Inside the Dukes: Jak Of All Trades

Cam Crawford was looking to avenge two earlier three-point misses and not just to assist the team, but because there was a special someone in the crowd for him, his mother.

So when Tre Dinkins III rescued a near backcourt violation and David Dixon had a jump pass at the ready, Crawford was waiting for the catch at the left corner.

The basket put the Duquesne Men’s Basketball Team in front by 11 points over Loyola Chicago with 1:31 remaining in Saturday afternoon’s home contest at the UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse.

“I was celebrating with my mom,” Crawford beamed. “She doesn’t get to come to a lot of games, so anytime she’s in the building it’s always special for me. I was 0-for-2 previously and got a good look thanks to Dave and it felt good.”

Huge 3 by Cam Crawford has the Dukes up 11 with just over a minute to play. pic.twitter.com/pxcZY2ZlCt

— Tristan (@TristanHuyett) February 9, 2025

Duquesne would be all smiles moments later, ending a five-game losing streak, with a 69-56 victory over the Ramblers.

“I’ve been here before, I was here last year and it’s like Cinderella story all over again,” sophomore Jakub Necas explained. “I feel like this is going to bring us even more together. You know what they say, you have to lose big to win big and this five-game losing streak just brought us together even more and we’re on the right track.”

Loyola Chicago was never fully able to get into its offensive sets and leading scorer Des Watson scored 14 points, but it came on 19 shots, he never truly found a steady rhythm.

Offensively, Duquesne went 7:33 without a basket, but defensively made enough stops to ensure it could find itself quicker.

“I don’t think we allowed our offense to affect our mood and the game play,” Duquesne coach Dru Joyce III weighed in. “I applaud my guys for not dropping their heads and playing. We got enough stops, but honestly, I applaud them for the looks they got. We didn’t play bad basketball and that’s more important than the scoreboard.”

It did not hurt that Loyola Chicago overlooked that Duquesne would press them and that came at the expense of two first-half timeouts and turnovers.

Joyce conceded that he felt his team had not done enough of it at times, but he looked at the numbers and saw it was an area of success.

“Quite frankly when we’ve pressed teams, we don’t always get a steal, but it’s resulted in teams not performing at a high level offensively,” evidenced Joyce. “I just tried to disrupt the rhythm, I didn’t anticipate getting as many steals as we did.”

What might have been just as crucial for Duquesne was that different individuals stepped up throughout the evening. All nine Dukes who played scored and grabbed a rebound.

Rozier’s three-point shot was the play that ended the lengthy scoreless streak, Maximus Edwards might have had his best defensive game in a Duquesne uniform, David Dixon hit a three-point basket, his fifth of the season and that basically ended the game and then his dunk at the end put it out of reach as a Ramblers player collided with the media table, softly saying “oh shoot”, his head firmly watching the basket.

“That should be our DNA,” weighed in Necas. “I believe if we’re going to share the ball on offense and especially on defense, we can beat anybody in this league. We have to stay together every single night because we know if we play like that everybody can step up in some moments and it’s very hard to guard.”

A PUBLIC STATEMENT

There has been some online criticism of Necas of late, especially during the five-game losing streak and a +14, second best on the team, which featured actions both seen and unseen on a stats sheet were on full display.

It was clear that word about some of these critiques got back to Crawford, because unprompted he offered this of his roommate.

“I love this guy,” he exclaimed. “He does everything for this team. Even when he’s not scoring the ball, he’s everywhere on defense, he’s talking on offense. He’s talking in the huddles, he’s a guy you want on the team, he’s the glue guy. He helps this team in ways that aren’t going to show up on the stats sheet and I think he should get some credit for that.”

Necas, who PSN reported has dealt with multiple injuries admitted that he has struggled recently, especially from the three-point line, but two of those shots went in Saturday and he had six rebounds, two steals and three blocks including one inside of the final minute.

In that article, Necas explained that he would “die for this team” and doubled down on that sentiment after Saturday’s win, explaining he is just trying to help his teammates as much as possible and do so in different ways.

“I think he had more pop tonight,” deduced Joyce. “Jakub has played a lot of basketball going back to the summer and he’s taken on a huge role. He practices hard and we don’t have a lot of practice players now, so our guys take quite a few reps. I think he’s been fatigued, but he powered through. There’s been games in stretches where he’s giving me everything he has, but he doesn’t have much. I tried to be more strategic with his substitution patterns. I got him out early, didn’t let him play such long stretches and asked if he was okay. I liked his aggressiveness just continuing crashing the boards and giving us extra possessions, he had some steals and another big-time block.”

Duquesne has a week in between games and next Saturday’s contest is at Dayton, a rematch from when the Dukes lost by 20 points, beginning the five-game losing skid.

Necas certainly does not need to be reminded how important that game is.

“Dayton’s going to be huge,” he concluded. “(I’m) not going to lie, I took that a little personally when we got beat here last time, so I’m excited for the game so I want to prepare myself as much as I can.”