Duquesne men drop to 1-7, losing at home to St. Peter's

Seven losses in eight games, and it’s not yet time for the Atlantic 10 schedule to begin. Not before Duquesne plays against five more opponents in what has turned out to be a challenging nonconference men’s basketball schedule.

At 1-7, there’s something a bit off with these Dukes.

“We’re working on it,” Duquesne’s Chabi Barre said.

Bryce Eaton, Marcus Randolph and Mouhamed Sow all scored 11 points, and St. Peter’s became the latest team to hand Duquesne a close loss, coming away with a 62-59 victory Tuesday night at UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse to extend Duquesne’s early-season woes.

Aside from an 84-58 thrashing from DePaul, Duquesne’s remaining losses have been by an average of 6.2 points per game.

“I just want us to keep improving on a day-to-day basis, myself included,” Duquesne coach Dru Joyce III said. “How we manage our day, how we manage the game, just figuring out how we can be our very best and then gaining some consistency with our level of play.

“We’ve been up and down.”

The Dukes’ only win in Joyce’s first season as coach came a week ago in its most recent game against Old Dominion at the Cayman Islands Classic.

St. Peter’s (4-3) came into UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse with respectable losses to Seton Hall (by four points) and No. 24 Rutgers (by 10) in a game that the Peacocks were leading deep into the second half.

“I believe there is enough effort there,” Joyce said. “It’s mental lapses that’s hurting us. You have to be engaged for 40 minutes.”

Jahsean Corbett led Duquesne with 15 points. Barre added 13 for the Dukes, who came into the game rested following a week off after returning from George Town, Grand Cayman, where they opened with a pair of losses to South Dakota State and Hampton before beating Old Dominion.

Duquesne had St. Peter’s reeling in the first half after a 16-0 run gave the Dukes a 24-11 advantage. But they couldn’t sustain the momentum as St. Peter’s rallied to close within 28-26 at the half.

When the second half began, Duquesne took possession and Tre Dinkins III calmly launched an air ball from behind the 3-point line.

Joyce stood motionless in disbelief.

“There’s always gaps in the game,” Joyce said. “That’s the game of basketball, where a run isn’t quite going your way. Then, it becomes, ‘How do you recover?’ They punched back. ‘How do you recover?’ I didn’t think we recovered with the right mindset. We still didn’t right our wrongs going into the second half. We still didn’t rebound the ball as well as we needed to, and we didn’t get enough stops.”

St. Peter’s outrebounded Duquesne, 42-37.

“We never put together a series of stops, like we did in the first half,” Joyce said. “We had ‘em, right? It’s basketball. It flipped. They bounced back and found some momentum. We needed three, four stops in a row to flip the game (back), and we didn’t do that.”

To make matters worse, co-inspirational leader Jake DiMichele joined Alex Williams and Jayden Brown on Duquesne’s injured list.

DiMichele, who practiced Monday, was a late scratch when he showed up on the court wearing a boot on his left foot. Joyce declined to be specific on details of the injury, saying only that DiMichele was day-to-day.

Duquesne entertains Delaware on Friday night.

The game went back and forth throughout the second half.

Barre’s free throw brought Duquesne within 57-56 with 1 minute, 51 seconds remaining. But Sow drained a 3-pointer and moments later made 1 of 2 free throws to boost the St. Peter’s lead to 61-56.

Corbett hit two free throws with 44 seconds to go to cut Duquesne’s deficit to 61-58.

The Dukes got the ball back after Eaton misfired on a jumper for St. Peter’s. After a timeout, Dinkins was fouled with 5.1 seconds to go and made made 1 of 2 attempts.

Sow answered with 1 of 2 from the line at the other end.

Kareem Rozier’s half-court 3-point shot bounced off the back of the iron, preserving St. Peter’s fourth straight victory after opening the years with three losses.

It’s back to work for Duquesne, which is trying to learn some answers to its early-season problems after a year in which the Dukes won 25 games, including a victory over BYU in the NCAA Tournament in March.

“Some of our lineups are starting to be a little bit more secure,” Joyce said. “Guys are starting to find their way a little bit. Not having Jake, as far as how we played in the Cayman Islands tournament — there were a lot of action and things we were running through him — not to have him as a secondary option next to Tre Dinkins, that changes some things up a little bit.

“But we’ll still continue to grow. We have to have a better level of consistency throughout the lineup. It can’t be (someone) playing well tonight and you don’t see him the next night … You have to be able to bring it every night. You’ve got to be able to pour something into the game.”