Official JMUSB March Madness Preview (Dukes Edition!)

Read that title again!  Never thought we’d get to write it.  Thankfully the day we were starting to doubt would ever come again is here.  The Dukes enter their first NCAA tournament in 19 years in Dayton, Ohio tonight against LIU-Brooklyn in the First Four.  Tipoff is at 6:40 on truTV but first we’ve got all kinds of goodies to get you ready.

Nation Vision Episode 1

First, we have this amazing little video produced and narrated by freshman star-in-the-making Andre Nation to start off with, complete with a rather amazing Brady Rap and a little harsh, but admittedly funny, treatment of senior effort-man Alioune Diouf.

The Fan’s Guide

Game’s on truTV.  You may not realize you have that channel, but you do. It’s a CBS property available on all cable and satellite providers.  But if you can’t make it to Dayton, you can definitely make it to one of the many Duke Club watch parties across the country.  Check out JMU Sports or the Alumni site for details, but let’s just say there’s even  a party scheduled in places like Wilmington, NC, and Houston, TX so there’s probably one in your area.  There are multiple parties in the DC/Northern Virginia area and while we would never discourage you from attending one of the official Duke Club events, many of which are at places that consistently support JMU activities, we’re also hosting our own JMUSB event at Ragtime in Courthouse.  We’ll be setting up at 6 and all are welcome!

Nuggets

Seniors Devon Moore, AJ Davis (both Columbus), and Rayshawn Goins (Cleveland) are all from Ohio and have each played in the Dayton Arena before in high school and/or AAU.

The CAA has had two Final Four teams in the last seven years and each had something eerily similar to the Dukes’ setup.  VCU came out of the First Four in Dayton, while Mason, after huge upsets in the early rounds, got to play virtual home games at the Verizon Center in Washington D.C. in the East Regional.  This year’s East Regional: you guessed it, at the phone booth.

Hello Friends…  None other than the Final Four team themselves, Jim Nantz and Clark Kellogg, will be on the call for the Dukes’ game tomorrow.  Kellogg’s own notable college career at Ohio St. ended with an upset loss to JMU in the 1983 NCAA tourney.

You’ll probably have read this by the time this posts, but if you’re tired of the only pre-tourney stories from the national media being blown-out-of-proportion negative press, then you’ve got to read this piece on Devon Moore from the Washington Post.  If that doesn’t make you love the kid, you are Gordon Gecko.

The Game

Oh yeah, the game.  LIU Brooklyn is a running team with fairly local ties.  Their two best players, Jamal Olaswere and CJ Garner (both averaging more than 20 a game lately) are both from Springbrook High School in Silver Spring, though Garner came to LIU by way of South Alabama.  Olaswere is the key for the Dukes.  A serious offensive threat as a 6’7″ wing player, he’ll be a tough cover for the Dukes.  We’d guess Diouf will get the first shot at him, but Nation, Cooke, and even Moore may all switch off if it’s not working.  JMU has proven really stout at shutting down smaller guards with our size and quickness in the backcourt, but we haven’t seen a really threatening wing player in a long while.  That said, overall the Dukes matchup very well size-wise and we doubt we’ll see some of the inside struggles we’ve seen against guys like Towson’s Benimon and Delaware’s Hagins lately.  LIU’s tallest player is 6’8″ so for a change the Dukes may be the bigger, deeper team. Plus the size of our Moore/Nation/Davis backcourt could prove to be a nightmare for LIU’s much smaller guards.

Coach Brady has said tempo is the biggest key to this game and we certainly don’t disagree.  LIU aims to play in the 80’s and 90’s and often is a defense-optional squad.  The Dukes (yes, this IS true) won the CAA on the strength of their conference-best defense.  While we’re not Wisconsin or UVA in terms of slow-down style and have proven capable of scoring a lot at times this season, no doubt  game in the 60’s or 70’s would bode very well for the Dukes.

And of course Rayshawn Goins will be available in the second half, which if nothing else should allow him to play as hard as possible without worrying about foul trouble.

Beer of the Week

We broke out this football tradition for the CAA tourney and it seemed to work, so we’re running it back again.  Because we’re playing in the East Region, to be played in DC, we’re going with DC Brau’s The Corruption IPA.  We’re huge fans of canned craft beer and this is a solid, local example of a big IPA (very hoppy and comes in at 6.5%).  We’ll buy everyone who can get in the door a round of these at some bar near Verizon should the Dukes end up there!

Prediction

The Dukes are better.  Despite the distractions of this week (all of them), the quality opponent (don’t sleep on LIU who has been in the tourney three straight years), and a propensity for slow starts, the confidence on this team is at an all-time high and Moore and Davis are just playing exactly like seniors should.

JMU 75, LIU 71

As for the tourney, we’ll be back with game-by-games, but Louisville’s Rick Pitino’s been saying for a while that THIS is the year of the 16/1 upset.  We don’t disagree.  You have to remember, no one ever sees the big ones coming, that’s the magic of them.