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Monteiro In The Zone As Duquesne Defeats Bowling Green, 86-76

PITTSBURGH (93-7 The Fan) -- B.J. Monteiro's career-high 28 points helped lead Duquesne (8-5) to a 86-76 win over Bowling Green (6-6) tonight at the A.J. Palumbo center, in the fifth best comeback under head coach Ron Everhart.  The Falcons', out of the Mid-American Conference, largest lead was 12 points in the first half, going on a 20 to 5 run over the span of seven minutes.

"They are a really good team, they are really well coached and they took it to us on every possession tonight. They gave us a lot of problems. It took one of our better efforts of the year to be able to come out of here with a win," Everhart said.

One of those problems, the zone defense, was no surprise being that Bowling Green's head coach, Louis Orr, was a standout player at Syracuse University, the poster-school for zone defense.

Duquesne was able to adjust, having to go with a smaller lineup and putting B.J. at the foul line to play the triangle.

"I told the guys in the locker room that whoever played in the middle against the zone, whoever we put in there to play the triangle offense, was our MVP tonight, because they made good decisions. We got it in and we got it out," said Coach Everhart.

The Dukes capitalized in the last seven and a half minutes, answering with a 24 to 7 run of their own going into halftime, with Monteiro and Sean Johnson combining for 17 of those 24 points.  Johnson finished with 16 points and five assists.  In addition to his points, Monteiro had eight rebounds and three assists.  Another Duke who had a career high, two for that matter, was sophomore guard T.J. McConnell who tied his career-high of 20 points, had a career-high four three's (going 4 for 7) and also finished with six assists.

"I think we just came out lazy and they really jumped on us, but we told each other to wake up and we did a good job responding to that," McConnell said.

Duquesne did respond by being patient in their shot selection and protecting the ball, finishing the game with a season-low seven turnovers and a season-high 24 assists.

Bowling Green, who beat Temple (ranked 26th in RPI) in late November, is now 1-5 on the road and 9-17 all-time against Duquesne.

Falcons' senior Scott Thomas became Bowling Green's 38th 1,000-point scorer tonight, ending the game with 20 points, 18 over the impressive mark, and four assists.  Redshirt junior forward, A'uston Calhoun, led Bowling Green with 24 points and grabbed eight rebounds, and Dee Brown added 12 points. The Falcons turned the ball over 18 times, five over their season average and out-rebounded the Dukes by 14.

The Dukes are now 7-1 this season when scoring 70 or more points.  Seven Duquesne players saw double-digit minutes.  Mike Talley went 6 of 7 from the stripe, while Eric Evans dished five assists.

Aly Cohen
The Aly Way
Twitter.com/alyco32

In case you wanted to know…

  • When asked if B.J. Monteiro knew if he was getting close to 1,000 points he answered, "Did I get it or did I not? No I didn't know, I try not to pay attention to stuff like that. It's great, but I was just playing to win."  For the record, he is three points away from becoming the 35th player to join the "1,000-Point Club" at Duquesne.
  • The Dukes are bringing in the New Year by taking on Houston Baptist at home on Saturday, December 31 at 4PM.
  • For the second game in a row, Duquesne's starting lineup had a different look. Tonight, B.J. Monteiro, T.J. McConnell, Mike Talley, Kadeem Pantophlet and Mamadou Datt got the start. Regular starters Sean Johnson, Eric Evans and Andre Marhold came off of the bench.
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