Playcalling Back to Durden and Other Changes

Two items mid-week.  First, in case you didn’t know, and judging by blog interest you didn’t, the women’s hoops team is hosting a WNIT Final Four game tomorrow night at 7 p.m. at The Convo against Syracuse.  A few cool notes here are that the ‘Burg and JMU Students seem to have really jumped on board with Coach Brooks’ teams’ run even if it doesn’t register with the rest of us.  They’ve been getting steadily larger crowds each game through their run and the ticket office reported today they’ve already sold more than Sunday’s win over UVa.  The run has included W’s over ACC schools UVa and Wake Forest and the Big East’s South Florida.  Hopefully they can notch another Big East win over the ‘Cuse and advance to the final where they’ll meet the winner of the San Diego @ Oklahoma St. game.  Lastly, the pep band’s version of Gogol Bordello’s Start Wearin’ Purple has also been gaining much more widespread enthusiasm on campus thanks to this run and we can’t wait to hear it at BFS come September.

What we pay to see!

Second, a bit of a shakeup in the Football Coaching staff was announced this week.  For some reason, even the Chicago Tribune picked up this story from the Sports Network, but we’ll take the midwestern love where we find it.  A few roles have been upgraded, included former JMU star Tony LeZotte, who will become a full-time (and presumably full-paid) assistant this year. But the big takeaway is that Mickey is turning the playcalling duties back over to long-time OC Jeff Durden.  As most of us know, many JMU fans had been calling for Durden’s head for a while before Matthews took the playcalling away from him and assumed that job himself last year.  Particularly after the ’09 and ’10 seasons I think we all agreed the offense appeared to have the pizzazz of a Sbarro.  However, even if it’s a fool-me-twice situation here, we’re generally fine with this.  MM didn’t do anything fancy last year (though he did have to play the meat of the season with an injured, untested QB) and just continued running the same dreadful stretch reverses and occassional hitches to nowhere as before so really, what’s the difference.  ’04, ’08, ’12 – if this really is another great year, we all know it’s going to be built on an O-Line allowing for running the ball, running the ball some more, and then running it again regardless of whether it’s the tailbacks (’04) or the QBs (’08), or some combination (’12) doing the toting.  Plus now Mickey can go back to what he does best: having his own personal contest to see if he can pop his eyes out or burst a neck-vein first while chucking visors and threatening the children of atrocious FCS officiating crews!