of his playing years at Miami he would be #1 on the all-time scoring list, surpassing Ron Harper. Antoine Davis would be #2, had he spent all five of his years in Oxford.
The thing that puts Maravich and Davis at #1 and #2 is that both played for their father and both put up an unbelievable number of shots per game. I don’t actually think either was as good as Harper, certainly not Davis. If either of those guys played for Miami under Shrider or Hedric or Coles, they might not have beaten Harper’s record playing in a normal offense.
Harper was actually a very good defensive player. The Pistol was not. After injury started to take its toll on Harp in the pros he reinvented himself as a solid defensive contributor in Chicago. And he still had offensive skills.
Duquense’s investment in Dae Dae paid some dividends today. They are rumored to have paid him $150-200k in NIL money for 2 years and now they are getting a bunch of free advertising. Plus, a unit from the NCAA tournament revenue share is valued at $2 million.