The collective groans from the crowd inside UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse when Queens guard Nasir Mann hit a go-ahead three to put the Royals up 71-70, it felt oddly familiar. The Duquesne team of 2024-25 lost multiple games in similar fashion. But not this team, not on this particular Tuesday night in November.
Despite a brutal night from beyond the arc (4-23), the Duquesne Dukes (3-0) rallied and survived for a 87-81 overtime win over the Queens Royals (1-3) to win their third straight at home to open up the 2025-26 season.
Duquesne Head Coach Dru Joyce III sees this edition of the Dukes as a new squad, and tries to not hinge on last year’s disappointments.
“That’s the season before,” Joyce explained. “And you take those moments, you learn from them, but this is a new team, right? And I don’t try to inflect this team with thoughts and ideas from last year.
That was our first time actually in a close game during this early part of the season. And I think we did show some grit, right? It wasn’t easy, they had the momentum right? They had the momentum, they had things going their way. But we continued to fight and make some plays.”
Once Mann hit that shot to make it a one point game with two minutes to go, Dukes Forward Jakub Nečas hit a big three to put his team up. WIth a minute to go and Queens with the ball, the Royals got four looks at the net and after the third offensive rebound, Avantae Parker finally came through to tie things up at 73. After Dukes guard Tarence Guinyard was denied at the rim by Parker (his third block of the night), Queens gave Duquesne everything they could handle on the other end to finish off regulation, with Yoav Berman missing two looks at the basket. Berman finished with 22 points, but him missing both of those shots was all Duquesne needed to finally slam the door shut in overtime.
In the overtime period, the Dukes took the lead off of a Nečas layup a minute into the stanza and never let go. Nečas made a lot of plays on and off the stat sheet in the latter part of this one that helped propel his team to victory. He thought that he didn’t play his best basketball in the two games last week, so he was grateful to the coaching staff and his teammates for the continued belief.
“I finally showed up,” Nečas said. “I’m just trying to bring myself and just play basketball and be healthy as much as I can.”
In the overtime period, Duquesne shot a perfect 4-for-4 from the field, with reigning A-10 Under Armour Player of the Week Tarence Guinyard leading all scorers with four points. Guinyard had 10 points on the night, dished out seven assists and nabbed three steals.
John Hugley IV once again provided a spark for the Dukes inside the paint, scoring 27 points and grabbing 11 rebounds. It was his first double-double as a member of Duquesne.
Max Edwards also contributed for the Dukes in the OT period with a field goal of his own. He came off the bench again tonight and gave Duquesne 16 big points. 10 of those came in the second half, and Edwards had half of the three-pointers that Duquesne made with two.
The Dukes held a commanding lead throughout the first half, going up 35-14 with under 6 minutes to go in the first half. But this game became more intense by the end of the half. In the final 5:45 of the Royals outscored the Dukes 18-6.
In the second half, despite a slow start, Duquesne was actually able to stretch their lead out to 16 with 10:52 to go in regulation following a floater from Dukes guard Dom Aekins. That momentum was long gone by the end of regulation, with the Royals outscoring the Dukes 29-13 the rest of the way until overtime.
With wins like this, Duquesne continues to build confidence and work towards their ultimate goal, one that goes beyond that stat sheets for guys like Hugley.
I don’t even look at the scoreboard, looking at how many points I got,” Hugley stated. “I’m just out here trying to play the right way, trying to lead these guys to an A-10 Championship, man. I think that’s the bigger goal here.”
BONUS POINTS
Dave Dixon made an appearance on the “SportsCenter Top 10” on Wednesday morning for this monstrous jam over two Royals defenders:
