Dae Dae Grant powers Duquesne past Saint Peter’s, Dukes win 3rd straight
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Duquesne guard Dae Dae Grant entered tipoff against Saint Peter’s on Friday night a game removed from setting a program record for consecutive free throws made.
Starting with the team’s 2023-24 season-opener Nov. 6, Grant had hit 43 straight shots from the charity stripe over Duquesne’s first eight games of the year, finally missing one with 48 seconds to play Dec. 6 in a win over Marshall, breaking Dave Ricketts’ previous record that had stood since 1956-57.
The Dukes welcomed the Peacocks to UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse on Friday night, defeating them 68-59 for their third straight win.
Grant led Duquesne (7-2) with 19 points and was 10 for 10 from the free-throw line.
“It’s a blessing,” he said. “I’m very honored and appreciative of breaking that record, and I can’t do that without my teammates and my dedication to this game. I’m just preaching that to them, just trying to keep it going and help the team.”
He hit 3 of 11 shots from the field, only one of which was a two-point attempt.
La Salle transfers Fousseyni Drame and Hassan Drame, who previously played two seasons at Saint Peter’s (2019-21), provided coach Keith Dambrot with a spark off the bench against their former team.
Fousseyni Drame led the Dukes with seven rebounds, contributing 11 points, and Hassan Drame had eight points and four rebounds.
“They played better than anybody we had,” Dambrot said. “The one thing about them is they’re going to put time into the game. They’re going to play as hard as they can play every single minute that they’re out there. I don’t think there’s any question that they were the impetus for us winning.”
The Dukes led by nine at multiple junctures of the first half but were unable to put the game out of reach against Saint Peter’s, which overcame a 12-0 Dukes run and a stretch of nearly seven minutes without a point to trail by just five at halftime.
After the break, the Dukes quickly built on their lead, going up 40-30 only 36 seconds into the second half.
As the second half went on, the Dukes never trailed, but their Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference foe remained within striking distance, in large part thanks to solid 3-point shooting.
The Peacocks had been shooting only .295 from deep on the year but went 8 of 20 (40%) from long range Friday.
“They made eight 3s tonight. That’s the most they’ve made all year,” Dambrot said. “We caught them on a nice night for them … They made 3s tonight, which made it a more interesting game than maybe it normally would have been.”
With 5:52 to go, Saint Peter’s trailed 60-55.
From there, neither team scored a basket for nearly the next three minutes before a 3-pointer and layup by Jimmy Clark III put the Dukes up 66-55 with 2:14 to go, finally putting the game away.
Clark scored 12 in the win.
With the fall semester at Duquesne coming to a close, the Dukes won’t play again until Monday, Dec. 18, in a neutral-court game against Bradley at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in Akron, Ohio, where Dambrot once led a state championship dream team featuring LeBron James and his now-associate head coach, Dru Joyce III.