One and Done In the CAA Tourney for the Dukes
March Madness opened with a bang for the JMU Dukes today. As the highlights above show, they came out of the gate flying. Three pointers, back door cuts, and wide open dunks helped them build up a 13-4 lead. The Dukes were rolling. And then they weren’t rolling. They stopped making good cuts. They stopped hitting shots. They stopped getting to loose balls. They couldn’t stop Keith Rendleman. There isn’t much to analyze. They just got beat in every aspect of the game of basketball. At one point they were down by 23 points only to mount a furious rally. A late game, purely cosmetic, garbage time rally that fell short anyway. Forgive me if this all sounds harsh. Facts are facts though. JMU got beat pretty easily by a 9th seeded UNCW team that they had defeated in their only previous contest.
Results aside, I’m still glad I made the trip down. Yes, it would have been a whole lot more fun if JMU won and there were more than a few dozen fans in the stands, but I enjoyed myself anyway. And I’m not exaggerating too much when I say there dozens of fans there. At one point my son looked at me and said “Not a lot of people came to cheer for the Dukes today.” And he doesn’t even turn 4 until later this month, so it’s not like he’s got a ton of experience when it comes to judging crowd size. It was a sparse crowd and even worse game, but I still was watching college hoops in March. And that’s not a bad way to spend a Friday. The loss effing sucked though.
The Brady Question
Todd and I have been avoiding the subject of Matt Brady’s employment status all season on this blog. JMU wasn’t going to make a move in season, so we figured it would be best to let things play out before we weighed in. Plus it’s just not that fun to talk about and we started this blog to have fun. Now that the season is over and it was unquestionably a disappointment, we probably need to get on with it. But, and there’s always a but, I honestly haven’t made my mind up yet. Todd has made up his mind and I’ll let him state his case. I’m still on the fence though. And with the overwhelming majority of fans ready to show Brady the door yesterday, simply being undecided makes me one of his staunchest defenders by default. So we’ll probably give Brady’s job status it’s own post later this weekend. Hopefully I will have made up my mind by then. At work, I’ve had to sit across from people and tell them they’re not good enough for promotion or even that they need to move on. It sucks, but I’ve been able to do it because I analyzed all the facts and was prepared to deal with the consequences. In this case, I haven’t analyzed all the facts and I’m not really sure that I’m prepared to deal with the consequences of Brady being let go. By that I mean that I’m not confident that there are tons of better options lining up to lobby for this job. And I’m even less sure that Jeff Bourne and the administration will do what it takes to secure a decent replacement if necessary. Plus, I’m still not even convinced Brady deserves to lose his job. He’s had 2 decent years and 2 disappointing years. Two very disappointing, injury plagued years.
I realize I’m on an island here and most of you are already convinced he should be gone. I respect that. Todd and I vehemently disagree on a lot of things such as politics, pro football, baseball, and even aspects of JMU sports. He’s still one of my best friends though. So I’m not going to take it personally if you think I’m crazy for sitting on the fence, of even if you want to blast me for not seeing what seems so obvious to you. If it comes across differently here or on Twitter, I apologize. That’s not my intent at all. Please feel free to weigh in the comments here or wait until we address the topic in its own post. Or go have a good beer and try to put this season behind you. That’s what I’m going to do.
Thank God the nightmare is finally over.
Yep. When does spring football practice start?
Brady should have been fired ON THE SPOT at the JMU NOVA Alumni Chapter’s “Coach’s Caravan” last year when he blamed the previous season on his best player not caring enough.
As the coach it is your job to recruit the right players, teach them how to work hard and make them care about the team, their PT, and their personal growth. Since he failed to do that, we all know he wasn’t fit to coach. Of the people in the room that night, only Jeffrey Bourne seemed to have missed that one.
Each year at the CC Brady shows up, “I’m excited for this next season, yeah last year wasn’t good enough, but it wasn’t my fault, it was because of (insert lame excuse) why we didn’t do better but we’re going to do better this season.”
Okay? And yet again it didn’t happen, so nice knowing ya.
Tough call on Brady. I don’t think we’re going anywhere with him though. He seems not to be able to motivate the players. He’s had a couple nice transfers, but I’m trying to think if his recruiting is even CAA level any more.
That said, completely agree that there is little chance that we’ll get anyone better. But if the status quo is this, then what do you have to lose?
Matt (first one), I was sort of taken aback by Brady’s comments at the CC also, so I asked him about them. He explained that Denzel just wouldn’t play D in a very matter of fact way. It didn’t seem to be a personal attack when talking to him one on one. I definitely understand if it came across that way to you when he was speaking to the group. It didn’t really bother me, but I get why it would be a show stopper for others.
Matt (second one), I don’t think finishing 8th in the CAA is the new status quo. I think this season was a step back, but part of me thinks Brady will have an easier time getting JMU competitive in the short term than a new coach would.
For whatever it’s worth, I think he’s going to be fired this week. I’m still not sure if I agree with it though.
Thanks for chiming in guys.
After watching the games today, it’s clear to me we are way behind the top tier teams in the CAA. I don’t think we lack in the talent area, I just think Brady hasn’t gotten the best out of his players, to me that’s coaching. He might be a great recruiter but if he doesn’t know what to do with it once it’s here, what good is he.
We are so far behind the top tier of the CAA it’s not funny.
I don’t know about talent since I don’t have the time to personally look at all the highlights from HS for the guys currently on the team. I am not sure we really that many talented players based on what I see. I get that coaching, especially at the college level is important (than say NBA) but I watch some of these games and it comes down to make plays, which the coach can’t do. I am sorry, but how much more motivation than a FREE RIDE at a great university do you need? Getting some other coach at this point may help but it comes down to talent. I am not completely sure Mickey Matthews is the greatest coach in I-AA but because we get great talent for our level of football, we compete. Don’t put this all on Brady. Denzel didn’t play defense, but because he did put up enough offense it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Brady is just telling the truth. I am not saying that Brady is that great either, but he is better than what we had post-Lefty.
Unless you can get a Paul Hewitt-type who was at a big time conference to magically land in our laps, I don’t know who we are going to get that is going to bring us to the “promise land”.