Rhode Island cruises past Duquesne as Dukes drop 14th straight game

When things are going badly for a struggling basketball team, nothing should be a surprise.

So, when Rhode Island’s Jeremy Sheppard took a lead pass from Malik Martin and dribbled to half court Saturday with the first-half clock winding down, Sheppard did what anyone else might do: He heaved the ball before time ran out.

Just Duquesne’s luck. Miraculously, it banked in for a 3-point shot at the buzzer and gave Rhode Island a comfortable 19-point lead en route to a 70-54 victory over the injury-depleted Dukes at Ryan Center in Kingston, R.I.

“It’s hard to keep stressing the idea of being positive and enjoying the game when that sort of thing happens,” Duquesne coach Keith Dambrot said. “But that’s part of the game.”

The injury-depleted Dukes saw their losing streak reach 14, three shy of a school record.

Ishmael El-Amin scored 21 points, Ishmael Leggett added 13 and Sheppard finished with 11 to lead Rhode Island (14-13, 5-10 Atlantic 10), which ended a three-game slide and won for just the second time in 11 games.

El-Amin, a Ball State transfer and the son of former Connecticut star Khalid El-Amin, who led the Huskies to the 1999 national championship, shot 7 for 12 and tied Martin with a team-high seven rebounds for Rhode Island.

Kevin Easley Jr. paced Duquesne (6-21, 1-14) with 13 points, freshman Jackie Johnson III added 10 on just 3-of-10 shooting and Toby Okani grabbed 11 rebounds.

Duquesne, which has two regular-season games remaining — beginning Wednesday at George Washington — before the start of the A-10 Tournament, shot 18 for 55 (36.7%).

After Sheppard’s last-second shot capped a 13-0 run to close the first half for Rhode Island, El-Amin’s basket to start the second half increased the Rams’ already-commanding lead before Duquesne rallied to cut the 21-point deficit to nine, 47-38, on a 3-point shot by Easley Jr. with 13 minutes, 11 seconds left.

Rhode Island used a 7-0 run to push the lead to 54-38 and the Rams went on to the victory, though Duquesne made one final run late with Johnson III’s 3-pointer closing the Dukes within 63-54 with 1:38 to go before Rhode Island scored the game’s final seven points.

Duquesne went more than 5 minutes without a field goal in the first half as Rhode Island built an early 19-9 lead. But Duquesne hung around before going cold again.

Rhode Island was clinging to a 29-23 lead but pulled away to its 42-23 advantage at the half after finishing the first half with a flurry.

Even so, Dambrot, in a familiar refrain, acknowledged the effort his players have been giving for much of the season. Especially so, he said, during the team’s current slide, which has seen Duquesne score more than 59 points just three times since a last-second, 72-71 loss at Fordham on Jan. 12, a span of 13 games.

“I thought they tried hard today, considering the circumstances,” Dambrot said. “It’s hard to keep guys engaged. None of these guys have ever been through this before.”

A disastrous season took yet another turn in recent days with the loss of 6-foot-7 center Tre Williams to a knee injury in the Dukes’ 74-50 home setback to Davidson on Wednesday.

Williams, who had started every game for Duquesne and was the team’s leading scorer and second-leading rebounder and also was ranked fifth in the A-10 in blocks, was scheduled to undergo season-ending, arthroscopic knee surgery in the next few days.

Dambrot’s latest starting lineup combination of Okani, Mounir Hima, Mike Bekelja, Tyson Acuff and Primo Spears was Duquesne’s 12th of the season and sixth in the past six games.

The Dukes also have played much of the season without 6-10 Austin Rotroff, who is sidelined with a stress fracture, and 6-7 RJ Gunn Jr., who has played in just one game because of a severe high-ankle sprain.

“A lot of our scoring problems have been inside,” Dambrot said. “Do you think the mismatch inside today is any different?”

Rhode Island outscored the Dukes, 40-16, in the paint. The Rams’ lineup included the Mitchell brothers, 6-10, 245-pound Makhel and 6-9, 230 Makhi.

Other than the inexperienced 6-11 Hima, who got his second career start against Rhode Island, Duquesne’s tallest player was the 6-8 Okani, who has started 13 of 27 games this season.

“These games now in January and February don’t mean too much for us,” Dambrot said. “It’s the recruiting battles in March and April that we’ve got to be able to win.”