Matt Lewis is The Truth

We know, we know, there’s no such thing as moral victories. And we know JMU has lost so many tight games late this year when they had a lead in frustrating fashions. But this game was absolutely legit from the Dukes as they took the 21-6 and clear top team in the CAA Charleston Cougars to OT before falling 81-78 in a wild affair that ended with a deep trey from CofC to break another tie. More than a few Charleston fans and writers mentioned after the game that JMU is now officially a team they don’t want to see when the pressure’s on the Cougars in North Charleston for the conference tourney two weeks from now.

And by the way, freshman point guard Matt Lewis, the player who’s been so great running the team and avoiding turnovers despite his youth and the fact he mostly played the two in high school went bananas, scoring a career high 33 points on an uber-efficient 10-16 from the field and 9-10 from the line. When we talked to DNR writer Josh Walfish about Lewis, he mentioned how tough it is for the freshman PG to really score in bunches when he’s asked to do so many other things for the Dukes. Fellow freshman Darius Banks was also outstanding with 17 and 6 and, broken record, we are still very encouraged about this group long-term.

Unfortunately, Charleston has two player of the year candidates and they were both superb with Jarrel Brantley going for putting up a strong double-double with 20 and 13 and Grant Riller scoring 32 including the game-winner.

But nothing about last night made us any less excited about the stretch run and the CAA tourney in two weeks.