Keith Dambrot

His uncle Irwin Dambrot played basketball for the 1950 City College of New York (CCNY) team, the only school to win both the NCAA Tournament and the NIT in the same season, and was the MVP of the NCAA tournament that season and the No. 1 draft pick (selected seventh overall) by the New York Knicks in the 1950 NBA draft.

Dambrot attended Firestone High School, playing baseball and point guard in basketball for the school teams.

In college at the University of Akron, he played third base on the Akron Zips baseball team (of which he was captain and MVP) for the school, establishing what at the time was a school record for career hit by pitch, with 28.

His father Sid Dambrot played on Duquesne Dukes men's basketball teams that were ranked No. 1 in the nation from 1952 to 1954.

Keith Brett Dambrot (born October 26, 1958) is an American college basketball coach and the current men's basketball head coach of Duquesne University.

During his high school head coaching career, he coached future NBA star LeBron James for two years.

During 13 seasons of head coaching at the University of Akron, he had a regular game season 305–139 record and was the winningest coach in the program's history.

He is a three-time Mid-American Conference Coach of the Year.

Dambrot entered the season in fifth place in league history with a .628 win percentage while coaching in the MAC (182–109 overall; 162–75 Akron, 20–34 CMU), eighth in overall wins (182), 11th in league games winning percentage (.600, 90–60) and 10th in conference wins (90).

He graduated in 1982 with a degree in management.

In 1984 he earned an MBA from the University of Akron.

His first basketball coaching job came while he was a college student, when he helped coach the high school junior varsity at his alma mater Firestone, and they won the Akron City Series JV championship.

Upon graduating college, he started as an assistant basketball coach at Akron.

Dambrot began his head coaching career at Division II schools Tiffin University for two seasons from 1984 to 1986 and at Ashland University for two seasons from 1989 to 1991, At Ashland, he led his team each year into the NCAA D-II Men's Basketball tournament.

In between, he was an assistant coach at Eastern Michigan University.

At 32 years of age, Dambrot replaced Charlie Coles as coach of Central Michigan University for the 1991–92 season.

He coached the team for two seasons, and was fired for making a controversial comment before a game against Miami University.

He had asked the players if he could use a controversial word (the "N-word") in addressing the team before he actually did, and they agreed, but he still was fired.

He sued the university in a wrongful discrimination lawsuit, and all 11 black players on the team joined him in the suit, claiming the university's policy against discriminatory language was too vague, but he lost the suit, though the students prevailed in overturning the school's language policy.

The incident at Central Michigan essentially blackballed Dambrot from college coaching.

Dambrot was only able to coach at the Akron Jewish Community Center and in some summer leagues.

Additionally, Akron has competed in the Mid-American Conference tournament title game in six of the last eight years and is just the second league school to have appeared in at least five-straight finals (Miami (Ohio) 1997–2001).

In his first seven seasons in charge of the program, Akron amassed a 162–75 (.680) overall record, including an 80–36 mark in MAC play and a 91–15 tally in home games (50–8 in MAC play at home).

In 1998, he became the head coach at St. Vincent–St. Mary HS in Akron, Ohio.

During his three seasons there, he guided the Fighting Irish to a 69–10 record.

During the last two years of his tenure as coach there, future NBA star LeBron James was on his squad, and they won two consecutive state championships, as well as were nationally ranked.

James took part in $1 clinics Dambrot conducted at the local Jewish Community Center.

Before playing for Dambrot, James had met with him, and followed up on the accusations made about him during his stint at Central Michigan.

In his book, Shooting Stars, James said that he did not believe that Dambrot was a racist.

Dambrot left St. Vincent-St.

Mary in 2001 to return to coaching as an assistant at the collegiate level at his alma mater, the University of Akron.

Since becoming the head coach of Akron in 2004, Dambrot led Akron to the postseason in four-straight and five of the last six seasons – participating in the NCAA Tournament in 2009, 2011 and 2013, the National Invitation Tournament in 2008 and 2006 and the College Basketball invitational (CBI) in 2010.

Akron has won 20-plus games in each of the last six years – one of only 20 teams in the country to do so – and posted 19 victories in Dambrot's first season (2004–05).

Only three other schools in the nation - also Duke, Gonzaga and Kansas - had accomplished that feat.

The Zips have won at least 21 games in each of the 12 seasons – a feat unmatched in program history.

In 2010, he was elected into the Summit County Sports Hall of Fame, and in 2013 he won the Red Auerbach Coach of the Year Award as the country's top Jewish college basketball coach.

Dambrot was born in Akron, Ohio, and is Jewish.

Dambrot's mother, Faye, was a psychology professor at the University of Akron while he was growing up.

Those 162 victories tied for the most by a MAC team and tied for 29th-best nationally during that seven-season span.

In 13 seasons as a collegiate head coach he owned a 270–145 (.650) overall record.