Duquesne men’s basketball came into its game with Marshall on one of its best runs in recent years.
Not only had the Dukes won six in a row, they were undefeated at home and coming off a last-second one-point win against Ball State.
But the Thundering Herd were just as hot, winners of seven in a row and with senior guard Taevion Kinsey ready to put on a show for the four NBA scouts who were in attendance at UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse.
Something had to give. In the end, it was the Dukes’ winning streak. Kinsey did his part to impress the scouts as he led five Marshall players in double-figures with 24 points, seven rebounds and seven assists. Andrew Taylor added 18, including 4 of 4 from the free throw line in a game in which the Herd was only 9 of 16 from the stripe as Marshall (8-1) used a 14-0 run to end the first half to pull out an 82-71 victory against Duquesne (7-2) to end the Dukes’ six-game winning streak.
“We lost the game in a five-minute stretch of the first half,” Duquesne coach Keith Dambrot said. “I probably should have called our second or third timeout but I thought we’d battle through it and we didn’t.”
Duquesne junior Jimmy Clark led the team with 19 points, 16 of which came in the second half as he helped the team get back into it after the Dukes fell into a 46-27 hole at the break. Junior guard Dae Dae Grant was the only other Duquesne player in double digits and he finished with 18.
“There were stretches where we could have pulled within the lead and made it a little bit closer,” Clark said. “Like coach said in the locker room, we beat ourselves. But give credit to Marshall, they are a good team.”
If nothing else, Duquesne showed a resiliency that will help it when it opens Atlantic 10 play on Dec. 28 at Dayton.
Despite trailing by as many as 19 early in the second half, shooting only 34.2 percent (25 of 73) from the floor and were 9 of 17 (52.9 percent) from the line, Duquesne refused to quit. Down 48-27 after a Taylor score 11 seconds into the second half, the Dukes went on a 17-2 run, keyed by 14 from Clark, to get it back to within six, 50-44, just 5:43 into the half.
“We had a focus not to turn it over and we tried to bring more spark on the defensive end to lead to the offensive end,” Grant said. “That’s how we came out in the second half and tried to turn that around.”
Although Duquesne never got it back to a one-possession game, it continued to weather through Marshall runs that extended its advantage to as many as 12, 61-53, with 7:18 remaining. The Dukes had one more run in them as they got the deficit back down to four, 63-59, on a Tevin Brewer 3-pointer with 5:00 left.
Duquesne had one more chance to make it a one-possession game when trailing, 70-65, Brewer missed the front end of a 1-and-1 and, after a Marshall turnover, Dae Dae Grant missed a 3-pointer in transition that the Herd turned into a 3-point play from Andrew Taylor to pull away.
“The thing I liked is that we competed when we had everything go wrong,” Dambrot said. “We just had one of those nights.”
When the wheels came off for Duquesne, Marshall took advantage of almost every opportunity. Kinsey netted six of his 10 first-half points and Obinna Anochili-Killen five of his seven to fuel a 14-0 Herd run to end the first half and put Duquesne into a 46-27 hole at the intermission.
First Published: December 9, 2022, 3:32 a.m.
