OMAHA, Neb. — Duquesne’s second-round NCAA Tournament game against Illinois was set up to be a contrast in styles.
It was the 11th-seeded Dukes’ unrelenting, tenacious defense, which routinely holds opponent point totals in the low 60s, versus the high-powered offensive assault from third-seeded Illinois that led the Big Ten in scoring at 84.4 points per game.
In the end, though, just one team lived up to its reputation Saturday night in Omaha.
The Fighting Illini unleashed an offensive attack that the normally stout Duquesne defense couldn’t suppress en route to an 89-63 victory. Illinois never trailed and shot 59.3% from the floor — a total that actually hovered near 65% for most of the game before the result became academic.
“We just got blitzed,” associate head coach Dru Joyce III said on the Duquesne radio broadcast after the game.
On Friday, Illini coach Brad Underwood played coy when discussing strategy about facing Duquesne’s defense, saying, “We’ll take whatever comes.”
As it turns out, though, Illinois appeared to have zero willingness to play Duquesne’s slow down, grind-it-out style, taking it to the Dukes in transition, on the perimeter and down low.
“They just bullied us a little bit tonight. Then, we got a little frazzled and unraveled. We had trouble with their physicality and quickness,” Duquesne coach Keith Dambrot said.
Duquesne had no answer for NBA prospect Terrence Shannon Jr., who had 30 points. Marcus Domask added 22 points and seven assists.
Illinois was also the better team defensively. Despite being ranked 11th in the Big Ten on defense, the Illini held Duquesne to 41% shooting and leading scorer Dae Dae Grant to just seven points.
“When we guard like we did early, we can be really electric in transition,” Underwood said afterwards. “It was a huge talking point coming in. We had to be better defensively than we were against Morehead State (in Round 1).”
For as badly as the season ended, it’s hard to taint what Duquesne accomplished by getting this far.
This group of Dukes snapped a 47-year NCAA Tournament drought. It snapped a 55-year drought when it came to actually winning an NCAA Tournament game. It won an Atlantic 10 Tournament championship for the first time since the conference was called the Eastern Eight. It sent Dambrot into retirement as a conference champion and with his first career NCAA Tournament win, a 71-67 decision over BYU on Thursday.
Not only that, but for the first time in almost half a century, the Duquesne basketball program was the best story in Pittsburgh sports.
Those things don’t get erased just because a really good team from a really big conference had a really hot night from the floor.
“That accomplishment and that success, it’s a blessing to be able to have that (A-10) banner hanging up. Not many people can do that or have been in the position that we have been the last few weeks,” Grant said.
Yes, the Dukes were indeed blitzed by a team that could find itself in the Elite Eight or maybe even the Final Four.
But what the Dukes blitzed themselves was their own legacy of irrelevance.
For the first time in a long time, Duquesne’s basketball program has a positive platform from which to operate, and a legitimate hope that the program can be back to the NCAA Tournament on a more regular basis.
And that the new championship banner Grant referenced may be joined by another before very long.
