The 2009–10 Duquesne Dukes men's basketball team represented Duquesne University in 2009–10 NCAA Division I men's basketball season.
Duquesne hoped to build on the success of the 2008–09 season and began the new year with five straight victories. Soon, however, a string of setbacks hit the team, including the loss of two players, one due to injury and the other to suspension. Duquesne lost its final non-conference game and slipped into a five-game losing streak. The team did manage to break the streak, but had trouble gaining any momentum. In mid-February the Dukes finally seemed to break free with a solid 21 point victory over La Salle, followed by a crucial road upset of the University of Charlotte, which was ranked first in the Atlantic 10 Conference at the time, and finally another upset of the University of Dayton Flyers in front of a sellout Pittsburgh crowd. However, Duquesne then lost its final two road games of the season.
Despite its lackluster season's end, Duquesne won an invitation to the College Basketball Invitational postseason tournament. The team lost to the Princeton Tigers, and the Dukes were eliminated in the first round, ending the 2009 season.
Duquesne University
Duquesne University, also called Duquesne University of the Holy Spirit, is a private Catholic university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The university's Duquesne Dukes compete in NCAA Division I (D-I). D-I schools are generally the major collegiate athletic powers, with larger budgets, more elaborate facilities, and higher numbers of athletic scholarships in comparison to Division II and III. This level was once called the University Division of the NCAA, and the Division II and III levels, the College Division; this terminology was replaced with the current numeric (I, II, III) divisions in 1973.
The Dukes have played twice in national championship games in the 1950s and won the National Invitation Tournament championship in 1955, when the NIT was the premier collegiate basketball tournament in the country. The men's basketball Dukes annually play its cross-town rival, the University of Pittsburgh Panthers, in Pittsburgh's highly anticipated and well-attended City Game. The current head coach is Ron Everhart, who has a two-year record of 27–32 (13–19 in the Atlantic 10 Conference). Well-known Duquesne players of the past include All-Americans Chuck Cooper, Sihugo Green, Dick Ricketts and Willie Somerset, and Norm Nixon, who won the Most Outstanding Player in Duquesne's 57–54 victory over the Villanova Wildcats in the 1977 Atlantic 10 men's basketball tournament.
Preseason
Duquesne lost only one starter, Aaron Jackson, from the 2008–09 team which ended with a record of 21–13, the first time since 1981 that the school had 20 or more wins in a season. Picked to finish 12th in the Atlantic 10, Duquesne went on to finish second, losing to Temple by only five points in the conference championship game. This earned Duquesne a bid into the National Invitation Tournament, its first postseason appearance since 1994. The team was eliminated in a double-overtime first round loss to Virginia Tech, but the Dukes' unlikely success inspired the hope of a return to the NIT, or perhaps even the NCAA tournament.
On May 12, 2009, the school announced that two freshman forwards, Shawntez Patterson and Aleksandar Milovic, had been released from their scholarships and cleared to transfer to other schools. Both saw limited action in the 2008 season. Shawntez Patterson transferred to Pensacola Junior College, and Aleksandar Milovic transferred to the University of Hawaii.
Andre Marhold, a small forward and the first of two incoming freshmen, signed with Duquesne on April 16. Marhold, a native of Pittsburgh who moved to North Carolina for High School, averaged 17.0 points and 10.0 rebounds per game his senior year, in which his team was the regular season champion. He was ranked 188 in the top 1000 high school seniors by Hoop Scoop. Marhold turned down scholarship offers from Clemson, Charlotte, and Purdue.
Several weeks later on May 13, guard Sean Johnson of Queens, New York also signed with the team. He attended Christ the King high school, whose basketball team finished his senior year ranked fourth in the state and eleventh in the nation by ESPN. He averaged 22.4 points per game and was named New York City Catholic High School Athletic Association Most Valuable Player. Johnson also received scholarship offers from Nebraska, Manhattan, and Quinnipiac.