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Monday, 13 February 2012 13:15

Written by Jenn Menendez

On this morning’s Atlantic 10 conference call with media coach Ron Everhart said it’s time for his team to find a way to win on the road.

The Dukes are coming off a 69-48 loss at St. Bonaventure over the weekend that did not help the road cause.

The season is coming down to the wire with the following games on tap before the Atlantic 10 tournament begins. Three of the last six games are on the road.

•  Feb. 15: Home vs. Fordham
• Feb. 18: at Temple
• Feb. 22: Home vs. Dayton
• Feb. 25: at George Washington
• Feb 29: at Charlotte
• March 3: Home vs. St. Louis

Everhart: “I think in any particular year your last five, six games of your conference schedule become extremely vital. Unfortunately for us a lot of those games are on the road. We’re going to have to find a way to be an effective road team. Other than a couple of games this year we have not been.”

“The opportunity for us, is right here and now to step up and start playing a little bit better if we can. Obviously we have some very difficult opponents come up.”

Rebound has been a season-long issue for the Dukes, and Everhart was asked about it.

“I think it’s an effort thing. We’ve been really up and down in that area. We haven’t been beaten up on the glass in the last five, six games with the exception of at Xavier earlier and the one at St. Bonaventure on Saturday. Hopefully we can get back to work in practice and maybe have a little better effort, emphasize that so we can get back to rebounding over the last stretch

 ***

Andrew Nicholson earned co-A-10 Player of the Week honors in part for his monster performance against Duquesne on Saturday.

He had 21 points and 23 rebounds to lead the Bonnies to a dominant 69-48 win against Duquesne.

Everhart: "Here at Duquesne Andrew was in foul trouble and collectively didn’t shoot the ball real well. The difference was at St. Bonaventure, Johnson came off the bench Eric Mosely stretched us out and gave Nicholson some room to operate down there, extended us far enough to where our rotations weren’t very good. I thought that was really the story of the game.”

 ***

A potential move to an 18-game schedule - from a 16-game league schedule - came up a lot this morning and got mixed reviews.

Everhart is a proponent for moving to 18 games.

Fordham’s Tom Pecora though, among others, said he’s an advocate to keep it at 16 games. He stressed Fordham’s location made it easier to line up non-conference games.

“I understand there are certain teams that need 18 games. For us 16 teams is perfect. I can get two non-conference games that are much more winnable than A-10 games.

“I’m an advocate for 16 but we’re going to do what’s best for the conference.”

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