Duquesne MBB Undone By Threes, Second Half Shooting In Loss To DePaul

The Duquesne Men’s Basketball Team fell to 0-3 on the season after losing 84-58 at DePaul Friday evening.

Maximus Edwards paced the Dukes with his 13 points, while Jake DiMichele came off the bench, earning 11 points. Jakub Necas achieved a career high with his four assists.

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Duquesne opened the game 4-of-6 from three-point range but finished 6-for-22. Additionally, the Dukes were contained to nine assists, were outrebounded 40-26, fell 22-6 in second-chance points and dropped the bench battle 30-21.

The 58 points represent a season low for Duquesne, which shot 28.6% from the field in the second half and missed all seven of its three-point shots.

“Terrible start to the second half,” Duquesne coach Dru Joyce III told the radio broadcast postgame. “That’s really the impact of the game. That 16-6 run didn’t determine the whole game, there were plays throughout, but you have to be ready to play. We gave up too many open threes in that segment. We didn’t play good basketball and from that point it was catch up. We weren’t able to really chip away. We played even and in the very end they ran away in the score, but in reality, it was even. (It was a) 4-to-6 point difference between the teams, but that 16-6 run, that’s where we lost control of the game.”

DePaul (4-0) had five players achieve double figures, paced by Isaiah Rivera’s 18 points on 7-of-9 shooting. Joining him were David Skogman (16 and nine rebounds), Jacob Meyer (13), Conor Enright (10 and eight assists) and Troy D’Amico (10).

As a team, the Blue Demons shot 13-for-25 on its three-point shot attempts and recorded 23 assists on 29 made baskets.

It was a quick start for Duquesne, most specifically Edwards, who after an 0-10 performance against Princeton connected for a pair of three-point shots. He would record eight points in a 10-2 run to open the contest.

DePaul’s first two points of the game came from the free-throw line as it went without a basket for nearly five minutes.

The Blue Demons cut its deficit to a point, before DiMichele buried a three-point shot to create some separation and Matus Hronsky only added to that off a Jakub Necas pass.

Duquesne held onto the lead for over 10 minutes, but DePaul utilized a 17-2 run as it caught fire from three-point range to build an advantage, much to the delight of its home crowd.

When Enright buried a triple, the second consecutive Blue Demons triple, Joyce called a timeout in an attempt to regroup his team.

DePaul scored 13 consecutive points in the run as the Dukes were held off the scoreboard for 3:49 of game action, before Kareem Rozier turned a David Dixon dish into three points.

In the closing stretch of the first half, Jahsean Corbett twice cut Duquesne’s deficit to three points, but it could not draw closer before the buzzer sounded.

Instead, Rivera’s three-point shot with 24 seconds remaining in the half, placed DePaul in front 37-31 at halftime.

Skogman, who previously played for Atlantic 10 program Davidson, opened the scoring in the second half from three-point range. opening an 8-2 run. When Meyer buried a three-point attempt, DePaul’s edge exceeded double digits.

Joyce had tried calling a timeout early in the half to stop the run, but it was not to be.

An 11-1 Blue Demon run in the earlier stages of the second half, which concluded with another Meyer trifecta, stretched the edge to 21 points.

Duquesne’s response was a 6-0 run, but DePaul had another long-range answer, this time Rivera played spoiler.

Duquesne got no closer than 14 points after that and the Blue Demons closed the game on a 13-2 run.

There was a change to the starting lineup for the first time this season as Tre Dinkins III got a nod taking Necas’s place in Duquesne’s opening five.

Duquesne returns to the UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse Tuesday when it hosts Milwaukee at 7 p.m. The broadcast will be carried by ESPN+.

“We have no choice, we have to continue to get better,” concluded Joyce. “There’s some things we did good tonight. We have to continue to progress, be able manage runs. It’s still a young team and still an early season. We’re still in November. It’s up to us to keep improving and keep working to get better each day and get ready for our next opponent.”