Spencer Thomas | editor-in-chief

“Well… that’s the City Game,” Dan Burt said as he sat down for his postgame press conference. In his 17th game coaching Duquesne against University of Pittsburgh, he’s become familiar with the nature of the rivalry, and the grind it took his Dukes to win a 73-69 thriller.

“When you play the city game, you really throw out every record and every stat. You know it’s going to be exactly what today was.”

Despite leading for over three-quarters of the game, Duquesne never got comfortable. Pitt came back from an 11-point deficit and had the lead midway through the fourth quarter. Then, for the second year in a row, the Dukes ran away in the final moments to defeat their archrival.

The Dukes were led by twin killers in the backcourt, who Burt called the two best players in the city. Megan McConnell’s star performance was unsurprising, picking up a double-double with 14 points and 11 rebounds. But exploding from her shadow with a team-high 20 points was Jerni Kiaku.

“People need to know who Jerni Kiaku is, because she’s just as good,” Burt said. “If Meg is Batman, [Jerni] is Aquawoman … I’ll come up with a better description.”

Duquesne’s guard success came in the face of a major size disadvantage. The Panthers were led by Khadija Faye, a 6-foot-4-inch center who exploded for 23 points and 14 rebounds in her first game back from an injury. Without attempting a single 3-pointer, she came to life in the second quarter, becoming a force for Duquesne to reckon with. Burt described a play on defense called ‘fire’ where when the Panthers passed inward to Faye, all five Dukes collapsed into the paint to defend her.

On defense, she was managed by Kiandra Browne, the Dukes’ biggest physical force. After flirting with foul trouble in the first half, she settled into a solid performance, finishing with 9 points, five rebounds and four assists. Her last bucket was Duquesne’s biggest, a 3-point dagger that banked in as the shot clock expired in the final minute, giving the Dukes a two-possession lead.

Burt attributed this to Faye’s defensive play style.

“She’s great at getting in there and making it look like you’re holding her. And that’s what I was saying to the officials the entire time,” Burt said. “They were missing that until late.

“Our kids found a way to limit her late in the fourth, and that’s what champions do.”

The Dukes got some inadvertent relief in the fourth quarter when Faye went down for two minutes with an injury. At the time, the game was tied 61-61. When she returned, it was 67-63.

Duquesne’s offensive output was at its best early. Scoring was distributed around the lineup, allowing McConnell to defer to Kiaku. Both players used their shiftiness and speed to maneuver through the towering defenders. Kiaku did this best, surviving a couple of harsh blocks to finish a few more circus layups.

She also knocked down a pair of somewhat uncontested 3s, something Panther Head Coach Tory Verdi admitted they were not expecting.

“She’s really dynamic in that open floor, but when she’s making threes, then it becomes really, really difficult to guard her,” Burt said.

Despite playing second fiddle for the first time all season, McConnell was still key to the Dukes victory. Verdi explained the game plan that limited her to her lowest point total this year.

“Ten eyes on her, the entire time. Load up every single time she has the ball. She’s their catalyst,” Verdi said. “She’s been there for 10 years now it seems.”

While this was only McConnell’s fourth time playing the Panthers, it’s easy to understand why Verdi feels that way. Across all four contests, McConnell has spent a total of four minutes on the bench. That’s 98% of possible game action.

After scoring 5 points early on, McConnell hit a dry spell, going scoreless for nearly 20 minutes of gameplay. Much of that was deferring to Kiaku’s hot hand, but as Pitt scored 9 straight points to tie the game at 38, her relative absence from the scoresheet seemed more eye-catching. That changed in an instant. After Burt called a timeout to stop the bleeding, his star player needed exactly 11 seconds to hit a 3 and deliver the Dukes back to the lead.

“Regardless of if she scores or not, she still impacts the game because of her ‘want to,’” Verdi said. “And there’s not many players in the country that have a ‘want to’ the way she does.”

McConnell did the same thing a few minutes later, when Pitt took a 45-44 lead, their first since the opening frame.

“She’s my security blanket. I love her dearly,” Burt said. I trust her more than any player that I’ve coached.”

“There was one little point tonight where I almost took her out,” Burt said. “And I went back to what [UConn] Coach [Geno] Auriemma says, ‘great players don’t get tired.’ She’s a great player. Meg doesn’t get tired.”

Every time Pitt tied or took the lead of the game in the second half, Duquesne immediately flipped the scoreboard with a 3-pointer. Burt said portions of those timeout huddles were dead silent. He just instructed the squad to breathe through their noses.

“Relax.”

In a time when Pitt, Duquesne and Robert Morris’ men’s programs refuse to play each other Burt advocated for the importance of this rivalry, even when people in the program questioned him.

“That’s what college sports is about. Let’s have some fun with it.” Burt said. “There’s gonna be sometimes when we lose but we’re gonna fight, and it’s gonna be a heck of a basketball game for the general public … And so, I think this is great for women’s basketball in general in Western PA.”

Duquesne will keep business in the city on Sunday when they host Division-III Carnegie Mellon.