Michael O’Grady | sports editor

The music that plays over the sound system at Cooper Fieldhouse during men’s basketball games is usually constrained to the genres of hip-hop, rock and pop. The Duquesne pep band also provides arrangements of well-known tunes. Maybe other arenas select from an extensive music collection, but not Duquesne.

One genre foreign to the Coop is vocal jazz, but Frank Sinatra’s “That’s Life” would have been appropriate to blast after Duquesne suffered an 82-62 thrashing from Dayton Tuesday night, a little more than 72 hours removed from its best win of the season so far, a 75-57 triumph over rival St. Bonaventure. If the Chairman of the Board’s “You’re riding high in April, shot down in May” line instead described a few freezing January days, he’d be singing about this week of Duquesne basketball.

St. Bonaventure came to Pittsburgh Saturday afternoon with a 15-3 record, but Duquesne had been the better team of late. A far cry from the team who was 0-6 in November, the Dukes had won six of their last seven and started Atlantic 10 Conference play 3-1. They made it seven of eight when they thoroughly rolled the Bonnies, hitting 14 3-pointers and establishing a powerful paint presence. Fresh off his return to George Washington where he dropped 22 points, Maximus Edwards followed up with a team-high 17 points on 75% shooting, 15 of which were from deep.

“He shot the ball incredibly well,” Duquesne Head Coach Dru Joyce III said. “I think it was only a matter of time, if you just check the history of Max over the past two years, he’s been a 35% 3-point shooter. Shooting in that 17-to-19% was just to me not in his reality, and I think it’s a credit to his hard work.”

The Bonnies scored the first six points before Chabi Barre and Jakub Necas began swallowing up their drives into the paint. Their offense stagnated afterward. Duquesne went on a 25-6 run which included three 3s from Edwards and a fastbreak dunk from Matúš Hronský which elicited the loudest reaction all season from the Duquesne crowd. The Dukes smelled blood and rode the lively atmosphere to a 9-point lead at halftime. Joyce shared that the Dukes knew it was going to be more boisterous than usual.

“I had to calm the guys down,” he said. “I don’t watch warmups, but all the coaches came back and kinda updated me, and said our guys probably had the best sweat going into a game that they’ve had all season.

“[The Duquesne crowd] came a little bit stronger today and I appreciate that, and our guys do too. They relished the moment to perform well in front of our fans, and I think they did a tremendous job.”

St. Bonaventure was able to cut the lead to 5 early in the second half, but that was the closest it would come. Highlights en route to the feel-good win were a Necas block on a Noel Jones tomahawk attempt, David Dixon making a steal and layup from directly under the St. Bonaventure basket and Cam Crawford’s three 3s, all from the corners. Duquesne limited the Bonnies to just 38% from the field. Crawford explained how the Dukes continually turned defense into offense.

“I think we focused on stopping their main guys,” he said. “I think Chance Moore got hurt, but [Jonah] Hinton’s a really good shooter, so we were worried about that going into the game, keeping him off staggers and stuff like that, not letting him get open looks. I think we did a good job of that, we were able to turn stops into threes on the other end.”

The win was Duquesne’s fifth-straight over St. Bonaventure and it prevented the 400th career college win for Bonnies Head Coach Mark Schmidt. Dixon’s egging of the crowd in the second half was one point of emphasis on how far the Dukes had come recently, and it felt like the turnaround could continue into Tuesday night against a Dayton squad that had lost three of four. That wasn’t the case.

Dayton mauled Duquesne up and down the court, essentially doing what Duquesne did to St. Bonaventure. The Flyers went a devastating 9-of-13 from range and forced 16 turnovers. The Dukes seemingly reverted to their November selves in all facets, for example shooting just 10 for 19 from the free-throw line. As for the crowd, the building was emptying by halftime. “Let’s go Flyers” chants could be heard from those who had made the trip from Ohio in the cold.

“This is conference play,” Kareem Rozier said. “There’s games like this that we’re gonna have, and the beautiful thing about it is that we get to see them again soon. We just gotta be ready to go.”

When asked how he assessed his team with one-third of the A-10 schedule down, Joyce took six seconds to ponder. “Work in progress.”.

But if the Dukes were “shot down in May,” then they’ll next be “back on top in June,” as Sinatra sang. Duquesne visits Fordham on Sunday afternoon and Saint Joseph’s on Wednesday night in two chances to return to the pre-Dayton mountain climb.