Michael O’Grady | sports editor

Pittsburgh, Trenton, Chicago, the Cayman Islands, back to Pittsburgh; no matter where it is, Duquesne can’t seem to get it going on the court.

Tuesday night at Cooper Fieldhouse was the latest example of Duquesne Head Coach Dru Joyce III’s Dukes failing to get it done, this time against Saint Peter’s. Despite a 16-0 run in the first half that put them up by as many as 13, the Dukes cratered and led by just 2 at half’s end. Twenty minutes later, Duquesne was on the wrong side of a 62-59 score, cementing their third loss in three tries on home court.

“Bad basketball,” Joyce simply said to begin his press conference.

The Dukes lulled Saint Peter’s into their style of slow-paced, low-scoring basketball, but two areas in particular left them with the short end of the stick. Duquesne’s bigs were continually out-muscled on the defensive glass by the Peacocks, allowing them 17 offensive rebounds and 12 second-chance points. A bigger problem and one that has been for some time was free throws. Duquesne was 14 for 22 from the line and missed seven in the final 10 minutes of the game. It’s past the point of worrisome, out of 352 teams in Division I college basketball, the Dukes are 351st in free-throw percentage at 58.99%.

“Guys gotta get in the gym, they gotta spend time on [free throws],” Joyce said. “Get in the gym, shoot more of them. Shoot ‘em, shoot ‘em until you feel like you can’t miss. A lot of guys are shooting a career-low from the line currently.”

On offense, the Dukes managed well enough despite the unavailability of Jake DiMichele, who has been the best offensive player on the team thus far. Jahsean Corbett led Duquesne with 15 points, his most since his transfer, and Chabi Barre recorded a career-high 13 points and eight rebounds as he continues to settle in after an injury that kept him out for the first four games.

The scoring pace was slow after tip-off, even for a Duquesne game. It took eight minutes for both teams to score 10 points, but after the 10-minute mark the Dukes found some life that has been missing this season when Matúš Hronský and Barre came off the bench. Hronský hitting a 3, Barre scoring over a double-team and Hronský scoring on a corner iso using a creative tuck-and-run were some highlights that gave Duquesne a 13-point lead, its largest of the game. For a few minutes, the Dukes were playing a type of basketball foreign to the bogged-down defensive battles they usually find themselves in.

“Yesterday, actually, [Hronský and I] were on FaceTime, he told me we need to step up,” Barre said. “He asked me if I care if I don’t start, I said I don’t. Once we get in the game, he goes, we change everything and give it everything we got on the court, and that’s what we talked about, we have to be ready.”

Duquesne kept their lead steady for the next few minutes before the Peacocks drained three consecutive 3-pointers to close out the half. For the majority of the second half, both teams consistently traded buckets with stops mixed in, but it was Duquesne who found itself trailing from 12-minutes-left-on. Rebounding remained an issue. Saint Peter’s was continually more physical on both ends of the floor.

“I don’t really believe every rebound-told numbers,” Joyce said. “Yes, they’re correct, but what I know is that we didn’t secure 17 possessions, and they only shot 33% from the field. That’s a lot of misses. They shot 33% and we didn’t grab all of [the misses]. When we go back and look at our analytics, the first thing I’m going to point out is we didn’t recover the rebound.”

As the game reached its homestretch, the Dukes couldn’t knock down any shots but kept getting opportunities at the line with varying success. A glaring moment was when Barre missed a free throw that would have tied the game with 1:51 left, Sow, who is 6 foot 9 inches, rebounded his miss and swished a 3 from the top of the key to give the Peacocks a two-possession lead.

Duquesne was able to make it a three-point game in the final minute, but Saint Peter’s kept fouling to bring the Dukes to the line rather then chance giving up a tying 3. Sow missed a free throw that left the door open for the Dukes with four seconds left, but they were out of timeouts and couldn’t advance the ball. Kareem Rozier’s halfcourt heave went low, dropping Duquesne to a dismal 1-7.

“We still didn’t right our wrongs going into the second half, we still didn’t rebound the ball as well as we needed to, and we didn’t get enough stops,” Joyce said. “We became reliant on trading baskets. I said it in the media timeout, this isn’t our style of play. We have to change the game and start defending, getting stops and finishing plays.”

Joyce also expressed that players need to be more consistent with performances. Two viable options in Tre Dinkins III and Maximus Edwards only scored 6 and 2 points, respectively.

“It can’t be Jahsean performing well tonight and then we don’t see him the next game, same with Max, same with Chabi. You have to be able to bring it every night, you gotta pour something into the game.”

Duquesne can win its first game at home either when they host Delaware on Friday or Maine on Wednesday.