The Sports Network’s 2013 Preseason All America team has been released and JMU’s Stephon Robertson and Dean Marlowe were selected. Robertson, a redshirt senior linebacker, earned a first team selection. Marlowe, a junior safety, made the second team. They were among a total of 14 CAA players who were honored.
Robertson is a past CAA Rookie of the Year, two-time All CAA first team selection, and the reigning CAA Defensive Player of the Year. He’s been a mainstay at linebacker for the Dukes and one of the keys to the JMU defense for years. Last season he led the team with 101 tackles. Don’t be surprised if he ends up on the short list for the Buck Buchanan award.
Marlowe joined Robertson on the All CAA first team last year after making the third team as a freshman. He was the only sophomore on last year’s first team, following a season in which he had 82 tackles on the year including 44 solos, 5.0 for loss, seven passes defended, team-high tying three interceptions, one forced fumble and one safety.
In Sunday’s Virginia-Pilot, Harry Minium gives readers the inside scoop on how ODU pulled off a move to CUSA. It’s an outstanding piece of reporting and a very interesting read. Take the time to digest it if you haven’t done so already. Unless of course you’re one of the folks who think JMU’s administration has already charted a course for disaster. Then don’t read it. Seriously. It will make you very, very angry. Just go back to stocking up on canned goods and Justin Rascati highlight videos while constructing your end of the CAA world bunker. The rest of you should definitely check it out though. read more…
As reported by Black Mountain News, a recent NCAA study highlights the struggles many FCS teams have had after transitioning to FBS. The study tracked 19 schools that made the move up between 1978 and 2010. The main takeaway from it seems to be that it’s harder to win in FBS. Well, duh. Of course it’s more difficult to win when playing at a higher level.
Below are a couple of the key findings of the study, along with my thoughts on each. read more…
JMU announced that Corey Davis and Xavier Crocker have been dismissed from the football team for a violation of team rules. No further details were provided by the athletic department, but the announcement comes on the heels of DNR report (behind paywall) that the two former players were present at an off-campus shooting over the weekend. This is the second time that Davis has been punished for a violation of team rules.
As we work our way through the summer offseason, it’s clear that us fanatics that care enough to discuss JMU sports this time of year still really only have one topic on our minds: the conference/FBS v. FCS issue. Usually this time of year we’re all excited about the prospect of the upcoming season and how the Dukes are gonna look, but this year a perfect storm of events seems to have that on the far backburner. Even with Stephon Robertson clearly on the early radar for the Buck Buchanon award, the toxic combination of mediocre seasons piling up since ’08, a relatively unpopular choice for an offensive coordinator position that was in need of more of a shot in the arm, a continued lack of communication from H’burg about JMU’s intentions, and most of all, the fact that many of the big-name FCS teams still appearing in preseason polls aren’t even playoff-eligible because they’re already transitioning to FBS, this summer is shaping up to be excruciatingly quiet and uninteresting. Given the absolute lack of expectation for actually scoring points this year, maybe that’s for the best. Honestly, since ’04, the bar has never been lower coming into the season, but in many ways the FCS bar is just getting more and more meaningless. Once again, we are 100% supporters of the university and two of the proudest alums we know. We’ve loved the last decade and are already wistful for the “old CAA.” And we’ll do our best to find a way to support whatever decision JMU makes in the long-run in a manner commensurate with that decision, but in case you’re wondering why we’ve moved so squarely into the pro-FBS crowd throughout the last year despite the obvious, and significant, risks, this take from the four-letter last weekpretty well sums it up.
Hopefully team performance won't cause the best LB in FCS to get overlooked this year.
The killer is right there near the end: “When I looked at what was going on, my concern became: Eventually, if the big split happens, are we now at the third level as opposed to the second level?”
Despite that brief flurry of hope after the JB conversation at the Nova Coaches Caravan, we’re very close to giving up hope for an announcement of any GOOD news (i.e. non-CAA, non-monitoring) this calendar year. Like the expectations on the field in Bridgeforth, might as well lower our expectations and realize the best we can hope for is to be pleasantly surprised.
Nick Balenger is all set to attend JMU this fall as a member of the Class of 2017. He was a star pitcher for Lake Braddock High School before he was paralyzed from the waist down in an accident last summer. Prior to the accident, Nick was like any other normal kid. Any normal kid who throws 86 mile per hour fast balls for a state champion baseball team that is. After the accident Nick’s goals changed from wanting to help his team defend its Virginia AAA State title, to something much simpler. His new goal was “be on stage walking across and going down the steps” at his graduation. Yesterday Nick accomplished that goal.
With his family, friends, and classmates watching, Nick walked 50 feet across the stage to receive his diploma. You can watch the video here. It was a shock to everyone in the crowd who was used to seeing Nick move around using a wheelchair and had only seen him stand a few times. He received a well deserved standing ovation. Fortunately for Nick, his spinal cord wasn’t completely severed and with lots of hard work, doctors say he could have a 95% recovery. Way to go Nick. I think I speak for Dukes everywhere when I say congrats and welcome to the JMU family.
h/t @JMUswag for the link
Leaks of all sorts have been big news recently. And while this tweet from the JMU Pep Band, might not have caused the same sort of social media frenzy that the Yeezus news did, it definitely had us grinning from ear to ear. Because it’s finally happening. The MRDs are working on an arrangement of Start Wearing Purple for the upcoming football season. That is all.
Most of you won’t be reading this till Monday morning, but Happy Father’s Day to all to whom that applies. Rob’s been busy being feted by his kids today and truthfully, there just ain’t much on the JMU calendar right now. We’ll come up with something fun for the next few weeks till we can further thrash about after the mythical July 1st deadline for collecting NCAA payouts and buyouts from the CAA that may or may not be something JMU is waiting on before saying a damned thing about their plans.
But in the meantime, here’s the worst Father’s Day gift ever! Smells like 21-16.
Future Dukes wishing their dads a happy father's day!
This is our 640th post here at JMUSB and I’m pretty confident it’s the first time we’ve ever mentioned the men’s club water polo squad. It’s the summer though, and Rob and I are split as usual on whether or not the sky is falling and JMU has their eyes facing forward (as opposed to say, facing the inside of their lower intestine) when it comes to realignment, so we’re going a different direction this Friday morning. Plus, as we mentioned back when Lawless came out, author, alum, and friend of JMUSB Matt Bondurant is rapidly moving up the list of notable Dukes.
Swimming in the North Atlantic? Shrinkage!
This month he has reported on, and penned, a cool feature story for Outside magazine on marathon ocean swimming and the “interesting” folks that love the little-publicized sport (as keen observers of our shared @JMUsportsblog account may have noticed, I’m a very amateur participant in a similarly niche and kook-filled sport of endurance adventure racing so I kind of love the celebration of these nuts!). Even better, Bondurant himself is an amateur athlete in the sport and even shouts out in the article that his swimming background included playing water polo at JMU! Speaking of, if anyone knows the current status of the club, assuming there still is one, feel free to update us on its goings-on in the comments and we’ll try not to let another 640 posts come before we circle back. Beyond the article, Bondurant’s third novel The Night Swimmer is set in a fictional recreation of the area in which the article takes place – County Cork, Ireland – and is just a cool read (though it was really tough to top the Virginia-heavy Wettest County in the World, on which Lawless was based).
Finally, while desperately trying to avoid editorializing, I should share for the non-Twitter audience that CUSA officially announced this week that they have shelved all talk of expansion “for the foreseeable future” and the Sun Belt apparently has done the same. So unless a lifeline is thrown from the long-silent MAC, JMU is back is back in the CAA with “peers” like Elon and Albany and playing FCS football “for the foreseeable future” while ODU fans can play with Taylor Heinicke in a bowl game on NCAA ’13. Knew I’d never make it – sorry Rob.
There are certain things in our little CAA sports internet world that give us great joy. One of those things is the way some folks (like us) tweak Richmond fans by insisting that the Spiders are on the way to Division III. It inevitably sets Spider fans off attempting to refute the allegations with all sorts of evidence and logic. Unfortunately for them, evidence and logic are of little use when attempting to disprove something that is 100% fabricated. Until today it is when our new favorite Richmond faculty member, Mr. Rick Mayes, emailed his fellow faculty members to inform them that “after three years of watching and studying sports up close, I believe UR’s long-term academic interests lie with D3-level sports and football being phased out over time.” Well there you go.
