A strong second half defensive effort spurred Duquesne to a 67-62 upset of Richmond at VCU’s Siegel Center. The second-round Atlantic 10 tournament matchup improved the Dukes to 9-8, while Richmond fell to 13-8.
Richmond led, 27-13, with eight minutes to play in the first half. The Spiders were running on all cylinders while Duquesne struggled with turnovers and on defense. The last eight minutes saw the Dukes tighten up that defense, going on a 17-10 run to close the gap to 37-30 at the intermission. Eliminating those turnovers, defending and going on an attack the basket mode put Keith Dambrot’s Dukes in a better position by halftime.
Duquesne trailed, 52-44, with just under eight minutes remaining in regulation. The defense stepped up. Over the last nine minutes, Richmond scored one field goal, a Tyler Burton layup at the final buzzer.
“Our offense was stagnant,” Burton said, “and they played pretty good defense.”
In the words of senior guard Jacob Gilyard, “we missed Blake Francis (out with an injury). If he was in there, we could rely on him to get us a few baskets during those nine minutes.”
Richmond coach Chris Mooney was pleased his team competed on the boards — Duquesne held a slight 37-35 edge — although shooting and turnovers were another story.
“We hit only five 3-pointers on the game and Duquesne had a lot to do with that,” he lamented.
Mooney also felt Duquesne deserved credit for not changing or getting rattled falling behind.
“Their plan was to go inside to (Marcus) Weathers and (Michael) Hughes,” Mooney said. “They kept doing that even after a rough start.”
For Richmond, the game was a microcosm of the season, a good promising start including a then-impressive win at Kentucky and over Loyola-Chicago before finishing with three straight losses. Mooney could chalk a lot of it up to injuries. No excuse, but the Spiders missed the scoring and defense of Francis. On this day, Grant Golden scored 10 points, but was not at full strength.
“I’ve coached for a while,” Keith Dambrot said. “But I feel for Chris Mooney. They were injured. I respect Chris Mooney as a coach and a person, but today, they were not at full strength.”
Dambrot felt the game was similar to their prior meeting, a 79-72 Richmond win on February 20.
“The way the game flowed was similar,” Dambrot said. “The big difference was down the stretch a few weeks ago, they made the plays. Today, we made the plays that got us the win.”
Duquesne was seeded ninth, Richmond eighth. This marked the Dukes’ first win over a higher seed in the A-10 tournament since 2009. Duquesne defeated Rhode Island and Dayton that year before falling to Temple in the finals.
“We went to nine straight championship games when I was at Akron,” Dambrot said. “I am not used to losing. They have not gone to an NCAA Tournament here in about 500 years. My job is not to just advance a game, but to win a championship.”
Duquesne will take on St. Bonaventure, the regular season champion, in the quarterfinals on Friday.
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