Duquesne offense guides way in win against Stony Brook

It’s early, but the Duquesne men’s basketball team already appears to be carving a niche.

“We’re getting there. We’re just going to keep putting it together,” emerging sophomore point guard Kareem Rozier said.

For the second game in a row, the Dukes overcame a lethargic first-half showing and scored at least 50 points in the final 20 minutes to pull away from an opponent and win handily.

Jimmy Clark III scored 24 points, and Fousseyni Drame posted 15 points and 11 rebounds in 28 minutes off the bench to lead Duquesne to an 85-63 victory over Stony Brook on Monday night at UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse in the opening game of the Cornhusker Classic.

Dae Dae Grant added 19 points for Duquesne (3-0), which won its first three games in a season for the first time since starting 10-0 in 2019-20.

In the the Duquesne’s first-ever meeting with Stony Brook, the Dukes outscored the Seawolves, 50-37, in the second half to turn the game into a rout after they managed to hold onto a 35-26 halftime advantage despite committing 10 of their 12 turnovers in the first half.

“We kind of self-destructed in the first half,” Duquesne coach Keith Dambrot said. “We made unforced mistakes on the break, didn’t rebound the ball very well. But one thing about these guys, they keep coming back for more. We played much better in the second half, other than the 3-line defense wasn’t very good. That’s an old team there. They’ve got six grad students. Difficult, spread you out, pretty good team.”

When a Dambrot-coached team at Duquesne holds an opponent to less than 70 points, the Dukes nearly always come away victorious.

Add Stony Brook (1-2) to the list.

Duquesne improved to 57-16 (.781) under Dambrot in such games.

The victory also improved Duquesne’s record in nonconference games under Dambrot to 35-9 (.795).

The Dukes, after entertaining Princeton on Wednesday night, will play Rider on Friday at home in the tournament’s second game and will visit Nebraska on Nov. 23 in the finale.

Aaron Clark paced Stony Brook with 22 points. The Seawolves, picked to finish ninth in the 14-team Coastal (formerly Colonial) Athletic Association, also received 14 from Tyler Stephenson-Moore.

Duquesne was playing without senior forward Tre Williams and graduate forward Dusan Mahorcic.

Williams was in street clothes with a brace on his left hand, the result of an injury suffered in the first half of the Dukes’ 90-72 victory over College of Charleston on Friday at the Veterans Classic at Navy.

The Cougars were selected as the CAA’s preseason favorite to win the league championship, but Duquesne overcame a four-point halftime deficit by outscoring Charleston in the second half 57-35.

Mahorcic has been sidelined with a knee injury and has yet to play a game for the Dukes since joining the team in the offseason from North Carolina State.

With Princeton’s deliberate offensive style looming Wednesday, Dambrot said there’s not much time to prepare for the Tigers, who are off to a 2-0 start with victories over Rutgers and Hofstra. He likened his team’s early-season games to “a pro schedule right now.

“It was a long trip (to Navy). We had two days (off), now one day, one day.”

Duquesne led 54-45 before going on a second-half rampage and breaking open the game with a barrage of 3-point shots. For the game, the Dukes shot a sizzling 46.4% (13 for 28) from behind the arc and finished at 50% (32 for 64) overall.

They used a 10-2 run to seize a 64-47 lead with 8 minutes, 25 seconds left on a Clark jumper and wound up outscoring the Seawolves, 31-15, in the final 10:20.

“We just told ourselves that we were going to rally, calm down and come out and play basketball how we should play basketball,” said Clark, who shot 10 for 19 to go with four steals, three rebounds and two assists. “We just needed to get back to playing our way and not letting the defense dictate what we do. That was the main focus at halftime, and that was the message that got across.”

Rozier, coming off a career-high 20 points against Charleston, added 11 points with team-leading seven assists for Duquesne in a team-high 33 minutes.

Grant sank a long 3-pointer and, after the Dukes’ Andrei Savrasov blocked Dean Noll’s layup attempt, Rozier drilled a 3-pointer from the left wing to give Duquesne a 43-30 advantage with 17:17 left before Rozier flipped a lob pass to Drame for a dunk to make it 45-30.

Stony Brook fought back on consecutive 3-pointers by Toby Onyekonwu and Stephenson-Moore to move within 45-36.

In the first half, Duquesne used a 10-0 spurt to turn a two-point deficit into a 19-11 lead with with 9:40 left. Stony Brook responded with six unanswered points to come within 19-17, but Grant’s second 3-pointer of the half stopped the Seawolves’ momentum.

Duquesne steadily increased its advantage, pushing the lead to 34-24 on a basket by Savrasov before settling for its nine-point halftime lead.