Watch: Duquesne WBB Prepares To Host WNIT First Round Game

It appeared that the Duquesne Women’s Basketball Team which Sunday evening found out what it had expected, another WNIT berth was in its future would be playing a road game, until word began to trickle early the next afternoon that would not be the case.

Indeed, when Duquesne plays Longwood Thursday at 6 p.m. it will do so from the UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse, guaranteeing at least one more home game for Megan McConnell and the entire Dukes team.

“We’re really excited to be playing at home,” Duquesne coach Dan Burt stated after Monday afternoon’s practice. “We expected to be in postseason play, we did not expect to have a home game. I feel very fortunate that our team which is a very young team with six freshmen of the 12 on the active roster are able to play in the postseason and see what this is all about. Also to give Meg another opportunity at home to play in front of a hometown crowd. I think it’s important to note that we never take for granted the opportunity to be able to play in the postseason and we’re incredibly happy that our administration has always supported us and allowed us to get this postseason nod, and we’re excited about what comes on Thursday.”

Duquesne returned home from its Mar. 7 Atlantic 10 Championship quarterfinals needing a couple of days down, having left it all on the court, catching Richmond off guard, a Spiders team which is seeded eighth in the NCAA Tournament as an at-large.

Burt still did not like how the game finished, again a clear reference to the lack of a late contest missed foul call against Richmond which had contact as senior Kiandra Browne tried to beat the shot clock from three-point range.

Now Duquesne is refreshed, and practices ramped up, though there still has been a brief period during each day to keep things loose and fun.

There is still work for the Dukes to do, that much is clear, but as Burt explained, it comes down to the understanding that all of this is one and done.

“If you don’t take care of business on Thursday, the postseason is over and we put the jerseys away,” he explained. “That’s the biggest thing I want to impart as we go through Tuesday and Wednesday practice of how important this is. There can’t be any ‘my bad’s’ because we’ll put the jerseys away. We’ve got to meet our passes, shorten our passes, keep them off the glass and rebound the ball well and value the ball on offense. We’ve got to have movement; we can’t beat them one-on-one.”

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