Jan. 10, 2009

Box Score

ST. BONAVENTURE, NY - Bill Clark scored a career-high 24 points and Aaron Jackson added 20 to help Duquesne to its first 2-0 Atlantic 10 start since 1999-00 with a 98-80 win at St. Bonaventure.

The win, Duquesne's sixth in a row, upped the Dukes' record to 11-4, while St. Bonaventure, which had won seven of its eight previous games, dropped to 10-5 overall and 1-1 in conference play.

Duquesne led from start-to-finish in posting its second-largest margin of victory ever in an A-10 road game.

Freshmen Melquan Bolding and Eric Evans scored 16 and 14 points respectively for the Dukes. Jason Duty added 13 including three of DU's season high-tying 13 3-pointers.

Five different players combined to hit eight 3-pointers as the Dukes jumped out to a 44-32 halftime lead. A 10-0 run, featuring five points from Clark turned a four-point lead into a 33-19 advantage with 5:45 left in the half. St. Bonaventure briefly cut it to seven before Duty hit a pair of free throws and Jackson buried a deep 3-pointer at the shot clock buzzer to give DU a 42-30 lead.

St. Bonaventure never got any closer than 14 in the second half that saw Duquesne's lead balloon to 30 with just over five minutes left.

"Our guys got after it right from the start," said Duquesne head coach Ron Everhart. "Offensively, we shared the ball as well as we have all year. I thought our guards were excellent. They controlled the game as well as they have all year. You can point to all of our guys and find one or two or three things they did well today."

Duquesne, which assisted on 21 of 33 field goals, shot 50 percent from the field and 13-of-27 from the 3-point arc.

The Dukes turned 19 SBU turnovers into 30 points while turning it over 14 times.

Clark finished with four 3-pointers. Evans and Duty had three each. Jackson had eight assists and Clark tied his career high with six. Damian Saunders, who scored a season-low seven points, had a game-high 10 rebounds and a game-best five steals.

Duquesne will bid for the first 3-0 Atlantic 10 start in school history when it hosts George Washington on Wednesday, Jan. 14 at 7:00 p.m.

NOTES
• This is the first 2-0 conference start since 1999-00 and just the fifth 2-0 league start in school history. No Duquesne team has ever opened a conference season 3-0.
• Duquesne has defeated Radford, Robert Morris and St. Bonaventure in its last three road games, making this is the first time since Nov./Dec. 1985 that a Duquesne team has won three in a row on the road. DU finished the 1983-84 season with back-to-back home wins and followed that by winning its first three road games of 1985-86.
• DU's win streak now stands at six, matching the Dukes' longest streak under Ron Everhart (first six games of last season). Prior to Everhart's arrival, the last time a DU team won six in a row was 1980-81 (seven-game streak).
• The win gives Duquesne four wins in its past five trips to St. Bonaventure (wins in 2004, 2006 & 2007 and a loss last year).
• The 18-point margin of victory was Duquesne's second-largest ever in an Atlantic 10 road game. The Dukes, who led by 30 with 5:33 to go, just missed tying the record of 19 set in a 111-92 win at St. Bonaventure in 2007.
• Bill Clark's previous career scoring high was 21 set two games ago against Bowling Green. Clark is averaging 20.0 ppg. in DU's past three games.