Dukes Go One and Done in CAA Tournament
We realize this is a little delayed, but the site was down due to some technical difficulties. We have no idea what happened, because our wonderful hosting service didn’t contact us to let us know the site went down, let alone how they managed to get it back up. Don’t go cheap on hosting services boys and girls. But we’re back.
The little glitch might have been a blessing in disguise because we had nothing positive to say immediately after the loss anyway. JMU struggled to score baskets. William & Mary scored a lot of them. When you don’t score, and you let the opponent go on 20 point runs, things typically don’t go your way. They certainly didn’t go JMU’s on Saturday. Sadly, the Dukes failed to win a game in the CAA tourney. Again. And the season is done.
Ron Curry didn’t have his best game, but he still led the team with 20 points. He ends his career as one of the top JMU players in recent memory, maybe ever. He came to JMU four years ago as a talented player, but few predicted he’d turn out this good. There’s no telling how things might have turned out if the rest of his recruiting class (Nation, Cooke, and Bessick) stuck around. Surely another trip to the dance was within reach. But we’ll never know. Matt Brady took Curry to the tourney as a freshmen. Now Curry is gone and folks are calling for Brady’s head. And that’s a topic for another day.
Well. Bruiser IS gone, and it’s hangin’ season. I don’t know what Matt could have done to prevent that execrable first half, especially the scoreless streak, but another tourney has come and gone with our guys looking completely outmatched on the first Saturday of March. We will soon see what the school’s aspirations are for this program. The cupboard is hardly bare, but it looks disorganized at best. Come on ladies!
But let’s be serious. Brady has another year left on his deal and he’s just won 20 games. We’ll see him next year for certain.
Campanelli: did the most with the least and 0 sub-.500 records
Thurston: 5-23, ’nuff said
Driesell: could recruit with his name, but couldn’t really X and O (as @ MD)
Dillard: excellent player who couldn’t x-fer his skills to the sideline
Keener: in way over his head
Brady: a Driesell-level X and O guy who doesn’t recruit as well
Think the decision to not pursue post-season says Bourne is ready to move “the program in a different direction” by “conducting a national search” to find the coach who can “take a proud program with a great basketball history” back to where “it is accustomed to being…”
or maybe he’s just monitoring the situation with regards to others on the coaching carousel.
Glad you guys are back up and running!
I actually think Brady can X and O. I watched a number of those games where he has clearly drawn up something new in the huddle and when the players do what he says- it works. I think his style was more than a bit off-putting for a number of players and that led to the transfers. Perhaps I’m just bitter but watching Rick Barnes at Texas as a great recruiter and terrible in-game coach and Brady as maybe a lackluster recruiter but a decent X and O guy- I would take Brady for JMU to watch. I do thin k JMU if they make a change should go young (like Tyler Summit for women’s LATech young) and see what happens. While basketball is an easy way for schools to get cash and more applicants, JMU has chosen not to go that route (spending money on football rathe than basketball) and I think they should keep that and take a chance and hope a young guy hits it big at JMU.
I agree with Ken’s synopsis of the JMU coaching history.
That said even after a 20 win season, I think it may be time to move in another direction and make a change. JMU can buy Brady out for $20k which is a drop in the bucket. What gets me frustrated about Brady, is it seems like his teams (2013 being the exception) are never their best at the end of the season. I think his relationships with his players is tense and strained to say the least. I think this is now 4 out of the last 5 CAA tournaments that JMU has been one and done, and vastly outplayed/out coached in all as I recall (could be wrong here did not look it up). I think while trying to breathe life back into a program and fundraise for a new arena both may be easier with a new coach. It is especially glaring when you see what Kevin Keatts has done in 2 years with UNCW — great job there, his players appear to like playing for him, and has good relationships with his players. Congrats UNCW!!!! They have over-achieved based on preseason projections both years with him at the helm.
That is the most frustrating thing with a Brady coached team, you kind of know what you are getting……but they rarely out perform projections or beat someone you don’t feel they should beat. Brady is good at beating teams he is supposed to beat for the most part.
Also, Kudos for taking a crap on the CBI/CIT/Vegas 16 pay for play, bull crap post-season tournaments. If you are not good enough to get into the NCAA or NIT (that is 100 teams I think — 68 NCAA/32NIT) then it is time to shut it down for the season. Those tournaments are just a waste of time and money. And quite frankly no one cares about them.
I offer up a variety of opinions on football primarily as a fan. When it comes to basketball, I have knowledge on the subject as both player and coach.
20 win seasons are no longer the benchmark they were just like 1,000 yard seasons in NFL football. College teams play many more games than they used to – so it’s much easier to get to 20 wins. It’s really by habit and lack of knowledge that people keep referring to 20 win seasons in basketball and 1,000 yards rushing in football (in an NFL season that’s only 65 yards a game).
For the good of the program, the time for Brady to leave is now or never. A new coach needs the ability to set direction through recruiting. Next year, JMU will have an insane number of 8 Seniors – which is piss poor planning by a current coach who simply doesn’t care because his focus was to win now to keep his job. That didn’t work. He couldn’t even move the team to the second round of the tourney.
By bringing in a new coach now, he is able to actually establish a plan for the types of players needed in his system and can recruit and have 8 scholarships to bring in some impact right away. I’ve seen enough Brady, and am knowledgeable enough about the subject to say it’s time to move on.
Jeff Bourne is incompetent. I have no idea how that guy still has a job other than to look at his superiors as also having no idea how to run an athletics program. It’s really an embarrassment to a university of this size.
Various responses to above statements in no particular order:
1. Matt Brady is a solid X’s and O’s guy, and anyone who thinks otherwise is wrong or lying. Just listen to him talk about basketball at any press conference or interview. Not only is knowledgable and eloquent, he’s more willing to share than almost any coach in Division 1 basketball. That combination is flat-out unheard of outside of Lexington/Durham/Lawrence.
2. Suggesting that recurring 20-win seasons aren’t a big deal at the mid-major level is trying to outthink the room. I don’t like going one and done in the Tournament either, but it doesn’t erase another good-not-great regular season. A senior-led team has this team poised to win 20 again next season, which would essentially be 3 seasons in a row. (They only won 19 in 2014-15.) When was the last time that happened? The early 90s? The electric zoo? Genuine question. I don’t feel like digging through the archives. Someone call Jimmy Irwin.
3. Brady isn’t stuck with too many seniors next year by accident — it’s a function of the 2012-13 squad, which had 6 or 7 seniors leave/graduate after the season was over. That bottleneck was a combination of bad timing and nagging injuries that stacked the majority of two classes up together. When Brady reloaded after that year, he got stuck with another unwieldy wave of guys, all aged the same. So it’s not ideal, but it’s not really his fault, either.
4. Brady had next to nothing to do with the Bessick/Cooke transfers. Bessick wasn’t happy with his role in the offense — he wanted to play with his back to the basket and take fewer jumpers, and wanted to seek out a program that could give him that. (Ironically, the program he left for has helped him perfect his role in the ass-on-the-pine offense.) Nation’s departure was inevitable. Cooke, I’m less sure about, but I think that may have boiled down to an ego thing.
Sorry for being the Brady apologist, but somebody has to do it.
Wrong about Bessick. He didn’t want the contact of back to the basket and preferred facing the basket and taking jumpers.
And wrong about Brady’s planning with the number of seniors. Two of those upcoming seniors are transfers. If that’s planning, it’s piss poor.
I might have flipped my details on Bessick, you might have me there. But I clearly remember he didn’t like how he was being used. Either way, the point stands. It wasn’t about Brady; it was about TB.
Can’t put up much of a fight on your point about transfers, though. That is a head-scratcher. Hard to say no to Shakir Brown, though, even if his class status is inconvenient. That guy can ball.
@Xerk is right about Bessick wanting to face the basket, but Chase you’re right that he left because he wanted to play a different role. I remember because I was speaking to Brady at an event and he said that “Bessicks’ favorite player was Carmelo Anthony and he wants to play the same role” and I literally laughed out loud. I felt kind of bad about it, but it was funny. The guy had no handle and no jumper. How he thought he could play on the wing or as a stretch 4 is beyond me.