That was hard to watch, but a road win is always good.  Week off before st bona.  ✌🏼

These Dukes can score!

First half was great to see. Gunn's sharpshooting was essential in breaking the game open. 

Minimal inside offensive presence by our bigs.

Kudos to the Duke’s 3 pointer offensive blitz in the first half. Very awesome indeed, however with the lack of defending the Hawk’s threes, they too were hot – but not as hot as the Dukes, they remained in striking distance.  While I love the ‘run & gun’ fast play – you can’t keep that up indefinitely because at some point you go cold and the sloppiness in passing sets in, and the puzzling turnovers allow the opponent to get back in the game.

While we got away with it against a St. Joe – not likely to happen against better teams.  This team runs in spurts -- seemingly ooze with confidence,  play with excellent ball movement – then when the ‘3s’  go cold, they suddenly make bad passes and tons of turnovers.   Great, we held on tonight.  But we’ll need to control the emotions against better teams and concentrate a little more on the basics once a lead is established.

Last edited by gjgsr (1/11/2023 11:31 pm)

- I like that this was a decisive victory & that St. Joes never got close after the 9 minute mark of the 1st half. This team hits hard right from the opening tip. The 16 point lead at the half was meaningful to me.
-St Joe's is pretty lost.
-I need to eat some crow about Gunn being able to be a serious A-10 player after so much time off & coming from D-II. Kudos to the coaching staff for finding him & keeping the faith. When will other teams catch on to him? This is comical & fun to watch. Once again RJ was much more involved in board crashing & box outs. If he had enough games to qualify, he would be leading the league in 3PT% & would be 5th in 3s made per game. Dae Dae is still the A-10 leader in 3s per game, 3s attempted, & total 3s made. He is 7th in 3PT% at .427. He has made more 3's than the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, & 6th place percentage guys have taken.
-Rozier was such a typical promising freshman tonight. He started out with 3-4 really bad minutes making mental mistakes & having his physical limitations highlighted. Then, he settled in & was great for 6-7 minutes! Then he was just solid. He is getting a ton of quality minutes that should pay dividends in coming years.
-I think the Dukes #1 priority in the offseason should be another experienced portal PG looking to make a competition & exposure upgrade. Rozier is going to need another year as an understudy.
-I too am puzzled with why Dixon was a DNP & Barre only got 3 minutes. Defensive rebounding really suffered. Those guys didn't even get in after Dae Dae & Gunn hit back to back 3s to put the Dukes up 20 & take it into the under 4 minute media time out. I get that letting another huge lead slip into a loss would be tragic but, Getting these 2 guys & Hronsky 2-3 closing minutes experience with Brewer & McGriff seems like it would go a long way.
-Dae Dae is really struggling the last 4-5 of games to understand his role in  help defense. He gets caught too deep in help position to get back to the quality shooters that he has been guarding. This has not & will not fly against better competition. Gun is still a bit lost in this way but was much better tonight. These guys really have to work the system better & stay home if Jimmy is going to play rover.
-24 is an awesome number of assists. The turnovers could have been at a more acceptable level if the upperclassmen could be a more disciplined about the low probability alley-oop attempts. Jimmy, Tevin, & Dae Dae each had some poor judgement in that department. When was the last time a Dukes team had 8 players with positive A/TO ratios? I was pleasantly surprised to see that Q is 1.6/1 for the year.  Tevin 3.3/1 (leading A-10),  Rozier 3.17/1, & Dae Dae 1.4/1

CLK wrote:

gjgsr wrote:

Kudos to the Duke’s 3 pointer offensive blitz in the first half. Very awesome indeed, however with the lack of defending the Hawk’s threes, they too were hot – but not as hot as the Dukes, they remained in striking distance.  While I love the ‘run & gun’ fast play – you can’t keep that up indefinitely because at some point you go cold and the sloppiness in passing sets in, and the puzzling turnovers allow the opponent to get back in the game.

While we got away with it against a St. Joe – not likely to happen against better teams.  This team runs in spurts -- seemingly ooze with confidence,  play with excellent ball movement – then when the ‘3s’  go cold, they suddenly make bad passes and tons of turnovers.   Great, we held on tonight.  But we’ll need to control the emotions against better teams and concentrate a little more on the basics once a lead is established.

gigsr, spot on.  I am excited about breaking the road loss streak, but if we are serious about winning the championship we have to get better defensively.  We out-"Gunned" SJU but gave up 80 points to a team that was struggling scoring.  

Box Score

Men's Basketball vs Saint Joseph's on 1/11/2023 - Box Score - Duquesne University Athletics (goduquesne.com)

Giving up 80 points to a team that we ran up 92 isn't that unexpected. SJ was playing catch-up all game and had to push their pace too or really get blown out. Most of the night we either spread the court in transition or they were trying the same to keep up. KD got a great win and some good film to show the team how to plug some holes in the defense at the same time.  These Dukes did a lot of travel with little rest this week, and ran their butts off in both of  these road games but now have a week to rest up and prepare for St.B.

CLK wrote:

I am excited about breaking the road loss streak, but if we are serious about winning the championship we have to get better defensively.  We out-"Gunned" SJU but gave up 80 points to a team that was struggling scoring. 

No doubt, CLK. Right now the Dukes are a top 50 offense with a below average defense. This combination points toward the Dukes finishing 5th or 6th in the conference. To me, this would be an underachievement based on the Dukes talent compared to other teams in the league. Dayton, with Daron Holmes, is a tough matchup. I haven’t seen enough of SLU to pass judgment yet. I’ll put the Dukes talent up against any other team in the league. They must improve defensively to secure that coveted double bye 2nd-4th place finish.

Couple other notes….
Dukes are currently #26 in the country in 3 point shooting at 38.1%.
4 Dukes are shooting over 40% from 3 - Gunn, Brewer, Grant and Rozier
Kenpom projects the Dukes will be underdogs in only 2 remaining games…. @UMass by 1 and @Saint Louis by 5.

You got talent all over the board with this team.  Again, the challenge for Dambrot is going to be keeping everyone on the same page -- the one needed to beat St. Louis, Dayton and yes -- still St. Bonaventure.  There are some on the team who yet find it hard to defend because they're offensively oriented.  There are others on the team that end up in certain instances - not playing because of the match-up situations.  Dambrot  has to instill the winning instinct in them - so they don't go off and pout and enter the transfer portal.  Tough challenge ahead...

townsonkid wrote:

the old saying offense wins games, defense wins championships might never be more true than for this team.   If that D doesnt improve, they wont reach their highest potential no matter how many 3s they make.  Business will pick up again vs St Bona, no matter their record.   At least we beat the bad team.

This team has played really good defense this year.  Just need to do it consistently

Motor wrote:

Bleeds Red & Blue wrote:

El Presidente wrote:

Minimal inside offensive presence by our bigs.

 


As well as defense.

Well guys lets not discount Reece with an outstanding offensive game and AR with his rebounding.
But do agree I would also have liked to see more minutes for our freshmen bigs.
Go Dukes

Ditto, Reese is a Big time player, and AR is in the center doing some important damage. On the road, the refs feast on fouls inside, that these Dukes can really beat teams from the perimeter too lessens bad refs call on the road is important and it can open the inside game if teams try to spread out to the perimeter to try to stop us. And, really,  we really beat Richmond the other night, we just, didn't beat the refs.too. 

BluffHunter wrote:

Here's a cool chart showing Duquesne's Bart Torvik ranking throughout the season. Green spots are wins and reds are losses.

https://twitter.com/jackmorganusn/status/1613583241025556480/photo/1

Thanks, BluffHunter. Interesting to see that Torvik’s advanced stats have the Dukes ranked 2nd in the A10.