City of Basketball Love

Joseph Santoliquito (@JSantoliquito)
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ASTON — A year ago, Donte “The Griz” Dupriest was stuck in a dead end, mundane job, working security at a South Philly Christian Street YMCA. He would sometimes languish over 12-hour days, seven days a week, his feet swollen and numb from being on them all the time, his eyes half-mast from the long hours. He was ready to give up on himself, and ready to give up on basketball, too.

That changed when retired Neumann University coach Fran Maxwell sought him out and tracked him down. That changed when he found some people willing to invest and believe in him.

Maybe it explains why the 6-foot-4, junior forward from Bartram plays with the reckless, relentless he does. Maybe it explains why although he’s 6-4 and he plays like he’s 6-9; why his alacrity stems from a fear that his next play may be his last, like he is playing in a burning building about to collapse.

Buoyed by Dupriest, Neumann University will be heading to the Division III NCAA Tournament, after a thrilling 83-77 overtime victory to win the Atlantic East conference over the two-time defending conference champion Marymount (Va.) on Saturday afternoon before a packed house at Neumann University’s Mirenda Center.

It is first Atlantic East title and NCAA Tournament berth since 2022 for the Knights (20-7). They also became one of the first teams in the Philadelphia area to earn a ticket to their Big Dance.

Much of that is a credit to Dupriest, whose 22 points and 14 rebounds were vital to the Knights advancing. But no play was more important than Dupriest coming out on Marymount’s Jase Mosley with 25 seconds left in overtime and deflecting a pass that resulted in a Marymount turnover, and Neumann clinging to a 79-77 lead, on a Dupriest bucket 19 seconds earlier.

Knights 6-foot junior guard DJ Earl led all scorers with 30, and it was 6-3 sophomore forward Jarell Keel (ANC) who put the finishing touches on the game by sinking a pair of free throws with 12 seconds left in overtime.

As he sat there holding a piece of twine in his hand from the postgame net-cutting ceremony, Dupriest got a chance for a moment to reflect on the twisting, turning odyssey his life took, from barely being unwanted coming out of Bartram, barely recruited, to winding up at Cochise Junior College, in Douglas, Arizona, for three years, to winding up working a few years at the YMCA with seemingly no future in basketball ahead of him.

“I was unwanted, I had to go through a lot of darkness to get to the light,” said Dupriest, who earned the nickname, “Grizzly Bear” at Bartram. “I didn’t believe in myself. I was ready to give up. My sister, Shydia (Boone), basically raised me when my mom died of cancer when I was 14. So, yeah, this all means a lot to me.

“What changed everything was Neumann coming into my life. I never even heard about Neumann until coach Max and coach Tony James called me. There were a lot of sleepless nights. There were a lot of times I wanted to quit, I wanted to give up. I didn’t want to do this.”

His sister Shydia, Maxwell, James and Neumann head coach Jim Rullo were persistent. They were not willing to hear ‘no’ from Dupriest. They got him accepted at Neumann in the fall, and he enrolled in December.

“We were on Donte for 18 months and we stayed in contact with him,” said Rullo, the father of Cardinal O'Hara's Drexel-bound star Molly Rullo. “He is obviously a tremendous basketball player, but when you meet him and know his background, you understand why he plays the way he does. He’s an impact on this team, with everyone on campus, and he even has a part-time job on campus. He is very infectious and is a joy to be around. He reminds me of Malik Rose at Drexel. He is always encouraging, always there for his teammates.

“He’s been a joy to have and he’s impacted this team. He is a double-double machine. It’s a credit to coach Maxwell, Scott Bogart, and Tony James. We have been fortunate to allow kids to have an opportunity. Donte is making the most of it. He does everything you ask him to do, and we’re not very deep. Our margin of error is very tight. For us getting the game into overtime was a success.”

A huge play came with 39 seconds left in regulation. Trailing 69-67, and Marymount with possession coming out of a timeout, Marymount’s Miles Phillips tried a three-pointer that Mike Smith III, out of Chester, came up to block. The Knights used the possession to tie it on a Bryan Etienne layup with 14 seconds left.

Dupriest got up in Mosley’s face to alter the final shot, sending the game into overtime.

From there, Dupriest, Etienne and Smith played key roles in stopping Marymount from any late charges. The Knights got out to a 77-74 lead with 2:53 to play on a Dupriest short jumper. A pair of Mosley free throws tied it up again at 77-77 with 44 seconds to play, when Dupriest rose one more time to make a game-changing play, reaching up and plowing through the Marymount defense for what resulted in the game-winning basket.

“This is special for Donte, because I know everything he went through,” Boone said. “He worked all day, and all night at that Y. He hated it. I was never ready to give up on him. He had the Neumann coaches who believed in him. It is an amazing journey. He’ll be the first one in three generations to graduate college from my family. That means a lot to me. My message to him was ‘Don’t stop.’ He’s 23, he has another year. I didn’t want to see him give up something he loved.

“He needed to come home from Arizona. Basketball has helped his life and changed his life, it really did. I can say he’s finally happy.”

Dupriest, now an honor-roll student, can say the same himself: “I had to get home from Arizona. I never even heard about Neumann until people started talking to me. I was scared, I hadn’t played in two years and I didn’t think I was eligible. I was working 10-, 12-hour shifts trying to pay the rent. My circle, my support system helped me get through it all. It’s a strange feeling, believing in yourself. This means everything to me. This is crazy.”

A year ago, Dupriest was mired in nowhere, and on Saturday, he was holding an MVP award and the championship netting around his neck, about to play in the NCAA Tournament.

Call it the power of basketball.

Joseph Santoliquito is an award-winning sportswriter based in the Philadelphia area who began writing for CoBL in 2021 and is the president of the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be followed on BlueSky here