JMU Escapes BracketBusters With a Win

JMU had just enough to get by Miami (Ohio) yesterday, narrowly defeating the Redhawks 70-69 in Harrisonburg. When the BracketBuster match-ups were first announced, we were less then enthused with the Dukes’ draw. Actually that’s putting it mildly, we were pissed. At the time, Miami was not playing very well and we were annoyed the Dukes wouldn’t get to face a quality opponent. Maybe there is some sort of JMUSB curse however, because Miami hadn’t lost since we posted our assessment of the match-up. They also had climbed all the way to first place in the MAC and into the top-100 in the RPI.

So Miami ended up giving the Dukes a little more than we originially bargained for. They definitely were a much higher quality opponent than we predicted they would be. And we’re glad. What could have been a snoozer of a victory against an overmatched team, turned into another gritty Dukes come from behind win. In typical fashion, the Dukes came out slow and went down double-digits in the first half. In not so typical fashion, the game was delayed for 12 minutes in the second half due to a powere outage in the Convo. The power outage didn’t disrupt the Dukes though. They battled back and traded the lead back and forth with Miami all half, before Devon Moore hit a free throw with 2.7 seconds yet to put JMU up for good.

Unlike last week’s win over Towson in which Denzel put the team on his back, this was a more balanced effort. All five starters scored in double-digits, led by Julius Wells with 16 points. Nobody was outstanding, but everyone was pretty good. The Dukes were especially good in the clutch, scoring on 10 of their final 12 possessions. In addition to hitting 1 of 2 from the line to seal the win, Devon Moore asserted himself offensively in the closing minutes. He’s not a pure scorer by any means, but he defnitely has a knack for finding space in the lane and getting penetration with the game on the line.

The win was JMU’s 10th this season when trailing at the half and 20th overall. Yes, the 20 win mark isn’t the mileston it once was, but it’s JMU’s second 20 win season in Coach Brady’s 3 seasons. For comparison’s sake, before Brady took over, JMU hadn’t even had a winning season since 1999-2000. In fact between the 2002-2003 and 2005-2006 seasons, JMU didn’t even win a total of 20 games. I don’t think anyone is satisfied that the Dukes are sitting in 5th place of the CAA. I think it’s fair to say however, that Coach Brady at least has things pointed in the right direction.

Photo taken from JMUsports.com