- Tonight's game was the ugliest 16 point victory I have ever seen. If the Dukes expect to play like this and beat teams like UMass and St. Joes they will be sorely mistaken.
- Shawn James did not play tonight because of a bad knee. We still do not know if he will play Saturday against GW.
- With James out Kieron Achara was forced to step up and he answered the call. Achara had 18 points and 12 rebounds.
- Ron Everhart wisely chose to use the two platoon system tonight. The Bonnies are a struggling team with a short bench who simply could not keep up with the running and gunning Dukes.
- Phillip Fayne took advantage of his minutes tonight playing hustle defense and scoring 11 points on 4-7 from the field and 3-4 from beyond the arch. It was nice to see the Fayne I had grown accustomed to seeing in non-conference play.
- I saw "Wunderkind" T.J. McConnell at the game tonight with his father and some friends.
I'll be totally honest I was not happy with the Dukes' performance tonight. St. Bonaventure is a horrible team, who does not have a road victory this season and yet the Dukes allowed them to hang around until the end of the game. I admit the game was never in doubt, but still this is a team that Duquesne has to totally and completely dominate if they expect to compete with the big boys in the A10. The Dukes will need a better performance Saturday against GW.
3 comments:
If by hanging around you mean cutting the lead to three possessions on a couple of occasions in the second half before losing by 16, then the Bonnies hung around. For the most part, Duquesne dominated and made the Bonnies look bad. What was it 15 steals to 1 and 28 points from turnovers? The Dukes played their game, set the tone and won big without their best player. I'll take a win like this today and on the 2nd of February.
I was a Fayne detractor early in the season, but I really like what I've seen from him this year. He may be the teams most improved player. Don't get me wrong he made a few bonehead plays in a couple of games and got benched but I'm not hoping he transfers anymore. In fact, I hope he gets more PT in the rotation against better opponents. If he plays 5-7 minutes at around the ten minute mark of both halves, I think he could provide an injection of energy right around the time the team usually needs it. Today was hands down the best I've seen of him.
Duke;
Many times ragged teams like Bona make you play a choppy type game, our best player was out and our best guard is in a horrible slump( Mensah) but we won by 16.
You will see more games like this in conference because of scrappy style of bottom dwelling teams.
We struggle because we don't have a true go to guy, however Archara looked like the player he was last season.
12-5, I will take for I didn't think it would happen this year.
I still somewhat amazed that the Dukes can average over 80 points a game with the half court offense they run. I really wish they'd design more set plays to get Saunders the ball, especially in the half court.
I thought the officiating was decent overall, but the one official seemed to really have it out for the Dukes. And WTF is up with all the carry calls? Did the A10 decree that they were going to emphasize that? I was a little surprised that STB #10 didn't get T'd up - he was giving the ref attitude after every call. STB #1 didn't need to pull his socks up either - it didn't hide his chicken legs, and we would have known he was a total douche without them. (I thought his style of dribble driving and then passing out to a guy in no position to shoot was kind of funny though.)
Hey - on the plus side, the pep band played a few songs I hadn't heard them play before. They did a nice job with "Beat it."
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