After a heartbreaking loss on the road at Dayton, the Duquesne Dukes look to bounce back at home against Fordham. They played earlier at their place, and Duquesne lost a close game in the final minute, 65-63. It’s a key game for both sides as they look to get out of the bottom tier of the Atlantic 10 standings.
Here are some keys to the Dukes avoiding the season sweep to the Rams.
1. Finding better perimeter looks
Duquesne wants to put up a lot of three-pointers and hope around 8-10 goes through. But Fordham has been excellent at preventing teams from even taking those shots. In the first go-around, the Dukes went just 5/12 from deep and had to settle for a lot of insider looks. And assuming starting center Chabi Barre is still out with a hamstring injury, it’s going to be hard to get good looks inside. They could simply have Jakub Necas play the five-spot for most of the game and space the floor as much as possible, but Fordham has good bigs like Josh Rivera, who scored 16 pts off the bench in the first game.
2. Jackie Johnson’s return to the A.J. Palumbo Center
As a freshman, Johnson played at Duquesne before transferring to UNLV for a couple of years. So this will be his first time back where his college career started, though Duq HC Dru Joyce wasn’t on the staff when he was there. Johnson was held to just 10 points on 3/11 FG in the first go-around. He’s averaging 18.7 ppg on the season and has three straight 20+ points games recently so once again, he’ll be the main focus for the Dukes in Johnson’s homecoming.
3. Redemption for Cam Crawford
After scoring the tying basket with just 10 seconds to go against Dayton, Crawford mistakenly fouled a Flyer that allowed them to score the game-winning points in a brutal way to lose. He’s been the unsung hero for Duquesne ever since he was inserted into the starting lineup. The 6’8 guard has also been one of the most consistent players overall, though he’s scored fewer than five points in two of the last three games. Against Fordham’s defense, they’ll need Crawford to manufacture some offense to get the home win on Wednesday. And after what happened on Saturday, it’d be a nice moment for him personally to have a bounce-back performance.