Balanced Attack Leads JMU Past Bucknell

I haven’t done the research, but I’m fairly certain that last season we never used the words “balanced attack” to describe the JMU basketball team. This year is a different story however. JMU cruised past Bucknell 85-75 in the final game of the CBE O’Reilly Auto Parts Harrisonburg Sub-regional or whatever they called it. Denzel Bowles was named the Most Outstanding Player for this tournament that wasn’t really a tournament and Rayshawn Goins was selected to the all tournament team. The win over Bucknell however, was a total team effort.

Andrey Semenov poured in 20 points off the bench, nailing 5 three pointers. As a team, JMU hit 52% of their shots behind the arc. Rayshawn Goins bested Semenov and finished with 21 points to lead the team. Joining Goins and Semenov in double figures were Denzel Bowles, Devon Moore, and Humpty Hitchens. Bowles had a relatively quit night by his standards and finished with 11 points, 5 rebounds, and 4 assists. It’s nice to have that be considered an off night for a Duke. After a tough shooting night against Presbyterian, Hitchens went 3 for 3 from long range. Julius Wells chipped in 7 points and went over 1,000 points for his career.

JMU outrebounded the Bison and finally held the turnovers in check, limiting themselves to 9 in the game. I’m still rather perplexed about what this entire tournament was, or why the Dukes hosted a sub-regional that doesn’t appear to feed into or even connect in any way to any other regional. Whatever the tournament was though, I’m glad the Dukes hosted it. It gave the Dukes a chance to host three more home games and an opportunity to continue to gel. For a team with as many new parts as JMU’s, these pre-conference games could prove to be immensely valuable.

The Dukes played games on three consecutive nights and won all three. JMU showed something different in every win. They rode Denzel to a big comeback win against Princeton, got it done without their “A” game against Presbyterian, and had a total team effort for a comfortable victory against Bucknell. This team still has a ways to go before anyone is making plans for March, but I’m really pleased with the progress so far.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!