Lucky 7 to Compete In CAA Tournament

It’s tournament week everyone. And for the first time in a long time, it isn’t a virtual lock that the JMU hoops season will be over in a matter of days. The Dukes are the 3 seed and have as good a shot as any team of getting hot and cutting down the nets next Monday night. It was an odd regular season in the CAA and this tournament is set to be just as weird. A full 30% of the league’s 10 teams won’t be competing in Richmond. ODU is headed to CUSA and thus ineligible per league rules, and Towson and UNCW are facing APR penalties prohibiting them from participating in the post-season. So it comes down to a lucky 7 teams. And you could make a case for practically all of them to win. Even an undermanned Hofstra squad is capable of elevating it’s game and pulling an upset or two. 

Last year I made the trip down for the Dukes’ CAA tourney run completely underwhelming opening round loss. At the opening tip, I was seriously contemplating if there were more people on the court than in the stands. This year, the Dukes opening game is a primetime match-up against William & Mary at 8:30 Saturday night. The crowd should be a bit better. Of course we’re still going to hear way too much about attendance problems and how VCU was the only reason fans came in the past. And VCU certainly did bring big crowds. Of course it probably had a lot to do with the fact that the games were played practically on its campus, something that was so ridiculous it’s hard to believe it ever happened. But that’s a subject for another post or something to discuss over a few beers.

For now, let’s focus on the present. And get ready for the Dukes huge opening round rematch against William & Mary. One more thing, for folks worried that it’s “hard to beat a team 3 times in one season”, the DNR’s Mark Selig was dropping some statistical knowledge to disprove that today. It turns out that since 2002-2003 teams that won the first 2 games against an opponent won the third 72% of the time. It’s going to be very hard to beat the Tribe on Saturday, but don’t let some old wives tale or myth make you think it’s going to impossible.

You can check out the bracket and broadcast schedule here. We’ll have a tourney preview of some sort later this week. Maybe we’ll even thrown in a football style game preview. We’ll just figure it out as we go, because we’re struggling to deal with this new cautious optimism (or at least an absence of complete despair) heading into the tourney.