Duquesne's comeback bid vs. La Salle falls short, losing streak reaches 16

And now, Duquesne Nation turns its attention to the Atlantic 10 men’s basketball tournament.

Will it be “one-and-done” for the hapless Dukes after they dropped their 16th consecutive game in their regular-season finale Saturday? Or can they extend their season, as freshman guard Primo Spears wondered after his career-high 34 points weren’t enough in an 85-76 loss to La Salle at UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse?

“We’re going into March (Madness) trying to get on a run,” said Spears, who tied a Duquesne record for most points scored in a game by a freshman. “As a fan, just keep watching as we try to win a couple games in D.C.”

On the court earlier against La Salle, the Dukes couldn’t get it done again.

Coach Keith Dambrot implored his players and they tried like mad to respond, desperately wanting to end their massive losing streak much in the same way they did in a 98-93 triple-overtime loss Wednesday at George Washington.

But, for as many times as Duquesne’s coach witnessed his undermanned Dukes score against La Salle in about every way possible in the second half and finish well above its anemic season average (64.4 ppg., even after the marathon outing three days earlier), La Salle most often had an answer.

Enough so, in fact, to fend off the Dukes’ furious comeback attempt from an 18-point second-half deficit.

“I’m proud of the fact that, when they got down that much, they came back and had a chance to win the game,” Dambrot said. “But you can’t get down that much in the first place.”

Jack Clark scored 30 points, and La Salle shot 57.1 % from 3-point range as the Explorers (10-18, 4-13) pushed Duquesne (6-23, 1-16) within a game of tying a record for the program’s longest losing streak heading into the A-10 Tournament.

The last-place Dukes are seeded 14th and will open against No. 11 Rhode Island (14-15, 5-12) at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday at Capital One Arena in Washington.

Rhode Island handled Duquesne, 70-54, in their only regular-season meeting Feb. 26 at Ryan Center in Kingston, R.I.

“I’m just taking this year as a learning experience,” said Spears, who shot 12 for 24 and topped his previous best of 25 in the previous game at GW. His 34-point outburst Saturday tied Eric Williams Jr.’s Duquesne freshman record for points in a game, set against George Mason in 2018. Williams since has left and is in his third year at Oregon.

Primo’s fellow freshman guard Jackie Johnson III added 15 points and Kevin Easley Jr. chipped in 13 for the Dukes, who twice got within five points of La Salle midway through the second half and trailed just 79-73 with 1 minute, 55 seconds left on two free throws by Spears.

But Josh Nickelberry, who scored 23 points for La Salle, sank a 3-pointer to extend the Explorers’ lead to 82-73, and Duquesne couldn’t recover.

It marked the first time La Salle has won at Duquesne since the 2013-14 season.

“It just felt like we had a hard time generating any juice,” Dambrot said. “I thought we played much harder, defensively, at GW than we did here. We only had eight guys. That’s part of it. But part of it is just mental toughness. It’s a little frustrating, but our size is almost like a high school team.”

Especially when 6-foot-11 Mounir Hima is out of the lineup. The inexperienced Hima, who averaged 9.2 minutes in 19 games this season, played 19 minutes against La Salle in the third career start of his second college season — his fourth overall playing the sport, He got two points, five rebounds and two blocks.

“Mounir is not quite ready yet to play huge minutes,” said Dambrot, who has been reluctant to keep his young, big man on the floor for extended periods but was forced to insert him at when the team lost centers Tre Williams and Austin Rotroff to injuries.

“There’s not much else we can do,” Dambrot said. “He’s gotten better at some things. He doesn’t know much. In fairness, it’s going to take him some time. When you don’t grow up in basketball … he’s only played four years. He’s been playing catch-up. He’s a great kid. He just has to learn. Some of those (La Salle shot) should have been blocks, but he didn’t get off his man.”

Duquesne trailed almost exclusively from the start, falling behind by as many as 13 points in the first half before closing within 39-30 at the half.

La Salle slowly built its lead to 64-46 before Duquesne went on a 9-0 run to trail 64-55 with 7:38 left on a basket by Easley Jr. The Dukes kept chipping away and made a game of it, but not before La Salle had the last word.

It was Duquesne’s senior day with the school honoring a trio of student managers and walk-on player Noah Buono during pregame ceremonies.

“We have more managers than players,” Dambrot cracked. “That tells you how it goes. Then, you look over on the sidelines and you have 45 guys over there with warmup suits. Whatever could go wrong this year has gone wrong. We’re getting it all out of our system now.

“It’s been a humbling year for me, but I’ve had a lot of good years. I’m not going to let one bad year rain on my parade. I’m just going to try to fix the problem. We have to get better. We have to win (recruiting battles) March and April. It’s as simple as that. We have personnel issues that we’ve got to fix.”

Duquesne played its second consecutive game without junior guard Leon Ayers III, who was not in uniform.

“For his own protection, I’d rather not talk about that,” Dambrot said. “It’s in the best interest of the young man, and that’s all I care about.”

Ayers III, a transfer from Mercer, has started in 14 of the 27 games in which he’s played and is averaging 10.0 points and 4.0 rebounds.