Noted Duquesne Basketball Fan LeBron James Celebrated Their NCAA Tournament Upset Of BYU

LeBron James did not go to college. The Los Angeles Lakers star, as we all know, went right from high school to the NBA, but of course, he is still a fan of college athletics — he’s a fixture at USC basketball games due to his eldest son, Bronny, suiting up for them, and he’s a longtime fan of the Ohio State Buckeyes.

But there is a third team in this equation: the Duquesne Dukes. The winners of the Atlantic 10 Tournament this year, Duquesne is in the Big Dance for the first time since 1977. And on Thursday afternoon, they pulled an upset by taking down BYU in a 6-11 game, 71-67. In the immediate aftermath, James hopped onto Twitter and celebrated the accomplishment.

Now, you might be wondering why on earth LeBron James is rooting for a private school in Pittsburgh that has a little more than 6,000 undergraduate students. The answer is that the Dukes are coached by Keith Dambrot, who was James’ head coach at St. Vincent-St. Mary’s High School in Akron for the first two years of his high school career. One of James’ high school teammates and close friends, Dru Joyce III, is the associate head coach at Duquesne, and also got a shout out after the win. (As an added bonus, Joyce’s father was an assistant at SVSM who got promoted when Dambrot took a job as an assistant coach at Akron and is still in charge to this day.)

Next up for the Dukes is a matchup against either Illinois or Morehead State, which we assume James will watch very closely.