JMU Blown Out By Towson

If you happened to set aside a few hours from your precious weekend to relax and take in JMU’s game against Towson, I’m sorry. I did the same thing and it was miserable. JMU didn’t even deserve to be in the same gym with Towson. The Tigers won 73-47 but it wasn’t really that close. It was a tight contest in the first half, but that was primarily due to the fact that Towson couldn’t get anything going with its star player, Jerrelle Benimon, sitting out with foul trouble. With Benimon out, the Dukes should have been able to take over the game. Instead, they let Towson go on a 10-0 run late and went into the break trailing 31-28. And that was the good half. That means that my bipolar fandom is in full swing. Some days, I’m sure they’re good enough to get hot and make a run. Today is not one of those days.

In the second half the wheels came off for JMU. That’s not true. The Dukes were consistently awful for the entire game. They really didn’t play any worse in the second half than they did in the first half. The difference was that Towson bounced back from a poor first half of its own, to play pretty well in the final twenty minutes. And playing pretty well, but not great, was all it took to beat JMU by 26 points. For the game JMU shot a hard-to-believe 14 for 55. That’s right, JMU shot 25% from the field. Poor shooting days can be forgiven (even 14-55 days). It’s harder to forgive a team just not showing up ready to play. Yesterday, it sure seemed like JMU wasn’t ready to play. And that isn’t even too surprising at this point. We must sound like a broken record, but when JMU plays to its potential, the Dukes can beat anyone in the CAA. All to often however, the Dukes fail to match the intensity and effort of their opponent. And that’s a recipe for disaster.

Once again, we can never be sure which JMU team will show up. The good one that plays with a ton of energy and is fun to watch? Or the one that sleepwalks through 40 minutes? Despite the up and down nature of the season, a few things are becoming clear. First of, this team really struggle shooting the basketball. Yesterday’s 25% shooting performance stunk, but wasn’t as much of an outlier as you’d hope. JMU is only shooting 36.1% this year in conference play. Somehow that’s only the second worst in the CAA, but it’s awful. JMU just can’t shoot. In fact in CAA games, seven team’s actually have a FG% that is equal to or greater than the Dukes’ 40.3 eFG%. If you’re not familiar with eFG% (which accounts for the fact that three-point field goals are worth more than two-point field goals) and want to learn more here’s a great summary. If you don’t care, just trust me when I say that is not an encouraging trend. Small sample size or not, JMU needs to start putting the ball in the bucket. And they need to keep the opponent from doing so. The Dukes are 0-8 when teams shoot better than 45.5%. For a defense that holds the opposition to 43.1% FG on average, that’s not much of a margin of error.