Opera singer Per Jellum’s rousing rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” drew notable applause and set the stage Monday night for a perfect storm at UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse, the home of Duquesne.
And the blizzard began immediately. Duquesne jumped on Canisius, kept its foot on the accelerator until the final horn and came away with an easy 102-59 victory.
“Were we looking to win by that margin of victory? I don’t think that was ever the idea,” Duquesne coach Dru Joyce III said. “How we performed is what we wanted. We sought to play an aggressive, disciplined game, defensively, and to really see if we had made some improvement.”
Jimmie Williams scored a career-high 24 points — he shot 10 for 12, making his first 10 attempts, and converted 4 of 5 shots from 3-point range — and Tarence Guinyard added 21 to lead the Dukes (7-5), who’ll host Cleary on Saturday in their final nonconference game.
“I hadn’t shot 10 for 10 to start off a game in little bit,” said Williams, who is in his first season at Duquesne after transferring from South Florida. “It’s been awhile, for sure. It felt pretty good.”
Guinyard shot 7 for 11 (5 for 9 from behind the arc) and led the way with a career-high nine assists. The Dukes sizzled from the field, shooting 59.7% (37 for 62), including 16 for 35 (45.7%) in 3-point shots.
Naturally, Guinyard, Duquesne’s leader in scoring and assists, was excited for the victory. But for once, he was equally impressed with the team’s play on both sides of the ball.
“We just have to take more pride in playing defense,” said Guinyard, another first-year player at Duquesne following his transfer from UT Martin, where he was an Ohio Valley Conference first-team selection last season. “We’ve been really good on offense. But we have to defend better. We can’t just think we can outscore the other team every time.”
Duquesne ranks fourth in scoring offense (85.3 ppg) and last in scoring defense (78.6 ppg) in the Atlantic 10. The Dukes open their A-10 schedule on Dec. 30 at Davidson.
Jellum, an opera singer based in his native Copenhagen, Denmark, is the father of Duquesne freshman forward Frederik Jellum.
In step with his belting pregame syllables, the night marked a rousing return for Duquesne to the cozy “Coop,” where the Dukes hadn’t played since Dec. 6. What followed that 84-75 victory over Stony Brook was an unproductive, two-game swing through the Rocky Mountain Region.
But an eight-day layoff upon their return to Pittsburgh seemingly served as a sensational solution for purging the memory of losses at Boise State and Nevada.
Though the Dukes yielded a total of 164 points in those prior games, they put on their most dominating performance of the season this time with former coach Keith Dambrot and ex-Dukes sharpshooter Bill Clark looking on.
“Even in our last game out (near) the West Coast, I thought we took a jump,” Joyce said, referring to Nevada’s 78-75 victory, a game that saw Williams’ potential tying 3-point attempt bound off the back of the iron with time about to expire. “Then, we go into practice (figuring) that was a tough week. We lost two of them. How are we going to bounce back? Do the guys really believe in the defensive side of the ball? Can we step it up to another level?
“I thought we did tonight, and we did it for 40 minutes of basketball.”
Playing for a second consecutive game without senior forward John Hugley IV, the team’s second-leading scorer and rebounder, the Dukes raced to a 46-30 halftime lead and finished with their second 100-point game of the season.
The 6-foot-10, 265-pound Hugley, who is averaging 15.4 points and 5.6 rebounds, was held out for a second consecutive game and was not on the Duquesne bench in what the team said was “a coach’s decision.”
Joyce told reporters afterwards he had no comment on the matter.
Alex Williams (15 points) and Cam Crawford and Jakub Necas (12 each) also scored in double figures for Duquesne, which received a career-high eight rebounds from 6-10 freshman Lazar Milosevic in the absence of Hugley.
Kahlil Singleton led Canisius (5-8) with 13 points. Brendan Oliver added 11.
The game marked the return of former Pitt and Saint Francis assistant Jim Christian, who is in his second season as coach at Canisius.
It is the 60-year-old Christian’s fifth head coaching job following stints at Kent State (2001-02), TCU (2008-12), Ohio (2012-14) and Boston College (2014-21).
Prior to that, he filled a number of assistant’s roles, including at Saint Francis from 1992-94 under Tom McConnell and at Pitt from 1996-99 under Ralph Willard.