It was a night of career-highs for the Duquesne Dukes, who used outstanding individual performances to defeat the Bowling Green Falcons 86-76 at the A.J. Palumbo Center Wednesday night.
↵The night would belong to B.J. Monteiro who terrorized the Bowling Green frontcourt, scoring a career-high 28 points against the Falcon zone.
↵"I was just looking for the open spots and tonight that was the baseline," he said. "My teammates did a great job finding me when I was open."
↵When the Falcons were able to stop him, T.J. McConnell was ready from the outside, tying his career-high with 20 points including shooting 4-for-7 from behind the arc.
↵Though those two individual performances shined brightest, the victory was still a total team effort, as made evident by the 24 assists dished by the Dukes, a season-high.
↵In the first half, however, it would be the Falcons who would jump out ahead early behind a 17-1 first half run while taking advantage of a sluggish Duquesne defense, leading by as much as 12 in the first half.
↵"Give Bowling Green credit, they took it right too us and didn’t back down," head coach Ron Everhart said. "We were a little lackadaisical and not executing early."
↵Duquesne would soon wake from their slumber, putting together a huge 24-7 run that would allow them to take a 45-39 lead into the locker room.
↵"We had to tell ourselves to wake up," McConnell said. "We knew we were faster and better than Bowling Green. We just had to realize it."
↵In the second half, Bowling Green would start quick again, taking back the lead 52-51 with 14:51 to go before another Dukes run fueled by the sharp shooting of T.J. McConnell would give them the lead for good.
↵The Falcons were not without great performances of their own. Junior forward A’uston Calhoun led Bowling Green with 24 points while Scott Thomas added 20 points of his own while passing 1,000 career points during the contest.
↵The Dukes will play their final non-conference game of the season against Houston Baptist on Saturday in Pittsburgh.