Everything That Happened While JMU Football Had a Bye

Everett Withers and the Dukes didn’t play on Saturday, but the weekend was far from uneventful. In fact, it was a pretty big weekend for some of the ladies of JMU. The Field Hockey team capped a 6-0 regular season record in CAA play, by advancing to the conference finals. Unfortunately, Taylor West and her teammates fell victim to Delaware, who won its third straight CAA crown. It was a particularly brutal loss too, coming at the hands of a golden goal in OT. The girls from JMU have nothing to hang their heads over. They won 16 games and rose all the way to 16th in the polls. They also cleaned up in the CAA awards department. Hats off to them all for a great season. And we’d be remiss if we didn’t give a special shout out to redshirt senior Taylor West. This year’s CAA Player of the Year is one of the best to ever wear purple and gold. It’s a shame she and her teammates were unable to win a title.

In happier news, the women’s soccer team pulled off a couple of upsets over the weekend and won the CAA Championship. The Dukes were seeded 4th in the four team tournament, but defeated Hofstra 1-0 in double OT Friday night largely due to goalkeeper Ellen Forrest pulling a Tim Howard and turning away a program record 16 shots. They followed that up with a comeback for the ages to beat William & Mary 3-2 in the final. The Dukes fell behind 2-0 in the first half, before finding the net 3 times after the break. It was the first time in the 21 year history of the tournament that a team had come back from two goals down to win the championship. The win earned a NCAA tournament bid for the Dukes, who will find out their draw on Monday.

There was plenty of action on the gridiron for the rest of the CAA and FCS. Things really broke the JMU’s way too. A stunning 6 teams ranked the Top 10 (#2 Illinois State, #3 Chattanooga, #4 Eastern Washington, #5 Ticks, #7 Sam Houston State, and #10 Portland State) lost over the weekend. That obviously is good news for the Dukes, who hope to win out and climb back up into playoff seed territory. Here are the rest of the CAA results.

Albany 17 – Delaware 6: The Great Danes managed to go to Newark and pick up a road win against an offensively challenged Blue Chicken squad. It’s sort of crazy how the team that once had the CAA’s best homefield advantage, can now lose to Albany on Homecoming and it’s not even big news.

W&M 34 – Elon 13: Poor Elon. The Tribe made the trip down south and did what it had to do. With the Ticks loss (see below), the final weekend clash with Richmond is set up to be the defacto CAA Championship now.

Villanova 24 – URI 3: Perhaps folks shouldn’t be sleeping on Nova so much. Sure, John Robertson is out. But the defense is playing very well and the Cats are a sneaky 4-2 in league play. They’ve got 5 wins with 2 games remaining, and could definitely sneak into the 24 team playoff field if they win out.

Stony Brook 14 – Howard 9: Meh. Stony Brook managed to escape with a late season non-conference win. Moving on.

New Hampshire 30 – Richmond 25: This was the big one. New Hampshire’s defense picked off Tick QB Kyle Lauletta 4 times. Which was great, because the Wildcats let Jacobi Green run all over the place to the tune of 154 yards. The Ticks were in control of the CAA, but now will probably need to beat William & Mary in two weeks if they hope to win the league.

Towson 10 – Maine 7: Another matchup of CAA teams that apparently hate scoring and excitement. A nice road win for the Tigers regardless. Towson has won 4 straight and is currently 6-3, leaving them very much in the mix for a playoff bid. We didn’t see that coming.