When it comes to his team’s annual game against crosstown rival Pitt, Duquesne women’s basketball coach Dan Burt doesn’t lean on the same cliches so many in his profession use about how every matchup, regardless of the opponent, means the same.
In this instance, it simply isn’t true.
“The City Game, I don’t care what anyone says, is filled with more emotion and is more important,” Burt said. “Anyone that says it isn’t, I think they’re telling fibs.”
With that heightened intensity has come a certain level of success. In a year in which their male counterparts surprisingly snapped a long skid against the Panthers, the Duquesne women continued to do what they have done against that same rival for the past several years — defeat it.
Julijana Vojinovic had a season-high 19 points, Chassidy Omogrosso added 13 points, 10 of which came in the final two quarters, and the Dukes defeated Pitt, 63-54, Thursday at the Palumbo Center, marking the seventh time in the past eight seasons the former has defeated the latter.
The victory wasn’t what Burt would have described as Duquesne’s best of the season, but it was perhaps its most complete. The Dukes (7-7) trailed just once for all of 29 seconds, outscored the Panthers (9-4) in three of the four quarters and never had extended stretches without any points.
That consistent scoring came early. With eight points from Vojinovic, who was making just her second start of the season, the Dukes jumped out to a 16-5 lead and after weathering a Panthers’ comeback, held a 30-22 advantage at halftime.
Pitt, after falling behind by 13, once again found its way back, getting within three early in the third quarter. Not long after that, Duquesne made a final and decisive run, spurred by two of its stars. On consecutive fourth-quarter possessions, Omogrosso and Vojinovic made 3-pointers. The following possession, Omogrosso, a former Pitt commit, had a timely cut and speedy drive to the basket for a layup to stretch her team’s lead to 56-45 with about seven minutes remaining.
On a team with one of the more unique rosters in college basketball, with nine players born outside the United States paired with four others who grew up within 30 miles of the school, the meaning of the City Game and what it represented was taught to foreign players who understandably had little, if any, conception of it when they arrived on campus.
“To play the game against Pitt, I’m from Serbia, from Europe,” Vojinovic said. “I never knew how it felt. But last year, I came here and learned how important it is.”
Amadea Szamosi added 12 points and a game-high 10 rebounds for Duquesne. Brandi Harvey-Carr led the Panthers, who shot just 34.9 percent as a team, with 14 points while Brenna Wise had 12.
The 2016-17 season has been difficult at times so far for a Pitt team with three sophomores and two freshmen among its seven leading scorers and without star forward Yacine Diop, who has missed each of her team’s first 13 games with a foot injury.
Some of those struggles continued to appear Thursday, particularly when it came to missing open shots.
“We had every good look,” said Pitt coach Suzie McConnell-Serio, who was the head coach at Duquesne for six seasons. “We had wide-open 3s, we had wide-open layups, we had jumpers. For whatever reason, we just struggled to score the basketball. It becomes contagious. I think you’re trying to find answers, by constantly subbing players and trying to find answers offensively. One after another, we just couldn’t find the answers we needed.”
For Burt and his players, the win ideally will be a catalyst heading into Atlantic-10 play, as the Dukes hope to follow up the first NCAA tournament appearance in program history last season with something as memorable.
If nothing else, they’ve got the title as the best team in the city for the third-consecutive season.
“Last year, we were the best team in the state,” Burt said. “Not the Big Ten and Penn State, not Pitt or Villanova. Duquesne women’s basketball was the best team in the state. Maybe the only better team in the state was the Villanova men. That’s it and that’s what our goal is this year. We certainly didn’t start off as strong as we would have liked with the difficult non-conference schedule we had, but if we can play like this and fine-tune a few things, I feel like we’re going to have a lot of success. At the worst, we’re the city champs, again.”
Craig Meyer: cmeyer@post-gazette.com and Twitter @CraigMeyerPG
First Published: December 29, 2016, 10:03 p.m.
Updated: December 29, 2016, 11:43 p.m.
