Duquesne's winning streak snapped at hands of Davidson

Usually a seeker of postgame cheer, Keith Dambrot to an extent is known even for uttering a light-hearted word in defeat.

Wednesday night, however, Duquesne’s basketball coach was in no mood to mince words following a 72-59 loss to Davidson at UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse that short-circuited the Dukes’ recent surge.

Davidson’s unique motion offense played tricks on Duquesne’s players, but Dambrot waved off the notion as a lame excuse.

“If you’re not ready to play and you’re not ready to play your best basketball, it’s going to be a hard night for you,” he said. “If you don’t have good discipline, defensively, they’ll slice you up. It’s a hard prep — harder than, say, a Richmond — if you don’t have tremendous discipline and understand concepts.

“It was a difficult game. It requires tremendous discipline, defensively, and clearly we didn’t have very good discipline, defensively, except for one group.”

Connor Kochera scored 19 points, Grant Huffman added 18 and Davidson limited Duquesne’s top two scoring threats — Dae Dae Grant and Jimmy Clark III — to a combined nine points on 3-for-16 shooting to come away with a victory and end the Dukes’ four-game winning streak.

Grant, who was averaging 18.3 points and eclipsed 2,000 career points Saturday at Rhode Island, finished with five points. Clark (15.4 ppg) wound up with four.

After an offensive explosion of 31 points in an 85-71 victory over the Rams in Kingston, R.I., Grant was held scoreless back home in the first half by Davidson.

Likewise, Clark didn’t score in the second half, and Dambrot responded by benching his two senior guards for a time in favor of a lineup of younger players, who sparked the Dukes to turn a 15-point deficit into a four-point game.

“You’ve got to play the guys who you think are going to win the game,” Dambrot said of a lineup that included grad transfers Fousseyni Drame and little-used Andrei Savrasov, sophomore Kareem Rozier and freshmen Jake DiMichele — a walk-on from Our Lady of the Sacred Heart making his seventh start — and Jakub Necas.

“I just felt like they tried harder, defensively, than the other guys.”

Grant, Clark and a majority of the team’s remaining veterans sat on the Dukes’ bench and witnessed their teammates help Duquesne climb back into contention.

“They just had a bad night,” Dambrot said of his high-scoring duo. “They’ll come back and play well after this. I have complete faith in those guys. They just didn’t have it tonight.”

Dambrot merely said he was holding his veterans to “a high standard.”

As he does frequently, he referred to his days as a high school coach at St. Vincent-St. Mary in Akron, Ohio, where he mentored LeBron James for two seasons.

“I held the greatest player in the world to a high standard,” Dambrot said, “I’m going to hold my best players here to a high standard. If they want to get out there, they have to play better — just like everybody else on the team. I always let guys build up equity, and they have equity. So, I went back to them (later in the second half), but it wasn’t much better.”

Duquesne (13-9, 3-6) was aiming to neutralize an earlier five-game losing streak to open the Atlantic 10 schedule.

Bobby Durkin added 11 points for Davidson (13-9, 3-6), which halted a two-game skid. The Wildcats were playing their fifth game in a row without injured big man David Skogman, their second-leading scorer (13.3 ppg).

Davidson continued its dominance over Duquesne, winning for the 12th time in 13 meetings. Duquesne’s only victory in the series came Jan. 5, 2020, a 71-64 decision at Robert Morris’ UPMC Events Center.

DiMichele and Drame led Duquesne with 15 points each. David Dixon scored 10.

Grant, coming off a sterling shooting performance Saturday (8 for 16, including 7 for 14 from 3-point range) in the Dukes’ victory at Rhode Island, didn’t get on the board against Davidson until the second half.

His 3-pointer with 8 minutes, 10 seconds left pulled Duquesne within 50-46 after the Dukes had fallen behind by 15 points (46-31) just after the start of halftime.

Davidson, which held Duquesne to long scoring droughts of nearly 5 and 4 minutes in the first half, carried a 36-26 lead into the break.

Following Grant’s shot, Davidson pushed the lead back to double digits and coasted to the final, sending Duquesne to its fourth home loss of the season.

The Dukes could’ve been looking ahead to a rematch with St. Bonaventure come Saturday — they defeated the Bonnies, 54-50, on Jan. 23 at The Coop. Or, perhaps, they were peeking behind them at that impressive triumph last Saturday at Rhode Island.

“You’d have to be a fool to have a letdown. They’re a good team,” Dambrot said of Davidson, which fared well in back-to-back games against ACC opponents early in the season, beating Maryland and losing a three-point decision to Clemson.

Whatever the case, Duquesne entered the night with a hangover and left with a bruised ego.

“We know what (Davidson does). We play them 100 times, and they did exactly what we thought they would do.” Dambrot said. “It’s the same stuff. They’re good at what they do. They screen well, they cut well, and if you have bad discipline, they’ll make you pay. We had bad discipline, and we paid the price.”