CLEVELAND — All this traveling appears to be taking its toll on the Duquesne men’s basketball team.

The Dukes seemed lifeless Sunday in an 83-61 loss to Marshall in the second game of a doubleheader in the Cleveland Classic at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse. Duquesne dropped its second consecutive decision to a Conference USA team after a 10-0 start.

“At some point, we’ll find out who’s all in,” Duquesne coach Keith Dambrot said. “If you don’t understand what this is about, then there’s issues. I’m disturbed. We’ve got a lot of work to do to get them ready for the league.”

The Dukes (10-2) will try to regroup in time for Thursday nights’s Atlantic 10 opener against Saint Louis at Robert Morris’ UPMC Events Center.

Playing this season without a home, Duquesne was sluggish from the start in its 12th and final nonconference game. Poor shooting from the Dukes’ first loss a week ago carried over to an uninspired performance against Marshall at yet another foreign venue, the home of the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers.

Duquesne’s last game in Pittsburgh was a 90-54 victory over Columbia on Dec. 9 at La Roche, but it still wasn’t like being at home.

The Dukes are playing their games off campus while awaiting completion of UPMC Chuck Cooper Fieldhouse, expected to be ready next season.

“I’m not going to make excuses, but it can’t help, right?” Dambrot said of his team’s vagabond schedule.

But there was no massaging the situation. Dambrot was not happy with his players, remaining secluded with them in the locker room for a long period after the game.

“That was probably one of the worst performances I’ve ever been associated with,” he said. “I’ve gotten beat up before, but I didn’t like that performance at all. We just didn’t play. We didn’t have any energy. Even when we cut (the lead) to eight, we didn’t have any energy. I can’t fix that. That’s on them. They’ve got to do better.”

Dambrot paused to gather his thoughts, then added, “Now, ultimately, it’s on me because we have to reevaluate and make sure we’re playing the right guys who care about winning. I’m very disappointed.”

Jarrod West scored 22 points, and Darius George came off the bench to add 19 as Marshall (6-7) led the Dukes almost wire to wire. Taevion Kinsey also was in double figures for the Thundering Herd with 13 points.

The Dukes connected on 23 of 68 shots (33.8%), their worst shooting performance of the year.

In its previous game — a 77-68 loss to UAB at the St. Pete Shootout in St. Petersburg, Fla. — Duquesne shot 36.4% overall and was 18.5% (4 for 24) from 3-point range.

Duquesne hit just one of its first 14 shots against Marshall, at one point missing 12 in a row. Could it have affected the Dukes’ intensity level?

“Good teams don’t do that,” Dambrot said. “They find another way to win. We’ve had trouble putting the ball in the basket, and we’ve shown all year when we get out of our routine, we have a hard time. We came back from Thanksgiving, and we weren’t any good. We weren’t any good tonight. We didn’t shoot the ball well in Florida.

“We just have to get back to basics. We have to guard better. We have to share the ball. It was just a bad performance. You can’t get any worse than that.”

It was a struggle for the Dukes from the start. Marshall built a double-digit lead in the first half and maintained it for much of the day, pulling away down the stretch.

The Thundering Herd outscored the Dukes, 24-13, over the final 8 minutes, 10 seconds.

Marcus Weathers was a bright spot for Duquesne, scoring a career-high 25 points and tying his career high in rebounds with 13. Michael Hughes added 15 points for the Dukes.

It hardly mattered.

“It’s like we were running in mud,” Dambrot said. “They looked way better-conditioned than us. We didn’t have any juice. I saw it in practice. It’s frustrating because there’s nothing you can do if you just don’t have it. We tried every lineup. Marcus had it offensively, but that was it.”

Duquesne converted just 3 of 16 3-pointers (18.8%), starting 0 for 9 in the first half.

“The message was pretty clear,” Weathers said of the team’s post-game meeting. “We kind of lost track of working hard in practice, doing the things we normally do. As a whole, the message was received very well by the whole group. We’re just ready to get back to work and just continue to try to keep working hard.”

George’s dunk stretched Marshall’s lead to 55-38 with 12:21 left, capping a 9-0 run by the Thundering Herd, and signified Duquesne’s struggles. Every time the Dukes tried to come back, Marshall had an answer.

The Herd kept increasing its lead and delivered a knockout punch after Duquesne made its final charge, getting within 46-38 on a jumper by Maceo Austin with 15:22 left.

Duquesne’s cold shooting led to a 38-29 deficit at halftime.

The Dukes shot poorly for a second game in a row, but not because Weathers wasn’t doing his part by posting a double-double in the first half. The 6-foot-5 Weathers was 10 for 14 shooting, including 7 for 9 in the first half, when he posted 17 points and 10 rebounds.

But it was Marshall that held the upper hand, taking advantage of missed shots inside and out by the Dukes. The Herd finished shooting 35 for 68 (51.5%).

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