Atlantic 10 Conference Basketball Marketing: 3 Inspiring Things About #8 Duquesne

There's something (or things) that every program does a fantastic job of that we can learn from. In anything you do, if you can find the good in what someone does and do more of that and then avoid what you find to be less effective, you'll end up in a better place.

Thus far our journey through the Atlantic 10 has shown us #14 St Joseph's, #13 La Salle, and #12 Saint Louis, #11 Fordham, #10 U Mass, and #9 Temple. Let's keep moving.

#8 Duquesne

What the program is known for? Would you have guessed that Duquesne is the only school to have back-to-back #1 overall NBA draft picks? Dick Ricketts and Shihugo Green earned this honor back in 1955-1956. Yes, a LONG time ago. But the program has had success since then - earning 6 NCAA Bids -- the last one in 1977.

Why are they 8th? There's some good pieces here, and they are given to you in the right places - much like a nice point guard who distributes the ball to his big at the right point on the court... but there's a gap in real time updates and insight that keep the Dukes from crashing the upper half of the A-10 marketing.

What inspired me about Duquesne? (link here)



1. The Ticker Drives you into Facebook and Twitter.


We're definitely in an age of tickers. Whether it's ESPN or Pro Football Sundays, television leverages the scrolling ticker in sports coverage consistently. And Duquesne does this well on their site - one of the first times I've come across a chance to follow a program on Twitter or Facebook announced to me via a scrolling menu.

The infrastructure is here. My question is how they can evolve the ticker to provide the latest news to you in your sport. Let me customize that ticker, or simply customize it for me based on where I'm at. Or maybe you could elevate the latest Duquesne tweets to the scrolling menu, to keep the site fresh? I think they are onto something here, but need to offer ways to take the attention getting device and make it very personal.


2. Men's basketball highlights infiltrate the basketball home page


This is hot.

Hit the basketball home page and the first thing you see is a basketball highlight video. Nice. It's topical and a great message.

What could be better? Well... two things:

1. Make this sharable. This could be done by posting the video first to YouTube or Facebook and then embedding this into the Dukes site. Or it could be done by adding buttons to easily share this to your site of choice.
2. Update it frequently. It's March. Don't show me last year's highlight video -- show me last week's. (Or Last month's) The bottom line is they have a great opportunity and platform to show off exciting plays. And they need to take advantage!

All that said, the starting point Duquesne is at -- getting basketball highlights in front of a basketball hungry audience -- is strong.

3. Coach Ron Everhart Tout

At first, this may feel like a reach to you. Especially when you see that clicking on the image of Coach Everhart (above) takes you to the image below. There's a lot to be perplexed about here - the tout has no peak at what lies beneath and then just takes you to a Biography page.

So what gives?


Well it is the impact that putting your Coach front and center in your site can have. It just pops off the page, and gets my mind spinning at the possibilities.

Many schools put their coach into a separate URL, which they allow him to control and build. I think that schools instead need to look at how they can elevate their coach to hero status. He's the one who's going to draw in the recruit. What if this page gave you access to a day-by-day look into the program, brought to you by Coach Everhart? What if you got a look into his philosophy, what he values, and how he will help you evolve as a player and a person? Doing this and elevating it in the bold way Duquesne starts would create a big impact.

That's it, come back tomorrow as we keep moving through the A-10!