Duquesne helps basketball coach Dan Burt celebrate his birthday with a 4-year contract extension

In his 54 years on this earth, Dan Burt has rarely experienced a better day than Monday.

First, Duquesne announced that it had extended Burt’s contract as coach of the women’s basketball team by four years through the 2027-28 season.

Meanwhile, Saint Vincent College invited him to the Pittsburgh Steelers training camp, where he and his son watched practice and listened to a speech by Pro Football Hall of Fame member Donnie Shell. He also found time to go go-karting with his son and was so busy that he almost missed another big event.

“Today is my birthday,” he said. “I just realized that.”

So what can he do as an encore on Tuesday?

“Washington County Fair,” he said.

First, Burt will pause and count his blessings and go through the notes he got from the Steelers and entered into his phone about how to make training more efficient.

“It’s a whole different game and the layout is different,” he said. “But you can pick up little things and say, ‘OK, we can start our drills with a couple more stations to address each developmental skill.’ Hopefully we’ll incorporate a few things.”

More importantly, the contract extension gives Burt the opportunity to finish his career at Duquesne.

“When I took the head coaching job 12 years ago, I said at the press conference that this would be my last coaching job,” said Burt, who previously spent six seasons as an assistant at Duquesne. “I’ve been committed to this since Day 1. I’m really looking forward to being here for another four years, hopefully four more years beyond that.”

“At a time of uncertainty in college sports, especially in recruiting, when you have someone who is from Pittsburgh (he’s a Trinity High School graduate) and has been attending a local school for 18 years, people know you’re committed to your university.

“If you can say to your local kids or your international players, ‘Hey, look, I’ve been here for 12 years, I’ve been in the program for 18 years and I have a new four-year contract,’ there are very few coaches in America who can say that.”

Burt is grateful to find stability in a job that often doesn’t offer it.

“As a man, when you coach a women’s sport, you don’t know if you’ll ever get that opportunity at the highest level,” he said. “When I was an assistant for 15 years, my goal was always just to be the head coach of a good Division III school if I could do that.”

Burt seized his opportunity and became the Duquesne program’s all-time winningest coach with a record of 209-132 (.613) and 107-66 (.618) in the Atlantic 10. Since taking the job, the 209 wins are the third-most by any coach in the A-10 school, behind Fordham (215) and Dayton (210). The 107 conference wins are seventh all-time in league history. The 2023-24 season was Burt’s seventh with at least 20 wins (21), and 13 in the conference tied the program record.

While chasing Fordham and Dayton, Burt said, Duquesne kept up with those rivals in terms of commitment.

“The facilities in these schools are very, very good,” he said. “We were able to keep up with them.”

Burt was hired in 2013 to replace Suzie McConnell-Serio, who had been named head coach at Pitt. He had originally planned to follow McConnell-Serio to Pitt as recruiting coordinator, but a desire to run his own program led him to apply for and get the job at Duquesne.

“I was really fortunate,” he said, “that the administration, including Greg Amodio, our athletic director at the time, and our president Charles Daugherty, believed in me when I left to take the job at Pitt.”

Burt said he plans to repay his current employers at Duquesne, athletic director Dave Harper and president Ken Gormley.

“I’ll never be Dean Smith, but I’ve always wanted to be in a place where I can really impact people and their lives and a program,” he said. “I think we’ve accomplished that.”

“As long as they allow me, I will stay. I have no plans to go anywhere.”