Pittsburgh – After getting down early on in the game, then leading by 17 in the second half, Duquesne (8-21, 1-14) found themselves in a dogfight Wednesday night against the Charlotte 49ers (19-10, 7-8). The game ended up going into overtime, where Duquesne failed to muster any consistency and fell 89-87.
“Chris Braswell took this one over and we really haven’t had that go-to guy to take something over. And that’s why we have to make our free throws, that’s why we can’t turn the ball over. The margin of error, like we talked about all year, is really small,” said Ferry.
Braswell led all scorers in the game with 28 points on 10 of 14 from the floor. 24 of these points came after the first half. Among the most crucial of these points was a 3-pointer with 5:13 left to play in regulation that cut the game to within eight. Braswell followed this up seconds later with a steal and a put back to cut the Duquesne lead to six.
Henry Pierria finished with 18 points and 10 rebounds before fouling out with :22 remaining in the second half. Terence Williams also recorded a double-double with 15 points and 12 rebounds, making him the ninth Charlotte player to get a double-double this season.
An unlikely contributor, Kadeem Pantophlet, provided nine points for the Dukes in the first half, including two 3-pointers that helped close the gap on the initial Charlotte lead. The 49ers started the game on an 8-0 run, but the Dukes went on to shoot 7 of 14 (50 percent) from beyond the arc in the half, one of their better first half showings of the season. Colter, who finished the game with 21 points, and Johnson (who had 20) found ways to get to the basket. The Dukes finished the half with nine fast break points and a nifty turnaround jumper by Colter to beat the buzzer.
Johnson and Colter continued to lay it on thick in the second half, also getting Winters and Jeremiah Jones involved in the action. Winters finished 3 of 9 from the floor while Jones went 3 of 7. Unfortunately, Duquesne let their own 17 point lead get in their heads down the stretch.
“We just kind of got a little comfortable with the lead, so it definitely didn’t look like we [were] attacking … we missed a couple shots, easy layups, you know, everybody’s got to keep playing, keep attacking,” said Marhold.
As soon as the Dukes opened up a large lead, Charlotte resorted to a nasty full court press, refusing to allow Duquesne to set up their offense. Duquesne didn’t try to break the press as a team though, and Colter tried to be a one-man press breaker. This partially led to the 14 second half turnovers the Dukes committed.
“We still could have won that game if we didn’t leave so many free throws out there,” said Ferry. “And we had some key turnovers late [in the game].”
Duquesne never led in the overtime period. They were able to tie things up 83-83 with 2:21 remaining, but Ivan Benkovic hit his third and biggest 3-pointer of the game on the ensuing possession.
With less than a second to play and Duquesne down by two, Marhold tried to receive a cross-court baseball pass, only to have the ball apparently hit out of his hands by a Charlotte player. Controversially, the ref thought Marhold touched it last and gave the ball to the 49ers, effectively ending the game.
Duquesne failed to achieve an Atlantic 10 home victory this year and has only won once since December 19th.
“It was very challenging this year I think, with the discrepancy in the talent level that we’ve had,” Ferry said. “We’re going to have a completely different team next year, so we’ll talk about those goals later.”
Photo Credit: Duquesne Athletics
