Duquesne rolls past UC Irvine in LeBron James' high school gym

AKRON, Ohio — Somewhere, “King James” probably was smiling.

Some 6 hours to the west, LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers were preparing to play an NBA game Sunday night in Chicago against the Bulls, while at his old high school stomping grounds, James’ former coach at St. Vincent-St. Mary was piloting Duquesne to a dazzling matinee performance.

In typical LeBron fashion, the Dukes were dominating.

Leon Ayers III scored a career-high 24 points, and hot-shooting Duquesne rolled to a bruising 76-54 victory over UC Irvine at LeBron James Arena in the Dukes’ best showing of the season.

“I think they knew what was at stake for me. It shows great loyalty and commitment that they played their best game in this building,” Duquesne coach Keith Dambrot said. “Now, we’ve got to show great commitment and loyalty to the Duquesne fans and win in our building.”

Duquesne is just 3-3 this season at its new arena, UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse, where the Dukes will face Wofford on Wednesday in their final nonconference game.

Tyson Acuff also registered a career high with 16 points for Duquesne (5-7), which also got 12 points and 10 rebounds from Kevin Easley Jr., his fourth career double-double and second at Duquesne. Easley registered back-to-back double-doubles during his freshman year at Chattanooga in 2019.

Dambrot shook up his rotation, inserting freshman point guard Jackie Johnson III into the starting lineup and using Ayers at the position for a portion of the time, and it worked out well for Duquesne.

“We got an unbelievable performance from Leon,” Dambrot said. “He took over the game, and that’s kind of what we’ve been looking for. We moved him to the point half the time, which most people would think I’m crazy for doing, but I feel like he’s a talented guy. We’ve got to utilize his skill set.”

Ayers, a 6-foot-5 junior who transferred this season from Mercer, shot 7 for 12 with 6 rebounds, 4 assists and 1 block. He made 2 of 4 shots from 3-point range and converted all eight free-throw attempts.

“I’ve been used to playing (all five positions) all my life,” he said. “Just me at the (point), I feel like it helps us a little bit more because I’m a little more experienced. Primo (Spears) and Jackie are great point guards, but sometimes they just rush too much a little bit. We’re just trying to get all of that under control. Once we get that settled, we’ll be fine.”

Spears, who has started the bulk of the Dukes’ games at point guard, and Johnson III are freshmen receiving on-the-job training at the college level, whereas Ayers is in his fourth college season.

Ayers shot 52% during his only year at Mercer in 2020-21 after scoring more than a 1,100 points in two seasons at the junior college level, where he earned All-America honors at Dearborn (Mich.) Henry Ford College.

Spears was a standout athlete in basketball and football at Windsor (Conn.) High School before averaging 21 points and 7 rebounds during a prep year last season at Lanham (Md.) Mt. Zion Prep. His minutes Sunday were limited after he suffered a knee injury in the first half and played sparingly the rest of the way.

Johnson III, a prolific scoring point guard last season at Chatham (Va.) Hargrave Military Academy, was making just his second career college start. He finished with nine points on 4-of-6 shooting in 25 minutes.

Emmanuel Tshimanga led UC Irvine (5-4) with 14 points. Colin Welp added 12 for the Anteaters, who came in with a decided height advantage — seven players on their roster measured 6-9 or taller, including two 7-footers — but were outrebounded badly by the Dukes, 40-26.

“We had good energy most of the week,” Dambrot said. “We really talked about three things we had to do to become a better team. The first one — it sounds kind of simplistic, but — is playing harder, and I thought we played much harder today than we did in almost any other game this year. The second one was playing better together. I thought we really did a good job of that. The third one was being more technical, just being more precise. We still have a lot of work to do there.”

It was Duquesne’s second consecutive victory following a three-game skid.

“We showed signs of being good today,” Dambrot said. “We had a good overall performance against a team that’s been really good. Look at their numbers. They’re a really good team, and we hung some numbers on them.”

It was the first time UC Irvine has yielded more than 66 points. The Anteaters’ previous opponents were averaging just 56 points.

“Everybody chipped in and did their part today,” Acuff said. “We helped each other out off the ball screen. We all did a good job of having each other’s backs.”

Duquesne was playing a game in Dambrot’s hometown of Akron for the third time in four years and the second at St. Vincent-St. Mary, where Dambrot coached James for two seasons when they combined to help the team win a pair of Ohio Division II championships in 2000 and ’01.

“It was a big win for him here coming back,” Ayers said. “We’re just happy for him. We tried to play as hard as we could and get him the W here.”

Duquesne, which shot 47.4 percent (9 for 19) from 3-point range, withstood the taller Anteaters, despite the loss of sophomore forward Tre Williams to an apparent shoulder injury, as well as foul trouble for 6-10 Austin Rotroff, who tiptoed through the second half with four infractions but still wound up with seven rebounds.

Toby Okani contributed eight boards for the Dukes.

Duquesne shot a sizzling 47.5% overall against UC Irvine, which entered the day ranked fourth in Division I in field-goal defense (35.3%) and third in 3-point defense (24.8%).

“It’s fun to be back here. This is where I’m from,” Dambrot said. “I can’t wait to be back and play better in Pittsburgh.”

It was a physical contest from the start with two Duquesne players being helped off the floor and taken to the locker room in the first half.

Spears injured his left knee when he landed awkwardly on an off-balance runner in the lane. He briefly returned in the second half wearing an elastic brace.

Williams fell to the floor clutching his left shoulder after cutting to the basket in traffic and having his shot blocked. He did not return to the game.

“We’ve got to get Tre’s shoulder looked at, which is a problem,” Dambrot said. “Primo is OK, I think. He hit knees (with another player). We’ve got some issues with Tre hurt. That kind of puts a little damper on it because it kind of shortens us up even more. But our other guys … really stepped up and played well.”

Perhaps the underachieving-until-now Dukes realized the significance of the neutral-site setting as they displayed a ball-hawking brand of defense not seen so far this year, seemingly securing every loose ball along the way against a team that was coming off a tough 66-61 loss at No. 10 Southern Cal.

Acuff’s long 3-point shot from the right corner as time expired in the first half gave Duquesne its largest lead to that point, 38-23.

Duquesne held a 47-29 advantage with 13 minutes, 36 seconds to go before UC Irvine went on a 9-0 run to cut the deficit to 47-38. But Duquesne regrouped and began to pull away, building a lead as large as 25 points.

“We just had a chip on our shoulder. We lost a few games that we should have won. We all feel the same way about losing,” Acuff said. “People tend to get their head down when they lose a lot, so I tried to bring the team together.

“When they made their little run, I brought us together in the huddle and said, ‘We’re still good. We’re still up 12. We can finish the game. It doesn’t matter.’ ”