Duquesne men's basketball loses to St. Bonaventure — again

Mark this one down for the archives. If you didn’t watch it, you might want to dial it up at a later date.

Fast. Physical. Entertaining. Take your pick.

And probably, there are many more superlatives to describe St. Bonaventure’s 65-61 Atlantic 10 Conference men’s basketball victory over Duquesne on Saturday night at La Roche’s Kerr Fitness Center.

“We played good enough defensively to win,” Duquesne coach Keith Dambrot said, echoing a familiar suggestion in recent weeks.

In this quirky, covid-interrupted season, the Dukes have held a winning team to 65 points or less on three occasions in January.

“We’ve got to put the ball in the basket more,” Dambrot said, noting his lineup has a handful of hungry first-year players who are developing on the fly.

“The young kids still need to mature. They let too much of the little stuff bother them. They’ll get better at it. They just need to be more level.”

It was a game that, by all accounts, showed the fast-developing rivalry between the A-10’s Southern Tier region of New York and Southwestern Pennsylvania, a back-and-forth, bruising affair that went down to the wire.

Kyle Lofton scored 17 points to lead St. Bonaventure. Dominick Welch added 14 points, and Jalen Adaway chipped in 12 for the first-place Bonnies (8-1, 6-1), who won for the sixth time in a row and are off to their best start since the 2000-01 season.

They also tied their best start in A-10 games, which was in 1982-83.

St. Bonaventure won for the second time over Duquesne in nine days and came in having beaten its previous four opponents each by double digits, including a 63-48 victory over the Dukes on Jan. 15 in Olean, N.Y.

“We’ve shown we can compete with anybody in this league, even with young kids,” said Dambrot, who continued to provide freshmen Chad Baker (30) and Toby Okani (24) with considerable minutes in starting roles, along with freshmen Andre Harris and Tyson Acuff (10 apiece).

Senior guard Tavian Dunn-Martin led Duquesne (4-6, 3-5) with 18 points on 5-of-12 shooting, including 3 of 6 on 3-point shots. Dunn-Martin, pressed into point guard duties following the departure of Sincere Carry, managed just one assist but committed four turnovers.

Dambrot, not one to point fingers, said the Dukes’ chances of victory in the waning seconds were doused by several miscues by multiple players.

“You just can’t make turnovers in crunch time,” he said.

Yet, it’s a testament to another tenacious defensive effort by the Dukes that St. Bonaventure made 15 turnovers to Duquesne’s 12.

Senior Michael Hughes posted 15 points and 12 rebounds — his 10th career double-double and third this season — while Marcus Weathers scored 10 points for the Dukes, who closed within two points in the final seconds but couldn’t catch St. Bonaventure.

The Bonnies took the lead for good, save for one brief tie, on a pair of free throws by Lofton with 9 minutes, 18 seconds left. During that time, Duquesne went cold offensively, going without a point for 5 minutes, 12 seconds, it’s second such portion of the game.

Neither team led by more than four points in the second half until Adaway’s dunk with 1:28 remaining gave St. Bonaventure a 60-55 advantage.

The score was tied on Hughes’ reverse layup inside the 3-minute mark before St. Bonaventure took a 58-55 lead on Adaway’s three-point play with 2:13 to go.

Duquesne held a one-point halftime lead, despite enduring a scoreless stretch of 7 minutes, 14 seconds and watched an eight-point advantage turn into a nine-point deficit while St. Bonaventure was accumulating 17 points on a variety of shots that pushed the Bonnies ahead, 21-12.

Before that, Duquesne had taken matters right at the Bonnies, bolting to a 12-4 lead before going cold.

With Dambrot substituting liberally, St. Bonaventure’s lineup remained mostly intact, though 6-foot-10 shot-blocker Osun Osunniyi, who came in averaging nearly a double-double (10.1 ppg, 9.6 rpg), sat out much of the first 20 minutes with foul trouble.

It was then, despite Osunniyi’s absence and with Duquesne’s rising crop of freshmen at center stage, that the Bonnies took control.

Finally, Duquesne broke the drought when Hughes converted 1 of 2 free throws then followed up on the next possession with a reverse layup that sparked a scrum between Hughes and St. Bonaventure’s Jalen Shaw — Osunniyi’s backup — that resulted in a foul on Shaw.

Dunn-Martin, Duquesne’s best free-throw shooter, sank both attempts from the line for the Dukes, who closed the gap to 21-17 with 6:33 remaining before intermission.

St. Bonaventure opened up a 29-19 lead when Welch made 1 of 2 free throws before the Bonnies, much like Duquesne earlier, went cold, allowing Duquesne to crawl back into it.

The Dukes outscored St. Bonaventure down the stretch, 13-2, capped by three free throws by Dunn-Martin, and headed to the locker room with its improbable one-point lead.