Michael O’Grady | sports editor

When it comes to on-campus home openers, things usually go smoothly for Duquesne. Whether at the old A.J. Palumbo Center or the new Cooper Fieldhouse, Dukes fans had been used to wins when their team plays on home court for the first time. Last year’s opener against Cleveland State was close, but the Dukes pulled it out; an overtime win against James Madison in 2012 was even closer. Duquesne hadn’t lost an on-campus home opener since 2005, a streak that spanned four coaches.

That streak ended Monday night in, ironically, what is Duquesne’s most anticipated season in quite some time. Playing for the first time underneath banners showing off last year’s Atlantic 10 Conference championship and NCAA Tournament run, the Dukes fell 77-72 to Lipscomb. The loss also put a stain on the debut of Duquesne Head Coach Dru Joyce III.

Duquesne and Lipscomb had only been separated by one place in the preseason Pomeroy College Basketball Ratings, so the loss itself wasn’t too surprising. But combined with the pomp and circumstance surrounding the game, and the Dukes’ ugly shooting performance that brought about their downfall, the result was a stinger and a wake-up call for the locker room.

“There’s just a lot of growth that still needs to happen,” Joyce said. “We’re a new team. This is everyone’s first year playing for me no matter if they’ve been here before, it doesn’t matter if I was their assistant coach in years before. This is still a new team and it’s going to take us some time to gel.”

The Dukes never led in the game, and their shooting never gave them a chance to. From 3-point range, they shot a poor 6 of 20, and were even worse from the free-throw line, going 10 of 19. They shot 45% on field goals on the night, but their second half was particularly bad, shooting just 14-for-33. Joyce lamented that his team didn’t take better advantage of Lipscomb’s zone defense.

“The way they played, it was almost to see if we would miss,” he said. “And today we didn’t make them.”

Following an elaborate pregame montage that showed clips of last year’s March Madness appearance, Joyce put out a starting five of Kareem Rozier, Maximus Edwards, Jahsean Corbett, David Dixon and Jakub Necas to start the year. There had been some offseason discussion that Tre Dinkins III could get the starting nod at point guard over Rozier, but Joyce went with the Duquesne veteran and de-facto captain.

Instantly, it was evident the Dukes were going to have a tough shooting night, one they weren’t going to be able to afford. Lipscomb drained four threes from four different players in the first seven minutes to jump out to an 18-4 lead. Duquesne’s defense focused on Bisons standout Jacob Ognacevic, which would leave his teammates open from behind the arc.

“They came out hitting everything to start the game. When a team is hot like that it’s hard to swing with them,” Rozier said. “We gotta get out to a better start defensively for sure, they shouldn’t be able to come out to 14-2 or whatever it was like that in our gym.”

Ognacevic was equally as imposing on the other end of the floor, and it wasn’t until Edwards and Corbett got going in the later stages of the half, along with a break for Ognacevic, that Duquesne scratched back into the game. From seven minutes left on, the two combined for the Dukes’ final 13 points of the first frame, cutting the deficit down to 41-34 at halftime. The play of the night for Duquesne was when Edwards put down a thunderous dunk with just over a minute left in the half, invigorating the whited-out student section.

Duquesne, however, returned to the form they started with in the second half, allowing Lipscomb to score 19 points in just over six minutes, but after hitting the 60-point mark the Bisons went cold. The Dukes went on a 13-2 run for much of the next five minutes, Eli Willborn and Dinkins provided paint scoring before a loud Necas block on Ognacevic quickly turned into a massive 3-pointer for Matúš Hronský at the other end.

“Our team, we stuck together, we raised our level of play,” Joyce said. “We found our game defensively, which allowed things to open up for us offensively.”

The Dukes lagged just behind Lipscomb from there on out; a Dinkins 3-pointer with 5:38 remaining cut the lead down to just three, but that was as close as Duquesne would get. Will Pruitt committed an offensive foul on the Bisons’ next possession, but Corbett couldn’t convert on an ensuing jumper and that opened the door for Ognacevic to take care of business. Dinkins made some desperation threes in the final minute, but it was too little, too late. Ognacevic willed Lipscomb to the win with an even 30 points and 10 rebounds.

“Lipscomb, they played well tonight. That’s a good ballclub,” Joyce said. “They were able to pretty much control the flow of the game offensively, and it put us in peril, especially the way they shot the ball from the 5-man spot tonight. They really had us stretched.”

Rozier expressed regret that Duquesne couldn’t give their new head coach a win in his debut. After his postgame press conference, Joyce sat by himself in the courtside seats of the empty arena. For over a minute, he silently stared into space. Moments later, the captain walked over to greet the coach and sat next to him.

“I got his back,” Rozier said. “I ain’t going to let him fail. I’m going to make sure my team bounces back, I promise you that. He’s done a great job preparing us, and now we just gotta go out there and compete and win the games.”

Joyce is the first Duquesne head coach to lose his debut since Jim Ferry in 2012 and the first one to lose a home debut since John Carroll in 1989. He described what he was experiencing throughout the day.

“The emotions…I just looked forward to gametime,” he said. “It took too long to get here, honestly. I was like, ‘Man, this 8 o’clock game, what’re we doing here?’ But it was an experience. It’s hard to sit here and say that I enjoyed it, because we were on the wrong side of the scoreboard, but I’ll just challenge myself and think, how can I be better? How can I get my team over the hump? How can I pull them out of a tough spot? That’s really where I’m at.”

Joyce will have an opportunity to pick up his first coaching win when Duquesne travels to Trenton on Friday to play Princeton as part of the Jersey Jam. The Dukes will attempt to avenge last year’s nail-biting three-point loss to the Tigers.