Duquesne MBB Stymies Purple Eagles In Season Opener
The Duquesne Men’s Basketball Team led wire to wire, handling Niagara 83-63 Monday evening at the UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse, good for the 1,500th win in program history.
Tarence Guinyard paced Duquesne (1-0) with his 19 points, a game high. Jimmie Williams posted 15 points, while John Hugley IV grabbed eight rebounds. As a team Duquesne shot 56.4% from the field and 42.3% from three-point range.
Niagara (0-1) saw Reggie Prudhomme led the Purple Eagles with his 16 points and Justin Page 14.
The visitors held without a field goal for the first 10 minutes of this contest, a fact emphasized by it spending two timeouts before the under-8 media timeout.
Guinyard took the opening tip and needed all of a second to get Duquesne on the scoreboard. Niagara would call a timeout after conceding the game’s first nine points. The Purple Eagles would not score until 13:05 remained in the first half when Trenton Walters buried a pair of free throws to break the scoreless drought.
Duquesne led 41-20 at half but ran into a small bit of adversity when it conceded the first eight points, but after Niagara got a no-call offensively which would have cut its deficit to 11 points, Greg Paulus voiced his displeasure to an official and was assessed a technical. Guinyard sank both free throws. Niagara would not get any closer.
More to come later with an Inside the Dukes article, but in the meantime, here are postgame comments from Guinyard, Williams and head coach Dru Joyce III.
