DaRon Holmes II tallied game highs of 24 points and 11 rebounds, helping No. 16 Dayton beat visiting Duquesne 75-59 in the Atlantic 10 matchup on Tuesday.
Nate Santos added 15 points and eight rebounds for the Flyers (20-4, 10-2 A-10), while Koby Brea scored 12 points off the bench. Enoch Cheeks had 10 for Dayton, which improved to 12-0 at home.
Jimmy Clark III led Duquesne (14-10, 4-7) with 14 points, and Jake DiMichele added 12. Dae Dae Grant and David Dixon added 11 points apiece for the Dukes, who haven’t won at UD Arena since February 2012.
Dayton led by three points at halftime, and Santos’ 3-pointer extended the gap to 43-37 with 16:10 left.
Duquesne answered with an 8-1 scoring run, taking a 45-44 lead on Grant’s layup at the 13:53 mark.
Dayton led 53-50 with 9:40 left, but Dixon’s layup and Fousseyni Drame’s triple gave the Dukes a 55-53 lead with 7:56 left. After a timeout, Clark’s layup gave Duquesne a four-point lead — its largest of the second half.
From that point on, it was all Dayton. The Flyers followed Clark’s bucket with nine straight free throws to take a 62-57 lead with 4:53 left.
The massive Dayton scoring run continued, as back-to-back buckets from Holmes and Brea pushed the Flyers’ lead to 10 with 3:27 remaining.
After Brea’s corner triple gave Dayton a 73-57 lead, Kobe Elvis’ bucket capped a 22-0 run that helped the Flyers pull away.
DiMichele’s layup with nine seconds left ended the massive Dayton run, and gave Duquesne its first points since Clark’s layup at the 6:39 mark.
In the first half, the Dukes got off to a hot start, jumping out to a 20-9 lead on Clark’s triple with 10:32 remaining.
From there, a 15-4 Dayton scoring run was capped with Cheeks’ layup, knotting the score at 24 at the 5:08 mark.
Santos’ free throws gave Dayton a 36-31 lead with 41 seconds left in the first half, before Clark’s buzzer-beating layup cut the Duquesne deficit to just three points at the half.
–Field Level Media
