JMU Sports Blog

The JMU Dukes women’s hoops team fell to #3 Texas A&M 85-69 in a game that was much closer and more competitive than the final score would indicate.  We could complain forever about the officiating in this game (and how much we’d rather watch players play than refs act the fool), but really we should begin by paying tribute to an incredible team that made us all proud to be Dukes and represented all the great things about JMU. And of course give a huge shout-out to the Pep Band, that sounded amazing on the four-letter and got lots of love from TAMU fans all night.

Thanks for five memorable years!

So thanks ladies and thanks Kenny Brooks for a fantastic season! Round of 32 after the ninth straight year of 24+ wins is nothing at all to hang your head about! In particular, a huge thanks to the Valley’s own and JMU seniors Nikki Newman and Kirby Burkholder for your outstanding careers. Also, in looking ahead, the cupboard is far from bare, in fact it’s bursting with talent and JMU should be in great shape moving forward.  Jaz Gwathmey really was the revelation of the postseason after being an unheralded offensive player all year.  Between, her, Giggetts, Mickens, and Hall, there will be no shortage of talent and excitement back in the ‘Burg next year.

From a game standpoint, the ladies actually played pretty darn well tonight.  Shot well in the first half and played relatively smart considering the “overzealous” zebras. But TAMU just shot lights out, including bank threes and ridiculous off-balance shots and proved too big for the Dukes once the fouls mounted up on our post players.  The real shame in the insanity of the officiating (which appeared to treat women the way the International Olympic Committee does) was that this was such a high-quality women’s game when the teams were allowed to play the game.  Full credit to the Aggies though, who played great and whose fans seemed legitimately kindhearted and seemed to be in love with JMU’s team, fans, and especially the band. The tweets from Aggie fans thrilled and blown away with the PepBand’s way-too-risky-for-Texas repertoire were fun all night.

As always, you can get much better in depth coverage from a much more knowledgeable source over at the JMU Women’s Basketball Fan Blog once he returns home from College Station.

Now we’re signing off for the winter season.  We’d root fer Softball this spring, but the truth is we’d rather have a conference move announcement between now and the Coaches Caravan April 23. Not that we’re holding our breath or much hope at this point.

The 11th seeded JMU Women’s team beat 6th seeded Gonzaga 72-63 tonight to earn the program’s first win in the Big Dance since 1991.  Needless to say, we couldn’t be happier for a program that has been a consistent winner and one of the best representations of everything we all love about JMU since former Dukes men’s star Kenny Brooks took over. The team and its dedicated supporters (including of course the Pep Band) have developed a bit of an indie/hipster/cult cache the last half-decade or so with their consistent challenging of big programs, epic battles between the Dawn Evans-led JMU squads and the DelleDonne-led Delaware squads, and of course a couple of deep runs in the WNIT. In case you haven’t been in on this, Start Wearing Purple didn’t start in football or men’s hoops, but rather during the WNIT run a few years back. But we’re guessing those in the know both inside and outside the program won’t mind needing to find a bunch more seats on the bandwagon as they get ready for Tuesday’s matchup with #3 seed (and hosting team) Texas A&M. We also loved seeing all the Twitter shoutouts to the program from former Dukes greats all over the place including but not limited to Arthur Moats, Akeem Jordan, Dawn Evans, Tamera Young, Pierre Curtis, Steve Buckhantz, and Devon Moore.

On the game, here’s the story through our eyes (though you can certainly find a much more knowledgeable account over at the JMU WBB Fan Blog).  The Dukes played a solid, smart first half in which they overcome a slow shooting start from CAA POY Kirby Burkholder to lead by three at the half.  Then they played basically 10-14 minutes of some of their worst, most inconsistent, sloppy ball of the season to start the second half. They seemed to turn the ball over every other possession and at one point were in a 3-28 shooting slump.  Then, out of nowhere, they just turned back into the dominant team we’ve seen all season! Part of it was definitely Coach Brooks’ decision to risk putting some foul-laden players back in the game a little earlier than he would’ve liked.  At the time, the Dukes were really struggling with Gonzaga’s pressure and he just couldn’t wait.  The gamble paid off as JMU went on a huge run to turn a small deficit into a relatively comfortable final minute.

Baller.

Burkholder – what can we even say?! If you have a kid and you want them to understand how to be a truly great player, have them watch this game.  Even conference players of the year have terrible shooting nights occasionally (4-17 probably qualifies). But you know what they do, or at least what Kirby did?  She found every other way imaginable to take over a basketball game even without knocking down shots. Outside shot not falling? Get to the line and knock ’em down (17-18). Forget that you’re just a guard and hit the boards (18(!) rebounds). Get steals in crunchtime, set up teammates for easy buckets, and smile the whole time! Just a virtuoso performance.

Lastly, we’d like to point out the truly fantastic work from the ESPN announcing team of Carter Blackburn (@CarterBlackburn) and Rosalyn Gold-Onwude (@ROSGO21). After so much ratchet CAA coverage, it was incredibly refreshing to have a team that had clearly taken the job seriously, embedded themselves with both teams for a couple days, and seemed to truly enjoy the opportunity to cover the game.  Shoutouts to past greats from both programs (including Tamera Young and Dawn Evans from JMU), explanations of “Nicki said No!” and “You. Got. Kirby’d!,” and a reference to the closeness of the team and the pep band.  Sure hope we get that team again Tuesday. Let’s Go Dukes!

Courtesy of Deadspin, today we learned about a funny story from last weekend’s ACC Championship game. A current JMU sophomore managed to sneak down onto the floor, bluff his way into the UVa huddle, and join in the post game festivities. And as the story explains, it was all pretty simple really. He just threw on a coat and cheap tie he bought prior to the game, walked down onto the court and acted like he belonged. While many of you will question why a JMU sophomore considers himself a fan of UVa athletics, we’re just going to let that go. What really caught our attention was the fact that simply throwing on a cheap orange necktie from Walmart made the kid a dead ringer for a UVa student.

After winning the CAA regular season and tournament in dominating fashion, the Dukes received their marching orders for the Big Dance Monday night and their was good and bad news to be had. JMU will take on Gonzaga at 5:30 p.m. Sunday.  You can watch the game on ESPN as part of their “Whip-Around” coverage or in full on WatchESPN.

The Good

CAA Player of the Year Kirby Burkholder

Hard to believe, but getting an 11 seed instead of the projected 8 or 9 seed they expected can be viewed very positively. As any amateur bracketologist knows, the winner of 8/9 matchups advances to play the top seed in the second round. In the men’s game that’s not always terrible (see last year’s Wichita St. team), but in the women’s game, where there is almost always enormous disparity between the 1 seeds and basically everyone else, that fate can be rough on teams who had good enough seasons to warrant an 8 or a 9 seed. On the other hand, the winner of the 6/11 matchup the Dukes find themselves in against Gonzaga advances to take on a much more beatable #3 seed in Texas A&M and they would avoid a top seed all the way till a potential regional final.  For a comparison, GMU was an 11 seed when their men’s team made it’s storied run and didn’t have to face a top seed (in their case UConn) until they made the Elite Eight. Not to say it’s easy, but an 11 seed is certainly nothing to be disappointed about.

Also in the good category, we’re happy to hear that both the Cheerleaders and the Pep Band will be joining the Dukes on the road!

The Bad

College Station, Texas could not have been at the top of either JMU or Gonzaga’s expected destination lists. The women’s tourney, while creating competitive disadvantages by playing games at on-campus sites of tournament teams in the interest of selling more tickets, usually does a somewhat better job of sending non-hosting schools to sites reasonably close to home. Not so for the Dukes this year as they’ll head to the Texas A&M pod, though it’s certainly no easier trip for the Bulldogs from Spokane, Washington. Obviously either team will be up against when they take on the Aggies in the second round, but that would’ve been the case anywhere for the Dukes.

The Ugly

Gonzaga spent 80% of the year atop ESPN’s Mid-Major Women’s Poll and JMU spent equally as much time in the top three of that same poll. To say this is a classless move by the NCAA to force two tough mid-majors to knock each other out in the interest of keeping the better-known schools alive would be an understatement. This is first degree felony mid-on-mid crime. We’ll bet Gonzaga supporters don’t feel any better about it than we do. That said, the teams seem to be mirror images of each other on the floor, averaging within a point of each other in points scored and points allowed, so competitively it should be equivalent to an 8/9 game and the Dukes certainly have to fancy their chances.

Time for Kenny Brooks and the women to earn that signature NCAA win and maybe even a magical ride to the second weekend of beyond. As Kirby Burkholder said after the CAA final, “We goin’ at least a couple rounds!”

When you’re as dominant in your conference as the JMU Women were this year, it’s not surprising you do well at the end of season awards banquet.  But the sheer volume for the Dukes this year is still fantastic.

CAA Player of the Year Kirby Burkholder

Kirby Burkholder takes down the CAA Player of the Year. Nikki Newman makes 3rd Team CAA AND comes home with CAA Defensive Player of the Year, which is basically a lifetime achievement award for all her years terrorizing the post in the league. And of course Coach (and growing legend) Kenny Brooks won the CAA’s Coach of the Year Award.

Oh, you thought that was all?  Not even close. Junior Toia Giggetts and Sophomore Precious Hall both made the CAA’s second team (and more knowledgeable observers of these things than us seem to think Hall was robbed by her underclassman status of being on the first team).  And as if to mark their dominance and make sure no one was left out in the Dukes’ starting five, sophomore Jazmon Gwathmey joined Newman on the All-Defensive team. And last, and maybe most important given the shine it adds to the previously mentioned hardware, both Burkholder and Newman were named to the All-Academic Team.

Needless to say, these women and their coach seem to consistently make us all proud to be Dukes. Now it’s on to the CAA Tourney, starting Friday at noon in Upper Marlboro, Maryland. Again, the Dukes have a shot at an at-large, but it sure would make everyone associated with this proud program breathe a lot easier to take care of business and bring home the CAA title!  Go Dukes!

…which is to say, goes out without much of a fight.  Truthfully, the overall record was a little worse overall than we would’ve hoped and we had hoped to be as high as a CAA 4 seed at season’s end, but honestly this wasn’t exactly unexpected and not a whole lot worse than we had hoped before the season.  Especially before we even knew Andre Nation would miss over half the season. Team had one 6th year senior who struggled to play up to his own lofty history and no other upperclassmen.  Only two real takeaways from this season headed into the offseason:

1) JMU needs to hope it holds on to the trifecta of Curry/Cooke/Nation.  These kids could be special the next two seasons and you certainly hope they don’t get bad advice to transfer. Not to say it would be wrong individually as we have zippy clue what’s best for each young player, but we just hope they realize what an opportunity they have if they stay together.

2) Those calling for Brady’s head need to pipe down. How quickly do we forget breaking a two-decade drought? And how dismissive are we of hideous JMU athletic administration (imagine that?) leaving Brady with a recruiting black hole this year thanks to his lame-duck status last year and a crummy, crappy schedule with only 10 games this year.  Another class, UR/UVA/etc. at the Convo, and C/C/N all back for their junior season certainly could make Coach Brady look a lot better a year from now.  All three of the big guns improved their scoring averages and Cooke and Curry (the non-suspended guys) both made huge strides assuming leadership roles over last season. Also enjoyed the freshmen.  Most guys are merely rotational, but Dalembert seems capable of a big leap, and despite the naysayers, Kent has the potential to be really, really good.  He’s 18 going on 16 and in case you didn’t notice, appeared to grow about four inches DURING the season while putting on no weight or muscle. Someone needs to chain him and Bessick to a strength and conditioning coach this summer and we may all be pleasantly surprised with what we see come Midnight Madness.

Next, a few notes on Baltimore:

1) Baltimore for the CAA tourney will never be Richmond, especially from a JMU standpoint. Virginia schools (the only dummies left without a chair) will never again enjoy the alumni-rich, easy living of the capital city, but Baltimore was pretty cool and we don’t understand why everyone was so down.  The arena was old as dirt, but certainly no worse than the Mausoleum.  Plus it had bars on either end of the court from which you were actually IN the arena, unlike that basement nonsense where the southern baptists tried to hide the booze in Richmond.  Plus there were bars and restaurants all around, Camden Yards next door, and the Harbor right there.  That said, hope JMU never plays there again.

PAINFUL

2) Great fun meeting our fellow dorks of the CAA and former CAA blog world! BRUTAL, BRUTAL ending tonight for two great Tribe fans @batogato and @gheorghetheblog. Seriously, if you can make it to a conference tourney and you don’t mind actually meeting other people, it’s a great atmosphere and a chance to realize you’re not alone in your mid-major, non-BCS fanaticism. Just hope we get to roll to Cleveland to do so at the Q with a whole new crew next year!