The hole was too deep. The road was too long. Duquesne’s furious comeback wasn’t enough.

But almost.

“I’ll commend my guys on their fight. I do believe we showed some of that,” Dukes coach Dru Joyce III said. “We weren’t able to pull it out. We had an opportunity to win, but, like I said, I’ll give them credit for their fight.”

The Dukes’ 21 turnovers certainly didn’t help them in an 83-79 loss to William & Mary on Tuesday night at UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse.

“We’ve got to clean it up,” Joyce said, “We’ll go back and look at it. You give a team the ball 21 times, it’s going to make things difficult.”

Sometimes, Joyce said, you’ll find yourself fighting off teams from the start, as was the case against the Tribe, who came out sizzling, converting their first six shots and 11 of 14 to establish control.

They used runs of 8-0 and 9-0 as a springboard to an early 16-point lead.

Tunde Vahlberg Fasasi scored 17 points for William & Mary (8-2), including two free throws to ice the outcome with 12 seconds left.

Cade Haskins added 16 points, Kilian Brockhoff followed with 14, Jo’el Emanuel had 12 and Reese Miller finished with 10 for the Tribe, who won their sixth game in a row.

William & Mary shot 50.9% and made half its 3-point shots (15 for 30).

“It’s basketball. They made shots early,” Joyce said. “It happens. You can play some of the best defense in the world, and sometimes a guy may make a highly contested shot. Overall, the frustration of losing a game here makes sense, but … we played around with fire, and that’s a dangerous game.”

Jimmie Williams’ 16 points led Duquesne (4-3), which fell behind early then fought back in the second half to take the lead. Tarence Guinyard, the Atlantic 10’s second-leading scorer, added 13 points, Alex Williams had 12 and Jakub Necas and David Dixon finished with 11 each for the Dukes.

Ahead from the start, William & Mary extended an eight-point halftime lead to a 14-point cushion on Haskins’ 3-point shot for a 64-50 advantage with 11:53 left.

Then, Duquesne showed up.

“We have everything we need to win, which kind of upsets me sometimes when we lose because we shouldn’t be losing,” Jimmie Williams said. “We’ve just got to be ready from the jump. We can’t let teams feel comfortable. We knew what they were doing, and we kind of just let them do it. I’ve got to be better myself, too. And for this team, we all just have to buy-in defensively because we all can score. We’ve got to give more effort and be more disciplined.”

Duquesne, which shot 45.8%, rampaged to the lead, using a 21-4 run, ignited by Jimmie Williams’ eight consecutive points.

Dixon’s spinning, acrobatic layup-and-one pulled the Dukes within 66-61 before Guinyard’s driving layup-and-one got them closer at 66-64 with 7:53 to go.

The Dukes finally got a lead when Jake DiMichele, who has been hampered with injuries for much of last year and this, swished a 3 from the right corner to put Duquesne in front, 67-66.

Joyce questioned Guinyard’s minuscule 2-for-3 showing at the free-throw line, where the Dukes made 17 of 24 attempts.

“We should’ve been to the free-throw line a lot more,” Joyce said. “I don’t think Tarence Guinyard is getting the right whistle. Three free throws on as many drives as he had, I disagree. To me, that doesn’t add up. It doesn’t make sense.”

When Jimmie Williams scored on a driving layup at the 5:47 mark, the Dukes had their biggest advantage, 73-68.

Miller and Dixon traded free throws to keep it a five-point margin before William & Mary used a 7-0 run, capped by Emanuel’s two free throws to retake the lead, 76-74, with 3:38 to go.

From there, the Tribe never relinquished the lead.

Jimmie Williams’ jumper with 1:15 left kept Duquesne a basket away from tying at 81-79, but his runner with the shot clock winding down was off the mark inside 20 seconds to go, and the Tribe held on.

Miller’s jumper gave William & Mary its biggest lead, 38-22, with 5:31 left in the first half, then Duquesne ran off the next eight points as part of a 10-2 run that got the Dukes within 42-35 with 2:25 to go before intermission.

Jimmie Williams and Necas scored five points apiece to account for all of Duquesne’s points during the spree.

It was a pattern of playing catchup for the Dukes all night.

“We showed some fight,” Joyce said. “We took some punches. They had it going. They shot the ball really well, consistently, throughout the game. But we found a way to dig and get some stops. You’ve got to take some positives from there. Just a lot of unforced turnovers and that’s unfortunate. We’re hurting ourselves by giving the ball back that often.”

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