Estimated read time: 5-6 minutes
OMAHA, Neb. — It took Duquesne men's basketball 47 years to make it back to the NCAA Tournament.
Might as well stay a bit longer.
Dae Dae Grant had 19 points, three rebounds and two assists; and Jimmy Clark III added 11 points and four assists as the 11th-seeded Dukes upset BYU 71-67 in a March Madness stunner Thursday at the CHI Health Center.
Jaxson Robinson poured in a game-high 25 points that included five 3-pointers for the Cougars, who shot just 38.6% from the field and 8-of-24 from the perimeter. Spencer Johnson added 11 points and a career-best 16 rebounds with three assists in his final game at BYU.
"They just don't want me to retire yet," said Duquesne coach Keith Dambrot, who is retiring following the season. "I'm trying to get to the Promised Land, and they are making me keep coaching. Our guys played exactly the way they need to go in order to win the game. They (BYU) are a load on offense, so it was a battle all game long."
Trevin Knell scored 11 points with six rebounds, and Dallin Hall supplied 11 points and six assists for the Cougars, including a 3-pointer with six seconds left to pull BYU within 2.
But BYU, the sixth seed in the East region, could get no closer in falling to 0-3 all-time against the Dukes in their first meeting since 1953.
Jakub Necas added 12 points and six rebounds for Duquesne (25-11), which advanced to the second round for the first time since 1969.
"Just a devastating day for us for sure," said BYU coach Mark Pope, whose Cougars team lost for a second time as a No. 6 seed after closing as 9.5-point favorites. "It's devastating because we lost. It's devastating because we won't move on. And mostly it's devastating because we don't get to get in the gym together again.
"So major congratulations to Duquesne. And so proud of my guys," he added. "This is incredibly painful, but I know how this goes. It will dissipate to some degree and will be replaced with an insane amount of gratitude for these guys sitting here, what they've dedicated to each other and to BYU, and the things that they were able to accomplish this year.
"And that will stay with us forever."
The Dukes opened the game on a 12-2 run, and added another 14-1 run to lead by double digits again on a BYU team that led for just 29 seconds.
BYU missed its first six shots, including three 3-point attempts, as Duquesne jumped out to a 7-0 lead, and Hall had to be bandaged after taking a stray elbow to the nose under the basket.
The Dukes held BYU scoreless from the field until Robinson hit a triple with 13:37 left in the half. Duquesne immediately responded to go up 14-5, but the Cougars had a response of their own, a 13-2 run to take their first lead on Robinson's triple with 7:25 remaining.
The Cougars' free-flowing, 3-point-centric offense giveth and also taketh away — sometimes in the same half.
Robinson had 13 points to lead all scorers at halftime. But Grant scored 12, and the Dukes shot 16-of-33 (48.5%) from the field to BYU's 9-of-26 (34.6%) en route to a 38-30 halftime lead.
The senior from Ada, Oklahoma, shot 3-of-6 from the field — all from the perimeter — and Duquesne outscored the Cougars 16-8 in the paint with 9 points off six turnovers to the lead.
"That's a very high scoring team, and we knew that we had to play into the 60s, low 60s, mid 60s, and not much higher than it was for us to win," Dambrot said. "That's just not the way we win.
"I will say this: If you watch them play, back-cuts, slips, all of those, we eliminated them all. The only thing they beat us with was 1-on-1 and at the 3-line some. They didn't get any easy ones. We made them work for everything they got."
BYU was uncomfortable, and made even more uncomfortable when Duquesne's Fousseyni Drame and BYU's Noah Waterman were each awarded a technical foul for their role in a fracas to open the second half.
Drame came up smiling as he was pulled from the pile by the officials. Waterman emerged with a scrape on his left cheek.
That set an early tone for the Dukes, who led by as much as 14 on Jake DiMichele's triple three minutes in.
But BYU likes to make things interesting. Robinson netted back-to-back buckets, connecting off the glass to cut the Cougars' deficit to three, 52-49 with 7:41 remaining. He pulled the Cougars within 55-54 on a triple with 5:090 remaining.
But that was the last time he touched the ball as the A-10's top-rated 3-point defense swallowed him up.
"Just playing within the offense, taking whatever the defense gives me," Robinson said of the final minutes. "My teammates were finding me open shots. Dallin did a great job of just being a facilitator. He's been there all season for us."
Fousseyni Traore cut the deficit to just one from the free-throw line as the Dukes went more than three minutes without scoring. The junior from Bamako, Mali tied the game with a dunk at 60-60 moments later with 1:28 left.
But Clark hit four three throws in the final 90 seconds, then took a runner to the rim with 26 seconds left to lift the Dukes to the second round in their first NCAA Tournament appearance since 1977.
