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Men's Basketball Closes Out Season with Offensive Explosion but Fall to Duquesne, 111-100
March 5, 2010
Pittsburgh, Pa. - Pittsburgh doesn't have an NBA team. But don't tell that to the fans who showed up at the A.J. Palumbo Center on Friday after noon to watch the Fordham-Duquesne Atlantic 10 men's basketball game. The two teams displayed a run-and-gun offense to combine for 211 points but unfortunately for the Rams, it was the Dukes who finished on top, 111-100 in the season-finale for Fordham. With the loss, the Rams close out the season with a 2-26 overall record, 0-16 in the Atlantic 10, while Duquesne improves to 16-14 overall, 7-9 in the conference. "This was a fun game to be a part of but we obviously would have preferred to win it," said Fordham head coach Jared Grasso. "We could have come out and gone through the motions but the guys played hard and competed. We had two freshmen and a sophomore combine for 59 points. I think our young guys have a bright future ahead of them." It would have been easy for Fordham to go through the motions in the last game of the season. The Rams played at home Wednesday night, had an early wake-up call on Thursday to board an 8:00 a.m. to Pittsburgh and then played a unique midday game today. But that was far from the case as Fordham gave Duquesne, a team which played in the Atlantic 10 championship game last year, all it could handle, even taking a five-point lead in the second half before running out of gas down the stretch. When head coach Jared Grasso took over the Fordham team in December, he wanted to install a fast pace to the offense and his squad responded today, scoring 100 points in a game for the first time since the Rams defeated Quinnipiac, 110-73, in 1999. That game featured Grasso as a player for the Bobcats with current Fordham assistant coach Joe DeSantis serving as Quinnipiac's head coach. Unfortunately, it also marked the second time Fordham scored 100 points and lost the game, the first was a 106-102 overtime loss to Yale in 1979.
The Fordham offense was led by Brenton Butler, who scored a team-high 29 points while also dishing out seven assists, and Chris Gaston, who recorded his 19th double-double of the year with 21 points and a season-high 18 rebounds. Gaston's 21 points brings his season total to 504, breaking Bevon Robin's freshman scoring record at Fordham (Robin scored 495 points in 1997-98). He also moved into a tie with Duquesne's Damian Saunders for most double-doubles by an Atlantic 10 player this year while Gaston's eleven double-doubles in conference play is tops among all players. He closes out the season averaging 18.0 ppg and 1.4 rpg. Gaston's rebounding average currently leads the Atlantic 10 while he is ranked fourth in scoring. The game was tight throughout with neither team able to lead by double figures until late in the game. The Dukes took a nine-point lead, 97-88, with four minutes left but the Rams battled back, scoring six straight points to cut the Duquesne lead to three, 97-94, on a Fahro Alihodzic layup with 2:56 remaining. Brown started the run with back-to-back baskets before stealing the ball from the Dukes and setting up Alihodzic for the layup. The two teams traded baskets over the next 50 seconds before the Fordham offense got cold and Duquesne netted five consecutive points to take a 104-96 lead with 52 seconds left. A pair of Butler free throws cut the deficit back to six, 104-98, with 43 seconds left but the Dukes outscored the Rams 7-2 over the final 42 seconds. Duquesne jumped out to an 18-12 lead 6:20 into the game and extended the lead to nine, 34-25, with 8:46 left in the period. The Fordham offense then heated up as the Rams went on an 11-3 run to make it a one-point game, 37-36, on an Alberto Estwick layup with 5:55 left. Brown led the Fordham charge with five points while Butler added four. The Dukes quickly got the lead back to six, 44-38, with four minutes remaining but back-to-back Butler three-pointers knotted the game at 44 with 3:19 left. Duquesne built the lead back to three, 52-49, with 15 seconds left and had a chance to take an even bigger lead into the break but a Brown steal and dunk in the closing seconds made it a one-point game at the half, 52-51. The second half started out as close as the first with the game being tied twice over the first 3:42, the final time at 64. A Gaston three-point play and layup over the next minute gave Fordham its biggest lead of the day, 69-64, with 15:18 remaining. The Dukes would come back to tie the game at 69, the first of three ties over the next five minutes and eventually built the lead to the nine with four minutes left before the Rams' comeback attempt came up short. Estwick added 20 points for the Rams, tying his career-high, while Brown finished with a season-high 18 points and he tied his season-high with nine rebounds. Notes
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