Noah Fries | staff writer

The Duquesne women’s basketball team got off to a hot start on Monday, racing past Saint Francis 89-60 in a season opener that featured just two lead changes — a figure that exemplified Duquesne’s dominance.

One year after starting two juniors, two seniors and a graduate student in the season opener against Princeton, Head Coach Dan Burt rolled out two freshmen and three sophomores, including one redshirt sophomore to start the 2025-26 season.

Burt’s system of full-court pressure against the Tigers produced 22 steals and 30 total forced turnovers.

His hockey-style line changes were on full display for the Dukes, and the young team executed their game plan to a tee.

“Our system is our system,” Burt said, “and we showed that today. As a coach, you’re going to nitpick — and there’s things that I’m certainly not real pleased with — but overall, to have very little on St. Francis and come out and play the way we did, I’m real happy about.”

Burt emphasized that a five-in, five-out system only works if each player on the roster buys in and stays mentally checked into the game — which is exactly what Duquesne did against the Red Flash.

Eight different Dukes tallied points in the first quarter, headlined by 6 points from redshirt sophomore guard Gabby Grantham-Medley and 4 from freshman forward Raevin Washington.

A layup from Washington would give the Dukes a 6-5 advantage with 4:43 remaining in the first quarter, and the Dukes wouldn’t relinquish the lead for the rest of the game.

Grantham-Medley tallied a double-double with 11 points and a team-high 11 rebounds in just 18 minutes. She took a redshirt last year, and Burt credits that redshirt year as a vessel that allowed her game to mature.

“She’s our leader, she’s our team captain,” Burt said. “And you know, she’s a bucket getter, but she’s also a kid that can go and rebound it also. She has a maturity about her that the others follow.”

The Dukes dominated the Red Flash in bench points with a 43-5 advantage — a testament to Burt’s system, accommodating a rotation 10 or 11 players deep.

Sophomore guard Nadia Moore tied for the game-high in points with 17 off the bench and added three rebounds and two steals to her stat line. One thing that doesn’t show up in the box score is her slow start to the game, marred by an illness. By the end of the game, she ended up with her career high in points.

“She looked ashen and she looked pale in that first rotation of the first quarter,” Burt said. “From there, she made good decisions with attacking first, getting her feet underneath her, getting some confidence and then knocking down those threes.”

For Moore, she realized that having a solid team foundation is the key to overall success. As emphasized by Burt, his entire team relies on each other to perform well and feed off each other’s play.

“Honestly, I really just got a lot of energy from my teammates,” Moore added. “I had a rough starting because I wasn’t feeling that well, but Gabby, Raevin, a couple of the other teammates were all telling me to keep fighting.”

Five players ended up recording double-digit points for the Dukes — Moore with her team-high 17, Dunja Zecevic (16), Washington (15), Grantham-Medley (11) and freshman guard Alexis Bordas (11). Zecevic, Washington and Bordas all joined Moore in setting career highs in points.

Nine of the 11 players who played at least one minute for the Dukes recorded at least one steal, leading to 29 points off turnovers that helped put an exclamation point on the game as a whole.

“The best way I can describe it is exciting,” Moore said. “We all just get so excited for each other whenever we get those steals and deflections. I feel like that excitement and chaos [are] the two things that I would say our defense is the biggest [in], and we take pride in that as a team.”

Duquesne took a 14-point lead into halftime, and the lead would get as high as 31 in the third quarter, with Moore and Zecevic leading the charge.

Perhaps the most surprising statistic from the game is that Duquesne shot just 11.1% from the three-point line and were still able to win by almost 30 — headlined by 56 points in the paint.

“We have a pretty good understanding of what we need to do better at,” Burt said. “We’re not going to go 3-for-27 from the three-point line — I can promise you that. And if we’re shooting it like we think we can, you know, we’re going to put up some serious numbers.”

Noah Fries can be reached at friesn@duq.edu