This Might Be the Greatest JMU Highlight Video of All Time
Do you like watching guys in short shorts play basketball? Do you forget what it’s like to see guys JMU jerseys consistently knock down mid-range jumpers? Do you love Carly Simon? Well then the video above is for you. It’s nothing but highlights of JMU basketball from the 1982-1983 season. And most of it is set to Carly Simon’s classic sports anthem, “Nobody Does it Better.” Because, of course it is.
The video was featured as part of CollegeInsider.com’s Turn Back the Clock today. As best we can tell, College Insider’s Turn Back the Clock is to Throw Back Thursday (#TBT) what the College Insider Tournament is to the NIT Tournament. Or something like that. Regardless, it’s pretty neat. Today’s JMU themed edition includes a nice little write-up about the Dukes’ 1982 NCAA tournament team that beat Ohio State before falling to eventual national champion UNC. And nothing goes better with a blurb about the 1981-1982 team than the above video featuring the team from the following season.
JMU basketball was legit back in the day, but highlights are tough to find. So do yourself a favor and watch the video. It does a great job capturing classic 1980’s style hoops. It also features one of the most 80’s dunks of all time at about the 58 second mark. And some downright amazing JMU warmups around 2:10. And what appears to be a classic 80’s style VHS recording transition blunder at 2:25. Of course there’s plenty of great basketball too. Just watch it.
I’m entranced. I’ve watched it like 5 times in a row.
Great stuff; a lot from 80-81 including vs. UVA in Godwin — Mark Railley and I almost got a bench technical that night because we said aloud, “you know they’re gonna protect the big guy”; Sampson got T-ed up for slamming the ball down after a foul call (it easily bounced more than 1/3 the way to the ceiling).
Charles Fisher was the player knocked out in the video. Dan Ruland caught him with an elbow, so it was friendly fire. Happened during the JMU invitational.
The man with the mustache at the video edit snafu was Rich Murray, the SID before Gary Michael.
Also footage from the first D-1 NCAA team in ’81 (vs. Georgetown [W] and Notre Dame [L].
Only thing missing was Matt Doherty running over Sally Nay at the beginning of one of the NCAA matchups with UNC. She ran out to clean up the toilet paper after our 1st basket. Doherty never stopped and trucked under the JMU defensive basket.
Thanks for filling in the gaps and provide us with the additional details KW. I was wondering if some of the footage was from Godwin. In the very beginning a guy hits a layup and almost runs into some purple doors behind the basket. It looked like Godwin to me, but I wasn’t sure. Now I know.
And that’s sort of a funny story about Sampson. I met him a basketball camp when I was much younger. I remember literally reaching my arm straight up to shake his hand.
How could you fail to note that the part where they are cutting down the nets you can see the final score was 41-38! Big time scoring…
Yeah, the days of no 3 point shot. Those were fun days to be a student. Godwin Hall was a great home court advantage…i was actuall bummed when they built the Convo. Not to mention it was the only thing on that side of the highway. JMU in the final 16 teams of the tournament 3 years in a row (don’t think it was called the Sweet 16 yet). Only 32 teams in the tournament back then.
One note on that loss to national championship NC team. 2 point loss. When they were interviewing James Worthy in the locker room after they beat Georgtown for the National Championship he said they (Georgetown) was the toughest team they faced all year except for maybe James Madison. Pretty high praise for the Dukes.
Hope one day JMU can return to those levels.
awesome video! Two observations:
1. The convo has not changed AT ALL in 30 years.
2. That team could put on shoes later today and probably beat the current team.
It was UNC’s Jimmy Braddock, not Matt Doherty, who ran over JMU cheerleader Sally Nay.