Duquesne basketball team dominates Rider at Cornhusker Classic

Someone must have lit a fire under the Duquesne Dukes.

Perhaps it was the Princeton Tigers, who in coldhearted fashion two days earlier handed Duquesne its first loss. Apparently, it wasn’t sitting well with the Dukes, who took out their frustrations Friday night on visiting Rider in the second game of the Cornhusker Classic.

“We played hard again but a little inconsistent,” Duquesne coach Keith Dambrot said.

Dae Dae Grant scored 23 points, and Duquesne raced to a 77-58 victory over the Broncs, who came into UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse as the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference preseason favorites.

Duquesne, which opened the Cornhusker Classic on Monday with a victory over Stony Brook, was coming off an emotional 70-67 loss to Princeton on Wednesday while taking a break from the tournament.

The Tigers came away victorious after contesting Fousseyni Drame’s potential winning shot for Duquesne, which clanged off the rim in the closing seconds with the Dukes trailing by a point.

“We took this game to show we could bounce back,” Grant said. “That last game was one we thought we shouldn’t have lost.”

Jimmy Clark III added 14 points for Duquesne (4-1), which led Rider by as many as 26 points (61-35) near the midpoint of the second half before the Broncs mounted a comeback and outscored the Dukes, 18-4, to get within 65-53 on a pair of free throws by Ruben Rodriguez with 4 minutes, 57 seconds to go.

“Keep chopping wood,” Grant said. “We know that at the end of the day we are playing against ourselves to make the game easier for us. Practice is going to be harder than the game. Really, just fighting through that mentality and just knowing that we are who we are. We do what we do. Sticking to that realm is the plan. Go out there and keep our mental strength.”

Duquesne, behind Clark’s six points, responded with a 9-0 run to seal the outcome.

“We are about 60% of what we can be. We’ve got a long way to go yet,” Dambrot said. “We’re just trying to survive and advance. We played four games in eight days, which is hard. We’ll take the win and move forward.”

Grant shot 7 for 15 overall and 6 for 12 from 3-point range for Duquesne, which will travel to Nebraska on Wednesday for its final game of the Cornhusker Classic.

Mervin James led Rider (1-3) with 15 points and 10 rebounds. Corey McKeithan added 13 for the Broncs, who shot 31.8% (21 for 66) and were coming off a 64-50 loss at Nebraska on Monday.

Rider outrebounded Duquesne, 43-42, but the Dukes blocked 14 Rider shots, four each by Dixon and Halil “Chabi” Barre, a pair of 6-foot-9 sophomores whose freshman seasons were cut short by various ailments that hampered them well into the offseason.

“I told Chabi, ‘I didn’t think you were ever going to block a shot again,’ ” Dambrot joked. “Those guys are capable. They’re just trying to get back in condition after being out for so long. I told Dixon, ‘I don’t know if they were interviewing you on the radio because you made five turnovers out of (the team’s total of) 11 or you had five (actually four) blocks.’ Both of them are pretty talented guys.”

Drame shook off that critical miss against Princeton and finished with 10 rebounds for Duquesne, and Dixon added six rebounds to his four blocks.

Duquesne, which shot 45.6% (26 for 57) overall and 38.7 (12 for 31) from 3-point range, opened up a 28-13 lead in the first half, scoring 12 unanswered points, including nine by Grant, who connected on a pair of 3-pointers and added a conventional three-point play.

Their largest first-half lead reached 18 points, 35-17, on a Grant 3-pointer before they settled for a 37-22 halftime advantage.

“I had in my mind that this game was going to be a bounce-back game,” Dixon said. “I kept telling myself that we weren’t going to lose this game. I want (the Princeton game) to be the only loss we have in the nonconference. I told myself that, and I told our other bigs that, too.”

After the Nebraska game, the Dukes will get some much-needed time to return to the practice court. They’ll be idle until entertaining UC Irvine on Nov. 29, then again off for a week before traveling to Marshall on Dec. 6.

“We have not been able to practice because we’ve been playing so much,” Dambrot said. “We’ll work on some things we need to work on. We’ll use that time to kind of hone in on that.”