Duquesne Basketball: Tre Williams injury effectively ends season for Dukes

Tre Williams won’t be playing for the rest of 2021-22 after suffering a knee injury. And that means Duquesne Basketball won’t win another game either.

There’s no question that this season has been a miserable campaign for Duquesne Basketball. Outside of the season-opening win against Rider and a three-game win streak, nothing has gone right. After falling to Davidson on Wednesday, the Dukes’ losing streak has been extended to 13 games and is dead last in the Atlantic 10 overall.

And unfortunately for the program, the losses continue off the court, with third-year big man Tre Williams now out for the final two weeks of the season. Towards the end of the first half against Davidson, the forward suffered a meniscus injury. It looked scary at first since it was no contact but the good news is that there’s no ligament damage, making the recovery time much more manageable.

Williams will be back for the 2022-23 season but that dooms the current campaign for the Dukes. He’s second on the team with 10.8 ppg and 5.7 rpg, while also leading them with 2.1 blocks, good for 5th in the Atlantic 10 and top-20 nationally. In a season where there have been 10+ different starting lineups, the 6’7 forward has been the lone consistent presence, starting all 26 games.

He’s also been the one constant in the frontcourt that has been decimated with injuries. D-II transfer RJ Gunn has been out of the year, while backup big Austin Rotroff has missed almost all of league play as well. That has left the undersized frontcourt duo of Williams and Kevin Easley for most of the year, which has created some rebounding and defensive interior issues, although Williams has been solid overall against the true centers in the conference.

Besides the consistency, Williams is a double-digit scoring loss for a team that has cracked 60 points just three times in the past 12 games, along with the team’s best overall defender. And Rotroff out, that leaves Mounir Hima as the only available player to play at the center position.

He’s coming off a career-high 10 rebound game and has made significant progress with his development in the past two months. But he’s a very raw player still and shouldn’t be getting extended minutes, which is something he’ll be forced to do. The next option would be having Easley playing at the five-spot, which is brutal for an already bad defensive unit.

Making matters worse is that Duquesne’s next opponent is Rhode Island. The Rams aren’t very good at 13-13 overall and 4-10 in the Atlantic 10. But matchup-wise it’s bad for the Dukes. Their starting forwards are Makhi and Makhel Mitchell, listed at 6’9 and 6’10 and around 240 pounds. This is a team with a lot of size and physicality, two things the Dukes aren’t handling well.

There are hopes that the guards will take the opportunity to step up and get out of this major funk. They tied their season-high in assists overall and Tyson Acuff had 15 points in the first half against Davidson. But in the second half without Williams, Duquesne managed just 17 total points after being down three at halftime.

The final three games of the regular season (Rhode Island, George Washington, La Salle) are all winnable on paper but without Williams, it’s hard to see how Duquesne gets any of them. It would be brutal to end the year on a long losing streak but at some point, you just have to turn the page and get ready for the 2022-23 season. And at this point, making sure Williams is healthy (and is coming back for sure) is more important than winning a meaningless game.