Even without one of the Atlantic 10’s biggest big men for much of Saturday’s exhibition men’s basketball game, Duquesne impressed.

Terence Guinyard and Jimmie Williams, a pair of first-year Dukes, scored 21 points apiece and Duquesne survived the loss of John Hugley IV to a first-half ejection to come away with an 83-81 exhibition victory over Virginia Tech in Blacksburg.

A first-team all-Ohio Valley Conference selection a year ago at Tennessee-Martin, Guinyard made a 7 of 15 shots and contributed eight rebounds, six assists and three steals for Duquesne.

Williams, who transferred from South Florida, was 7 for 12, including 4 for 7 from 3-point range, and added five rebounds and three steals.

“It’s an exhibition game, and the most important thing I’d like to be able to take a look at is, ‘How is your team performing? What is helping me move forward?’” Duquesne coach Dru Joyce III said.

“In the second half, we played with great pace. Our bigs did a terrific job running the floor. They created so many opportunities at the rim for us. I think it was a total flip between points in the paint in the first half to the second half to where we wound up winning that battle — as well as the rebound battle.”

The 6-foot-10, 265-pound Hugley, whose college career began at Pitt and has made stops at Oklahoma and Xavier before landing back in Pittsburgh with Duquesne, was sidelined with two technical fouls after scoring 10 first-half points on 4-of-6 shooting.

That’s when his teammates took over.

“I’m proud of the poise we had, because regardless this being a road exhibition game,” Joyce said, “you have a crowd and there’s momentum involved. We handled those situations well. We found ourselves down a couple times, but we made some runs.”

Without Hugley, who is among five Duquesne players standing 6-10 and averaging 248 pounds, Duquesne prevailed.

“Defensively, we had some points in the second half where it just became a see-saw battle,” Joyce said. “They score, we score. But the way we closed, a huge credit to Jakub (Necas) and Dave (Dixon). Those are two versatile forwards able to guard down and guard up. I thought they applied a lot of pressure.”

Virginia Tech, which is picked to finish 12th in the 18-team ACC — two spots ahead of Pitt — led by 13 points twice, the last time midway through the second half.

But the Hokies, who went without a field goal during the last seven minutes, couldn’t keep control.

Guinyard’s dunk with 44 seconds left completed a Duquesne comeback that put the Dukes in front for good, 82-80.

Ben Hammond led Virginia Tech with 22 points. Tobi Lawai added 20 for the Hokies, who were outrebounded 41-40.

The victory follows up on Duquesne’s closed-scrimmage victory a week earlier against Cleveland State at UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse, where the Dukes will open their regular-season schedule Nov. 3 against Niagara.

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