Duquesne associate head coach Dr, u Joyce IIIwho was LeBron James’ teammate at St. Vincent-St. Mary, is getting his first opportunity as a head coach at the college level.
Per CBS Sports’ Jon Rothstein, Joyce is being promoted to the role after Keith Dambrot retired following the team’s loss to Illinois in the NCAA tournament.
Dambrot was a head coach for 22 seasons with three different programs. He spent seven seasons with the Dukes after being hired in March 2017.
The 65-year-old was the coach at St. Vincent-St. Mary for the first two seasons Joyce and James were on the team.
After the 2000-01 high school season, Dambrot took an assistant head-coaching job at his alma mater, the University of Akron. He was promoted to head coach starting with the 2004-05 season.
Joyce played for the Zips from 2003 to ’07. He had a 13-year career playing professional basketball in various leagues overseas, including Basketball Bundesliga, the Polish Basketball League and ProA.
After his playing career ended, Joyce returned to his home state after accepting a job as an assistant on Dennis Gates’ staff at Cleveland State in August 2019.
Dambrot announced before the start of the NCAA tournament he was going to retire at the end of the season.
“I didn’t want to cheat [the job],” Dambrot said. “And I just felt like I could see myself losing that edge at some point. And that’s why I said, ‘I don’t want to end like that.’ I’m not built that way.”
The Dukes defeated BYU in the first round for the program’s first tournament victory since the 1968-69 season when there were only 25 teams in the field. They lost in the second round to Illinois on March 23.
Joyce just wrapped up his second season as the associate head coach on Dambrot’s staff. He is taking over a program that has won at least 20 games in consecutive years for the first time since 1970-71 and 1971-1972.
