Duquesne men's basketball team still stranded on bus after road win

By foxsports
Published

Micah Mason scored 23 points to lead Duquesne to an 86-75 win Friday over George Mason in a men's basketball game in Fairfax, Va. 

The team celebrated coach Jim Ferry's 300th victory, and were headed home on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. 

They've been stuck there ever since. 

Duquesne's bus was one of the many unfortunate motorists stuck in the monster storm pounding the mid-Atlantic states this weekend. Members of the Temple women's gymnastics team were also reported to be stuck on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

The stranded passengers put on brave faces as their situation crossed over into a second 24-hour period.

"The bathroom is not that bad. It could be worse," said Dave Saba, a spokesman for Duquesne's men's basketball team. "It's not what you would expect from 31 men on a bus. We try to keep it clean."

The players mostly got by on leftover pizza and Gatorade and watched movies including "Invincible." And it was difficult for some of the players, who were quite tall, to sleep on the bus.

The Dukes pulled out of Fairfax at 4:30 p.m. on Friday -- the game had been moved up from Saturday due to weather concerns -- thinking they had a shot to make it back to the campus of the private university in Pittsburgh ahead of the worst of the storm.

That ambition was dashed once traffic bogged down on the Pennsylvania Turnpike behind tractor trailers struggling to handle inclines. The Duquesne bus came to a halt at about 9:15 p.m. -- at least 90 minutes southeast of home under even the best of conditions.

The bus has heat and power, so comfort and safety while they're parked isn't an issue. However, Ferry said mid-morning Saturday that his players are running out of the leftover pizza they bought on the way home.

"We're getting pretty hungry," he said. "We hope it starts moving pretty soon."

The recent standard for blizzard-related travel inconvenience was set in November 2014 by Niagara University. The women's basketball team was stuck on a bus south of Buffalo for 24 hours before police could reach them and transport players to nearby shelters.

That episode gave us this memorable image:

As for Temple, gymnastics coach Umme Salim-Beasley said the team was about 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh after having departed Philadelphia at about 2 p.m. Friday to try to beat the storm.