With Duquesne's hopes of snagging an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament likely dashed due to a light non-conference profile, Ron Everhart's team needed to set itself up for a run through next week's Atlantic 10 Tournament with a first-round bye. A win over Richmond this afternoon would have taken care of that without the need of a tiebreaker, but it wasn't to be as the Spiders (24-7, 13-3) limited the Dukes to 32.8% shooting from the field in their 68-56 win at the Robins Center. Justin Harper and Kevin Anderson scored 16 points apiece to lead the Spiders, and Harper grabbed a game-high 12 rebounds as well. Bill Clark led Duquesne (18-11, 10-6) with 18 points and Damian Saunders added 10 points and 11 rebounds, but combined with 19 Richmond turnovers the Dukes didn't have enough to overcome their own offensive woes.

The reserves made all the difference for Richmond as they outscored Duquense 25-9, and Cedrick Lindsay supplied 11 of those points. That made up for the Dukes outscoring Richmond in the paint (30-26) and off of turnovers (18-11). Senior Dan Geriot scored the first two points of the game just 13 seconds in on a layup but Duquesne would respond with an 8-2 spurt to take an 8-4 lead three minutes in. After Richmond pulled even with baskets from Anderson and Harper Duquesne scored seven unanswered points to take what would be their largest lead of the game at 15-8. Francis Martel would answer with a three pointer, and an Anderson bonus shot with 10:47 left in the half gave the home team an 18-16 lead. With the score 22-20 Spiders following a Damian Saunders basket with 6:50 remaining in the half, Harper scored five unanswered points to push the lead out to seven. Duquense closed to within one point later in the half but the Spiders would take a 37-30 lead into the break.