Duquesne scraps out home win for revenge vs. St. Joseph's

Mud wrestling was back at Duquesne.

That meant a grind-it-out style Saturday in search of the ultimate goal.

Mission accomplished.

David Dixon, in just his third start of the season, scored 17 points and got a career-high 10 rebounds for his first career double-double, Jimmy Clark III added 15 points, and the Dukes slogged their way to a 66-56 victory over St. Joseph’s at UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse.

The win moved Duquesne (15-10, 5-7) within two games of .500 in the balanced Atlantic 10 standings and avenged a last-second 71-69 defeat to the Hawks a month ago in Philadelphia.

“I was worried we kind of spilled our guts at Dayton, and were we going to have anything, emotionally, to be ready to play?” Duquesne coach Keith Dambrot said. “These guys have done a really good job of rallying when people said they were dead on arrival. This was not another easy one.”

Duquesne collapsed in the final 6¹⁄₂ minutes Tuesday night at No. 16 Dayton, which used a 22-2 run to overcome a four-point deficit and cruise to a season sweep of the Dukes.

“It kind of demoralizes you a little bit,” Dixon said, when reminded of that 75-59 loss to the Flyers.

“I had a talk with my parents, my friends. They helped me out. They say, ‘You guys are a good team. Things happen.’ Coach said after that game not to let it bother us, but sometimes those things tend to stay. I kind of used it as fuel for this game.”

The sophomore forward from Memphis, Tenn., shot 6 for 9 — half his makes were on dunks — and made all four free-throw attempts.

“When he gets 17 and 10, we’re going to win a lot of games,” Dambrot said.

With seemingly no problem bouncing back from defeat, Duquesne’s defense against St. Joseph’s was superb. Dixon and Clark, who combined for six assists and five steals, led the way. Dixon also added a pair of blocks.

Dae Dae Grant (11 points) and freshman Jakub Necus (career-high 10) also scored in double figures for Duquesne.

“Mud wrestling? Of course, of course,” Dixon said. “We want to hold teams to under 60 (points). That’s our brand of defense. We try to beat teams up on the inside and outside. They’re not going to get easy buckets on us. (If) they like to score in the first 10 seconds, we try to grind them out for the whole 30 seconds, and I feel that did a lot for us today. That helped us out.”

It hasn’t always worked for the Dukes, but when they manage to be successful at it, Dambrot said his guys appear comfortable.

“We’ve put a lot into the Dayton and (75-69 victory Feb. 10 at) St. Bonaventure games in front of full houses,” he said. “The crowd tonight (3,017) helped us. Having a good crowd kind of energizes you a little bit better.”

Cameron Brown led St. Joseph’s (16-10, 6-7) with 18 points and made four of the Hawks’ nine 3-point shots, which equaled Duquesne’s total. But while the Dukes shot 50% from behind the arc, St. Joe’s converted 24.3% of its whopping 37 tries.

“You’re not going to beat them (often) in a 3-point shooting contest. They lead the conference in attempts,” Dambrot said.

The outcome was the sixth time Duquesne has limited an opponent to under 60 points. The Dukes are holding teams to an average of 68, but they’ve allowed just 63 ppg since a 54-50 victory over St. Bonaventure at home, a span of eight games.

The Dukes, who remain at home Tuesday to play Saint Louis, held a nine-point advantage against St. Joe’s when Necus and Dixon — of all players — connected on consecutive 3-point shots to open up a 54-39 lead with 7:29 left.

The 6-foot-9 Dixon came into the game having made just one of 11 previous attempts from behind the arc.

“That’s what I work on all the time, just like free throws,” Dixon said. “I want to be more of an inside-out player. I’m happy one (3-pointer) went in because that helped my confidence a lot.”

Duquesne’s biggest lead went to 60-43 with 4:49 left on a driving layup by Clark, enough of a cushion for the Dukes to survive the rest of the way.

Duquesne and St. Joseph’s wrestled with one another for much of the first half of what began as another slow-scoring game. But Duquesne surged to a 9-2 run during the final 2:42 and built a 31-23 halftime lead.

Clark capped the run, taking a pass from Jake DiMichele and beating the halftime clock.

Grant, Duquesne’s leading scorer (17.0 ppg), again drew a lot of attention from defenders, a trend that has picked up since his 31-point explosion Feb. 3 against Rhode Island.

But he managed to reach double figures this season for the 22nd time in 25 games, and he made all four free-throw attempts to improve to 95.6 % (108 for 113), which trails only Butler’s DJ Davis, who leads the nation at 96.6 %.

“There’s very few people in the world who can shoot free throws better than him,” Dambrot said. “That’s just a freak of nature to be able to shoot it like that. When he misses, you’re surprised.”

Meanwhile, Duquesne’s Dusan Mahorcic, the N.C. State transfer who saw his first action for the Dukes in late-December following off-season knee surgery, didn’t enter the game until the second half and played just three minutes.

“Dusan didn’t practice for two days, so that’s why we went with what we did,” Dambrot said.

Mahorcic, a 6-10 grad student from Belgrade, Serbia, flew to his Raleigh, N.C., home to be with his wife, Ngala, who gave birth to the couple’s first child on Valentine’s Day.

The N.C. State transfer would’ve loved to remain with his family, including their newly born girl, Jalena, but his work continues at Duquesne, where’s he’s spent a season of grueling physical therapy in order to continue his playing career.

“When I was playing in the States to begin with, I didn’t know Duquesne was in Pittsburgh,” Mahorcic said earlier in the season. “In fact, I didn’t know anything about Duquesne.”

For now, though, it’s his temporary home.