Mar 15 / Rob

JMU Loses in First Round of Tournament for 101st Place

OK folks, I’m going to come clean and just let everyone know that the game is technically still going on as I write this. The Dukes trail Davidson 83-57 with under 4:00 minutes to go though, so I think we can call it. Plus, since I’m struggling to find anything at all worth saying about this one, the final buzzer will probably sound before I post this anyway. So, yay blogging ethics or something. And boo JMU Dukes effort.

I honestly didn’t really know much about the College Basketball Invitation Presented by Zebra Pen before the Dukes got a bid. It’s obviously not the most prestigious tournment, falling below the 68 team NCAA Tournament and 32 team NIT, and just nudging out the College Insider Tournament. I guess you could say that if the NCAA tourney is the Big Dance, this tournament is probably more like an ice cream social. That doesn’t mean it’s a waste of time though. It could have been a nice chance for the Dukes to put the William & Mary loss behind them,  notch a few more wins, and build some momentum for next season. It’s been done before. Five teams in the real March Madness played in the CBI last year. Unfortunately, JMU just didn’t show up tonight and got absolutely destroyed by a team they should have beaten.

The game was broadcast on HDnet, a channel I don’t get, so I was forced to listen to the broadcast on Madizone. It’s alwasy tough to provide any real analysis without seeing the game, but this game got so ugly I probably wouldn’t have much to offer even if I had watched from courtside seats. It was too frustrating to pay close attention to. Here’s what you need to know though, everything the Dukes did to drive fans crazy this year, was on display tonight. Apparent lack of effort? Check. Careless turnovers? Check. Poor shot selection? Check. Terrible perimeter defense? Check. I could go on and on, but you get the point. It really just seemed like the Dukes didn’t want to be there. Either that, or Davidson and William & Mary are both some sort of goofy white guy kryponite for the Dukes.

It would be easy to dwell on the negative and slam Brady, Denzel, and the rest of the Dukes tonight. I’m going to refrain from that for now. I’ll give it a few days and try to enjoy March Madness before attempting to analyze this season. It definitely had some bright spots, but this was a terrible way for it to end.

8 Comments

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  1. Ryan / Mar 16 2011

    It was an absolute garbage game to watch. Everyone was trying to be the hero and make the 20 point shot for the comeback vs. playing team ball and whittling down the lead. Davidson played team ball while JMU played street ball… and I wouldn’t call anything I saw on the court for our side defense… it was a free for all.

  2. Jason / Mar 16 2011

    They defend the 3s like the other team has an infectious disease. Its worse than my Men’s Rec league team. Davidson is not that bad of a team, but I agree that JMU should be able to beat them. They took Bowles out of his game and then the rest of the team just didn’t have any kind of answer. It was a pathetic attempt, and I would agree from the demeanor that they just didn’t look like they wanted to be there or have any interest in playing. I think the end of the season was not great, but overall the season was a success in general considering they won over 20 games, had a pretty good non-conference record against some decent teams. Hopefully next year we can just make some improvements on defense…..

  3. Landeta / Mar 16 2011

    I was told last night by a one of the folks over at CAAZone.com (plug!!) that JMU paid 60k to play in that game. If that statement is accurate… That is a lot of Duke Club donations to cover that beat down they took.

    Next year if they don’t make the dance call up UVA, Tech, Radford, Liberty and play a best of the rest in-state tourney to end the season. At least we might care about those games.

  4. Rob / Mar 16 2011

    I think you’ve been misinformed Landeta. It was reported that JMU told the selection committee that they didn’t want to pay $35,000 to host a home game. I never heard anything about it costing $60,000 to play on the road. I could be wrong, but it certainly doesn’t sound logical that you’d pass up a home game to pay $25,000 more for a road game.

  5. Ryan / Mar 16 2011

    I can’t believe I paid $20 to go watch it… thats all I know!

  6. Landeta / Mar 16 2011

    Your 35k number appears to be wrong. Either way it looks like it defiantly cost 60k to host. The person I spoke with may have been misinformed because JMU didn’t host a game. Either way they stunk up the join and you could make the argument that any cost to the university was a waste because that game would not help recruiting.

    http://askville.amazon.com/cost-host-game-CBI-tournament/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=67099514

  7. Rob / Mar 16 2011

    Thanks for the clarification Deta. I knew they didn’t want to pay to play a home game and in the end it was a good call.

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