Keith Dambrot said things just snowballed on his team.
In Duquesne’s most recent game, Wednesday at Rhode Island, the Dukes held a 38-30 lead at halftime. Then the Rams came out guns blazing in the second half, and Duquesne was caught squarely in the cross hairs.
The result: Rhode Island outscored the Dukes, 47-17, in the final 20 minutes en route to a 22-point win, Duquesne’s first Atlantic 10 Conference loss.
“It certainly wasn’t the jitters, because we played a really good first half,” Dambrot said Friday. “If you’re jittery early, you can say, ‘Oh, well, it’s big-game jitters.’ But it certainly wasn’t that. I thought the second half started, and we didn’t defend well early. And then we didn’t make anything, and it snowballed on us.
“No different than what most teams go through, just inconsistencies. We’ve been a little inconsistent. We paid the price. But if you look around the country, it happens to almost everybody. It was disappointing, because we were right there to win the game, and we just didn’t play well enough to win the game.”
Given the way the first half went, Dambrot was surprised with the way his team came out in the second half. At the same time, he also says nothing surprises him in basketball. He’s aware of the contradiction, “but it’s a true statement.”
Now the question becomes whether or not Duquesne can right the ship.
The day before the Rhode Island game, Dambrot spoke to the importance of this stretch of games for the Dukes. Four of Duquesne’s final five games of the season come against the current top-six teams in the conference. Obviously, that will be a tough span. And that’s not to mention that after Saturday against Massachusetts, No. 7-ranked Dayton comes to PPG Paints Area in what certainly will be one of the Dukes’ toughest tests of the season.
At the time, he was referencing the matchup with the Rams as part of that important stretch. Obviously, that didn’t go how he or Duquesne wanted it to, but the point still stands that the Dukes need to make headway when they can. The road game Saturday against the Minutemen, who are 1-5 in conference play, is as good a chance for that as any.
“[Massachusetts] has had their struggles, but they’ve played some good games,” Dambrot said. “They’re capable of beating anybody. They went to St. Louis and lost by three. They’re just inconsistent, too. They’re more inconsistent than we are. It ain’t going to be an easy game. We just have to grind it out, man. That’s the best way to describe it is we’ve just gotta grind out victories until we can click on all cylinders.”
To do that, the Dukes are trying to diagnose what went wrong Wednesday and then move forward.
And while Dambrot isn’t happy with the way his team lost, he does recognize that sometimes things just don’t go your way. Duquesne shot an abysmal 4 for 24 from the field Wednesday in the second half. Part of that can certainly be chalked up to bad offense and good defense, but even bad offenses shoot better than that.
So Dambrot classifies it as an aberration, pointing out that the real problems were less tangible. And now, he and his team have moved on, hoping to prevent the hangover from Wednesday in the second half from turning into a snowball effect for the season as a whole.
“You can’t accept it. You can’t tell them it’s OK, but at the same token, you’ve gotta move forward,” Dambrot said.
Mike Persak: mpersak@post-gazette.com and Twitter @MikeDPersak.
First Published: January 24, 2020, 7:14 p.m.
