Duquesne’s Dru Joyce III glanced at two of his players sitting side-by-side just a few feet away. His eyes opened wide as he raised his brow and offered up a half-smile.
Had his message finally sunk in?
“We’ve grown a ton. We’ve definitely picked it up on the defensive end,” senior forward Alex Williams said after scoring 22 points on 7-of-15 shooting in No. 7 seed Duquesne’s 67-60 victory over No. 10 Rhode Island on Thursday in an Atlantic 10 Tournament second-round game at PPG Paints Arena.
“Defense,” Williams added with emphasis, “is our identity now.”
After dispatching one set of Rams, Duquesne is moving on to face another version in the quarterfinals after overcoming 34 points by Rhode Island’s Tyler Cochran to prevail.
The Dukes (18-14) will meet No. 2 VCU’s Rams at 5 p.m. Friday.
In the only regular-season meeting between the teams, those Rams of VCU (24-7) defeated Duquesne, 93-80, on Jan. 3 at UPMC Cooper Fieldhouse.
“That game was a long time ago, right?” Joyce said. “If anyone is expecting us to quit, you’re looking at the wrong bunch of guys.”
Jimmie Williams added 17 points against Rhode Island, and Tarence Guinyard, a day earlier named to the all-A-10 first team — the first Duquesne player to do so since Damian Saunders in 2010 — wound up with 15 for the Dukes.
“They have a nice team,” Rhode Island coach and former Blackhawk star Archie Miller said. “They were playing as well as anybody in our league in February, and they can beat anybody, really, on a given night.”
Duquesne, which won the A-10 Tournament title in 2024, is back in the quarterfinals after making a first-round exit last season.
The suddenly defensive-minded Dukes, who committed an astounding, season-low one turnover, had scored at least 80 points in 13 of their first 17 games, including a two-point exhibition victory in October against Virginia Tech.
“I give Duquesne a lot of credit,” Miller said. “They played 40 minutes with one turnover. The facts are the facts with our team … When you’re 7, 8, 9 in the country in turnover percentage, your steals percentage is seventh in the country, those are real numbers. And for us to play a 40-minute game and have a team play with one turnover? Man, that’s really hard to overcome.”
And so is shooting just 7 for 24 inside the 3-point arc and 2 for 7 from the free-throw line. Rhode Island scored most of its points on 15 of 27 from behind the arc.
Cochran, who also grabbed a game-high 10 rebounds, nearly carried the Rams (16-16) to a victory, shooting 12 for 21, including 9 for 14 from behind the arc.
The 3-pointers total fell just shy of the PPG Paints Arena record of 10 by Oakland’s Jack Gohlke in an NCAA Tournament first-round upset of Kentucky on March 21, 2024.
“He was definitely a distraction,” Duquesne’s Jimmie Williams said. “At halftime, we wanted to cut his water off. And I really didn’t think he was going to keep making as many threes as he did leading into the second half. But he did, and he was a pest on defense a little bit, too. So, he had a really big night. Salute to him.”
Cochran, a transfer from Toledo, this week was voted the A-10’s co-Defensive Player of the Year.
Duquesne held an 11-point advantage with 7 minutes, 16 seconds left and never let Rhode Island any closer than five points the rest of the way.
Leading by seven at the half, Duquesne scored the first five points of the second half to go up 40-28.
The Dukes played through foul trouble in the second half after post players David Dixon and Jakub Necas each reached four. Necas fouled out late in the game.
Dixon, playing in a school-record 128th game, led Duquesne with nine rebounds in 18 minutes.
Alex Williams capped a 13-3 run for Duquesne with consecutive 3-point shots as the Dukes opened up a 25-14 first-half lead.
Rhode Island answered, keyed by a pair of Cochran 3-pointers and another by Myles Corey, to pull within 31-28.
Duquesne then scored the final four points of the half, including Jimmie Williams’ 3-pointer that drew a foul. But he failed to extend it to a four- point play, misfiring on the free throw.