Duquesne (6-7, 1-1) defeated Saint Joseph’s (6-7, 0-2) Wednesday night 71-68, which marked the team’s third best comeback in the Ferry era.
The Dukes rallied from a 12-point first half deficit to finish the half trailing by two points. Junior guard Derrick Colter scored a game-high 22 points, entering the game ranked second nationally in 3-point percentage. Wednesday marked his ninth 20-point game of his career and the second this season. Senior forward Dominique McKoy and junior guard Micah Mason scored 13 and nine points, respectively.
Duquesne began a 12-2 run on a McKoy layup with 6:01 left in the first half, including two 3-pointers knocked down by Mason. Mason came off an 0-of-8 (0-of-5 from the 3-point arc) performance at Dayton Saturday, making 3-of-7 from the arc, and scoring all nine points in the first half of play.
Saint Joseph’s sophomore forward DeAndre’ Bembry led his team with 18 points. The Hawks’ shot 41.2 percent from the field and 24.1 percent from the 3-point, in comparison to the Dukes’ 50 percent from the field and 55 percent from the arc.
“I think we played really hard and really competed today,” head coach Jim Ferry said. “We got down 12 in the first half and this year, when that has happened in the past, we’ve kind of crumbled and we didn’t do that.”
McKoy commented on his team’s focus on remaining aggressive for the duration of the game.
“We just try to stay aggressive and we taught ourselves to come out and leave it on the court and work as hard as we could,” McKoy stated. “So that’s what’s our focus the whole game, just to keep playing hard and that’s what we did.”
There were four ties and three lead changes before Duquesne took the lead for good on a Colter 3-pointer with 17:18 left in play. After Colter’s 3-of-10 (1-of-5 from the 3-point arc) at Dayton, his 8-of-11 (4-of-6 from the 3-point arc) Wednesday night once again proved his status as the second nationally ranked 3-point shooter in the country.
“It always feels good when you’re back at home and you’re shooting because you’re used to the rims and you know where your spot’s at,” Colter said. “So we just kept shooting. Coach [Ferry] said, ‘keep shooting, keep shooting’ and believe it, have confidence in your shot and you’re going to make them.”
Ferry has noticed an improvement in terms of his team’s overall confidence level throughout the season.
“I thought today’s confidence absolutely builds [upon previous games]—what I really like in today’s [game] was the kids turning to each other on the court and saying, ‘one more stop, let’s get another stop,’ so starting to come together,” Ferry noted. “We’ve been consistently inconsistent with our confidence. I think our guys—because we’re so young—we’re playing well, then dips, so hopefully we can build on this. A win like this is better than a win by 16-20 points because you really have to grind one out here and this is something we can always now go back to and build on, so hopefully our confidence will grow from here.”
Duquesne takes on Rhode Island (10-3, 2-0) Saturday at 1:00 pm ET at the A.J. Palumbo Center.
Photo Credit: PSN
