Not Quite Silly Season

A huge congrats goes out to JMU Softball.  They fell in the Knoxville Regional to NC State yesterday, but not before finishing an historic season for the program.  The team won a school-record 42 games and their first NCAA tournament game on Saturday!  With almost every significant contributor still an underclassmen, it should be very exciting to see what’s in store from this group the next couple of years.

We figured whenever softball went down that would be the start of the offseason given the baseball team’s hideous early season, but somehow the Diamond Dukes have managed to work their way into the limited-field CAA Tourney, where they’ll begin play this week.  Incredibly, even as the sixth seed you’ve gotta like their chances given that JMU is serving as the host for the tournament at the stunning new University Park facility. Good luck fellas!

UMass needs to make a decision

We also have some good news to report for all of you that are sick of our constant conference realignment posting.

Who knows?

After a very satisfying chat with AD Jeff Bourne at last week’s DC/Nova Coaches Caravan, we’re going to completely lay off the conference realignment talk for at least a month unless there’s news.  We’re no journalists and it’s not like we’ve got surprising or breaking hard facts to report, but we did get the following for sure: a) the admin is in touch with all of the potential conference destinations on a daily basis; b) full study from the consultants isn’t due till September, but the admin expects to have something they can work with in June; c) JMU realizes that the balance of where it’s “peer institutions” reside athletically has shifted; and d) the athletics administration now has an active voice in the overall University’s larger long-term plan, at least in part due to the support of President Alger.  These items were VERY satisfying to hear.  There were other smaller items that still worry us that JMU is a year or three late to the party and that we may not hear a publicly announced decision until after October’s Board meeting, but it can safely be said that heads are not buried in the sand and the period of tonedeafness has passed.   While Rob and I have at times been as far apart on this issue as many other fans, we’ve both maintained that our biggest complaint was our perception that JMU was not actively dealing with the situation and was just hanging out and letting things “happen to them” instead of writing their own story.  We still stand by the idea that we’ll learn to live with any decision, so long as JMU works hard to explore the options with an open mind, actively makes the decision, and then stands by it firmly.

We’d also be remiss if we didn’t send out a huge thank you to Men’s Hoops Assistant Rob O’Driscoll, who spent a ton of time talking to us, making us laugh, and generally confirming all of our suspicions that Coach Brady’s group is rock solid!