PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) – Duquesne kept fighting facing its first ranked team on campus since 2014, down 17 points in the second half, the Dukes got back to within a point, but 24th ranked St. Louis did just enough for a 81-77 victory Tuesday night at the Cooper Fieldhouse.
It was a back-and-forth first half with five ties and eight lead changes as the Dukes kept the highest scoring team in the Atlantic 10 in their sights. While St. Louis (18-1, 6-0 Atlantic 10) started off hot in the second half hitting eight of its first 10 shots, Duquesne (10-9, 2-4 Atlantic 10) was just two of its first 12, three of its first 16.
“I think the team is smart enough and responsible enough to understand where we had the lapse,” said Duquesne head coach Dru Joyce III. “The first 10 minutes (of the second half) I think we stayed in the locker room for the most part.”
“We didn’t come with the right fight and energy to sustain.”
The Billikens would bust out to its biggest lead and the Dukes would claw back to six including a thunderous dunk by David Dixon, but it quickly went back to double figures. It was 77-70 at the last media timeout and stayed that way for the next 2:41 and it was 78-70 with 1:03 to play, but Duquesne scored seven straight points over 37 seconds to cut it to one.
“Credit to our guys, we will continue to do that,” Joyce said of the effort. “We don’t have anything else to do, we might as well fight as hard as we can. We might as well play as hard as we can.”
Jimmy Williams had a career-high 28 points (11-22 field goals, 4-7 from three) to go with five assists, four steals and no turnovers. Billikens had five players in double figures to even the all-time series between the teams at 19-19.
“We’ve been in every single game,” Joyce said. “We’ve taken teams to overtime, double overtime. We are doing quite well on the road, I wish we could do better at home, protecting our home floor.”
Duquesne has a couple of winnable games at struggling Loyola Saturday and then home to St. Bonaventure and Rhode Island next week.
“We’re close,” Joyce said. “We are close.”