Today was a good day for JMU softball. In fact it, you could say it was a Megan Good day. (ed. note: please pretend you didn’t read that sentence and we’ll pretend we never wrote it.) The team won, because that’s what it does. This particularly victory was especially sweet because it came as a result of sophomore pitcher Megan Good’s perfect game though. That’s right. For the second straight season a JMU softball pitcher has tossed a perfect game. Last year it was Jailyn Ford’s turn. Today, Megan Good had the honors, striking out five and not allowing a single base runner in the five inning 8-0 win over Drexel.
The win was the 7th ranked Dukes’ 37th on the season, agains only 3 losses. Amazingly enough, the Dukes have stormed to that record despite playing only 6 of their 40 games in the friendly confines of JMU’s Veterans Memorial Park. Going anywhere and everywhere to take on, and beat, all foes is how you crash the Top 10 party as a mid-major ladies and gentlemen.
The Dukes now enter the stretch run of the regular season with 6 of their 8 remaining games at home. Then it’s onto the CAA tourney, before hopefully hosting a few more games in the NCAAs. With arms like those of Megan Good and Jailyn Ford in the circle, this team could go a long way.
So while we all hold onto hope that Vad Lee and/or Dom Richards will be drafted in the NFL soon, there were a few other Dukes drafted today in other sports. First, Jazmon Gwathmey was picked 14th overall in the WNBA draft, as the second pick of the second round by the traditional powerhouse San Antonio SilverStars. For those that followed the golden age of Kenny Brooks (the greatest Duke ever who just reminded us that JMU has given up on life by not offering COA or figuring a way out of the CAA), we know this honor for Jaz was truly earned and in no way surprising.
However, what we didn’t know was that there’s a new 2016 National Fastpitch College Draft. Yup, that’s a pro softball league that’s actually been around a while and we were excited to see Senior Pitcher Jailyn Ford went third overall in round one to the Akron Racers while Senior offensive star Erica Field went to the USSSA Pride (Kissimmee, FL). This is pretty cool even if we have no idea how this is possibly a full-time job. But it seems like 5-6k for a 3 month season plus housing. Tempting to keep playing right out of school but since you’re required to live in the team area, this could certainly have an impact on any “real-job” possibilities. But in any case, we’re still hoping these two active legends can lead the 7th (that’s 7th nationally people) ranked Dukes to greater glory while they’re still wearing the purple and gold this spring!
The ladies of JMU Softball are absolutely crushing it right now. They’ve jumped out to a 34-3 overall record and a perfect 9-0 record in CAA play. As a result, they’ve been holding steady at #7 in the polls lately. If things keep up, we’ll have something we don’t typically see in JMU sports, a true national contender.
Much of the Dukes’ success is due to a pair of powerful arms. Megan Good and Jailyn Ford. The pitching duo has provided JMU with the exact sort of one-two punch that can carry a team all the way to a national title. They’ve been absolutely dominant, consistently shutting down the oppositions’ hitters game after game. They also get it done at the plate. Ford in particular, has been a best. She’s batting .304 and has knocked 8 homers. She also slugging .674 and has stolen 11 bases for good measure. As a result, she’s a finalist for the Senior CLASS Award. The award recognizes the top senior NCAA athletes in the nation, not only for their accomplishments on the field, but also in the classroom and the community. There is a fan vote that counts for 1/3 of the award. Fortunately for Jailyn, if there is one thing JMU fans can do well, it’s stuff an online ballot box. So vote early and vote often (seriously, you can vote every day) for Jailyn and help her win this great award.
Sean O’Regan was officially hired as the newest JMU Women’s Basketball Head Coach yesterday. The school broke the news to the public via a clever little video that is definitely worth a look. It was nothing compared to the way the team found out though.
In the video above, Jeff Bourne informs a group of players that a new coach has been hired and then invites him in. Seeing the team ladies react with absolute joy once O’Regan enters the room shows you how much they love playing for him. He was Kenny Brooks’ right hand man and is the perfect person to take over the program.
Louis Rowe Was formally introduced as JMU’s newest head coach at a press conference yesterday. The highlight of the event was Rowe’s announcement of his assistant coaches. We already knew that Mike Deane, who was a key part of Matt Brady’s staff, was staying on. Yesterday we learned that Byron Taylor and David Kontaxis would be joining Deane as assistant coaches. Additionally, Larry Davis will assume the role of Director of Basketball Operations.
Byron Taylor spent the past 7 years at the University of North Florida (UNF), as a member of head coach Matthew Driscoll’s coaching staff. He helped lead the team to 45 wins over the past two season. UNF also won the Atlantic Sun and advanced to its first NCAA tournament in 2014. Taylor played ball at Florida A&M, where he earned MEAC All Academic honors.
David Kontaxis comes to JMU from the AAU ranks. He’s been involved with coaching AAU teams in DC and the Virginia/North Carolina region. Prior to getting involved in the AAU ranks, he was the Director of Basketball Operations at William & Mary. Before William & Mary, he was an assistant and head coach at Central High School in Capital Heights, Maryland. His experience could be invaluable for the Dukes in terms of leveraging recruiting relationships in the DMV and Mid-Atlantic.
Larry Davis will round out the JMU basketball staff, assuming the role of Director of Basketball Operations. He comes to JMU after serving as an assistant at Newberry College. Before jumping to the college ranks, he coached high school basketball in South Carolina, leading his team to a state championship. He had the most impressive playing career of any of the new coaches, playing for UNC and eventually transferring to South Carolina. At UNC, he was a member of Dean Smith’s 1993 National Championship squad. After transferring back home to his native South Carolina, he lead the Gamecocks to their first SEC Championship and earned All SEC and All America honors.
You might not like Cost of Attendance (COA) subsidies. They might not align with your view of amateurism. But COA is the new full athletic scholarship. Schools that want to compete athletically, will pay them.
Fin.
Legendary Dukes Forward Louis (Lou) Rowe was hired as the 10th Head Coach of JMU Men’s Basketball today. An introductory press conference (not that many old-school fans will need the introduction) will be held Tuesday afternoon at the Fire Hazard Convo. But that wasn’t the only JMU news today. Lost amidst the university’s understandable hype-blitz for the new coach was the fact JMU is really starting to show it’s true colors lately regarding its commitment to Athletics. And those colors are poo-brown, vomit-green, and bile-yellow (with maybe even a little flaming-dumpster-fire-orange mixed in for good measure).
Since there is both good and bad news to cover related to this hire and Athletics as a whole, we’re going to do this football-postgame style with a Good, Bad, and Ugly.
The Good
First and foremost, we LOVE Coach Rowe as a player and all-around Duke. He was one of the all-time greats of our era and has stayed in the game his entire career. He’s also a 2x JMU Assistant Coach, including most recently under Matt Brady where he proved himself a fantastic mentor of young men and a stellar recruiter. Remember that Nation/Cooke/Curry/Bessick class? Coach Rowe had a huge hand in that talented group. And with nine scholarships coming open a year from now, recruiting ability (which is largely the ability to connect with, and relate to, young athletes in addition of course to knowing how to “play the game”) is not a terrible thing for Director of Athletics Jeff Bourne to focus on with this hire. But make no mistake, giving the keys to Coach Rowe is a complete and total leap of faith as he joins the team after non-descript stints at most recently Bowling Green (OH) and before that Rider and FIU (household names of course). We love Coach Rowe too much as a Duke to even whisper the alum-turned-head-coach-who-shall-not-be-named, but we worry we’ve seen this movie before. We’ll be rootin’ but it’s a reach at best.
The Bad
Well if you’re interested, it’s probably time to sit down, grab another cup of coffee, and settle in cause we’re gonna be here a while. Before we circle back to issues further highlighted by the Rowe hire, you absolutely must stop and read the excellent blog LadySwish’s Q&A with arguably JMU’s most successful coach in any sport in its history, departing Women’s Head Coach Kenny Brooks (who also happens to be a fabulous former Dukes player). Because we’ve got to vent about big-picture items before contextualizing our feelings on the Rowe hire (which again, we’re generally ok with) and we’re starting with some nuggets from that piece..
So let’s begin with the following quote from Coach Brooks, an unassailable Duke in every respect: “Madison not offering cost of attendance. That was a tremendous red flag for me. Without cost of attendance in the next few years, there’s no way you’re going to get the Jazmon Gwathmeys or the Precious Halls or the Angela Mickens’ of the world to be able to come to a place like that because it’s such an enticing factor. One of the first things recruits are asking is, ‘Do you offer that cost-of-attendance thing?’ Here in the next few years, there’s going to be a divide between the haves and have nots.”
Really kind of speaks for itself, doesn’t it? And in case you’ve forgotten, JMU’s current President Alger not only signed onto, but in fact authored, the anti-COA letter co-signed by a grand total of nine universities nationwide (including such luminaries as VMI!). So yeah, there’s that. SERIOUSLY PEOPLE THIS IS THE MAJOR ISSUE FOR JMU ATHLETICS THIS DECADE – YES WE ADMIT EVEN BIGGER THAN FBS – AND IT’S TIME TO START PAYING ATTENTION AND MAKING OUR VOICES HEARD HERE. But even worse is when you spend 43M a year on Athletics and then get cheap on the last 200-500k max it would take you to fund the Cost of Attendance stipends that will allow you to stay competitive. Just makes no sense. Of course, neither does calling your 20k-raise offer to a guy who just told you a number that dwarfs yours “a significant counter” when you could’ve just said “thank you very much for your incredible contributions and best of luck in your new position” while moving on. Seriously, you were paying in the 200k range, one of your all-time favorite sons and a true representative of all that’s best about JMU tells you he got an offer from an ACC school in excess of 500k/yr and you thought “well let’s offer him 20k more with no COA or more money for assistants, that’ll probably do the trick”?!?!
Next, let’s move on to Coach Brooks dropping knowledge (or at least implying knowledge) on where the CAA stands in the current college athletics pecking order: “Last summer I sat in the coaches meetings in the CAA and I got a shock. Anucha Browne came to speak about scheduling and how to schedule up and things of that nature and she pulled up our resume and said, ‘I was hoping and praying you guys were going to win because you probably would not have gotten to the NCAA tournament with a record of 29-3.’ She said, ‘You guys didn’t beat any Top 25 teams.’ We did. We beat UCLA, but when we beat them, we knocked them out of the Top 25. When she said that, I lost a lot of hope in what the NCAA considers mid majors.”
Again, kind of speaks for itself doesn’t it? And it’s saying that as the Group of Five (G5) non power-five (P5) FBS conferences keep growing and consolidating power at the mid-major level and a couple of outlying hoops-only powers (Big East and A-10) keep producing high-quality products on the court, everyone else is back to low-major status. And that so clearly includes the Crumbling Athletic Association despite the hollow reassurances of the former commissioner that “we’re almost back.” No, we’re not almost back. When you replace VCU, GMU, ODU, and UMass with Elon, College of Charleston, and Albany you don’t come back.
And finally, what in the name of a logger’s taint did we hire a search firm – like we paid them actual legal tender – to conduct a “national” search for only to hire a guy who played here, was a coach here, and just four years ago was sitting on our bench and our payroll?! You needed ole’ Eddie Fogler to procure a guy who should’ve been at the top of every single one of JMU’s top administrators’ “if the current Coach has a scandal and we have to have a respectable alum to take us through the ‘Interim’ period” list? JMU is like the Jelly of the Month Club to these search firms (i.e. The gift that keeps on giving the whole year round). And it also seems clear that Carr’s pro-ambition, pro-FBS, pro-big move (you know, Withers! Who in hindsight despite all our recent issues was likely sold the same bullshit bill of goods that Coach Brooks was in re: JMU Athletics’ ambitions) was no longer needed and ole’ Coach Fogler was told “find us someone cheap, or that loves JMU so much they won’t notice.” And how do we reach this conclusion? Well, Tony Bennett’s top assistant at UVA, Ron Sanchez, was seemingly the leading candidate throughout the process. He’s the type of up-and-coming dream candidate any in-state rival would have on their list. But if you think he was doing anything but scooting back over Afton Mountain in a hurry after hearing “no COA, CAA4lyfe, and here’s a lowball offer” then you’re delusional. And even scarier, if JMU thought he really might take the job when he heard that, than it’s JMU that’s delusional. A guy like that is not coming to a place that has now quite clearly planted it’s flag in the camp of deemphasizing the importance of Athletics even if they don’t have the cajones to say so outloud. Unfortunately, as always, actions speak louder than words.
The Ugly
What, you thought we forgot The Ugly? We sorta did actually. But here’s a legit story about ODU’s chances for an AAC call-up so you don’t feel cheated.
Hearing James Madison will be Ron Sanchez from uva or Louis Rowe from bowling green
— Coaching Changes (@CoachingChanges) March 29, 2016
Your guess is as good as ours as to the accuracy of this report, but it seems reasonable. Rowe is a former JMU player (and a great one at that) who’s had multiple stints as an assistant coach for the Dukes. He was one of Matt Brady’s assistants from 2010-2012. He also was an assistant under Dean Keener for the 2007-2008 season. After JMU, Rowe was an assistant at both Rider and Florida International University, prior to assuming his current role as a member of the Bowling Green coaching staff. He played for 2 years under Lefty Driesell after transferring to JMU from Florida. He was part of the CAA Championship squad in 1994 and followed it up by averaging 21.7 points per game as a senior.
Ron Sanchez is currently Associate Head Coach at Virginia. He’s been a member of Tony Bennett’s staff for seven years. He also served as one of Bennett’s assistants at Washington State prior to making the move to Charlottesville with him. As Bennett’s top assistant, he’s definitely got some credibility. Sunday’s second half notwithstanding, Bennett has a well earned reputation for coaching poised and mature teams. Sanchez has been with him for a decade and has tremendous experience helping take teams on deep NCAA tourney runs. He played basketball at SUNY-Oneonta, where he was the conference player of the year. The real question is whether Sanchez wants to make the leap to be a head coach at a school like JMU or stick around and be a top assistant on a national contender.
Two intriguing candidates. One with ties to the school and one with ties to a top tier coach. What say you?
Update: He’s gone.
News broke over the weekend that Kenny Brooks had interviewed for Virginia Tech’s vacant women’s basketball head coaching position. It’s not a real surprise that the Hokies would be interested in Brooks. His Dukes are coming off their third straight NCAA tournament appearance and he’s the program’s all time winningest coach. He’s proven that he can recruit the region and has done very well with the resources at his disposal. He could be quite successful at a P5 program that was willing to give him even more.
Virginia Tech Athletic Director Whit Babcock is undoubtedly well aware of Brook’s accomplishments. Babcock is a JMU alum and Harrisonburg native.
Brooks is very well compensated, by CAA standards. He recently signed a 2-year contract extension, with no raise however. JMU pays him $225K a year. There is no buyout clause in the contract. Virginia Tech’s former head coach, Dennis Wolf, had a base salary of $233K plus a $133K retention bonus prior to be fired. Assuming Brooks could negotiate a similar sort of contract, it would be a nice step up.
For his part, Jeff Bourne almost sounded resolved to the fact that Brooks would likely leave. He told the DNR’s Nick Sunderland “We’re willing to obviously make an offer on our side that we think is attractive. But we are also fully cognizant that Virginia Tech is an ACC school and with their resources and package that they’ve put together, there’s clearly a difference between what a CAA school can do and what an ACC school can.” Sort of a weird way to play your hand JB.
We should hear something soon. JMU now faces the very real possibility of needing to replace both its basketball coaches this offseason. Considering Brooks is on the men’s coaching search committee that might be a tall order.
Thank goodness we have a coaching search and hire to break down this spring!
So as we learned back in the 2009-10 school year when we started this project, two old men (that’s us) who live 2 and 3 hours from campus respectively simply aren’t capable of covering all of the spring sports in any way that isn’t mere regurgitation of the official JMUSports coverage. We get excited when teams like Softball or Women’s Golf have great seasons. And we’re certainly gaining hope that the Good/Ford Express may indeed be headed for an historic run that will sustain us well past May graduation this year. But we’ve also spent huge portions of the last five spring seasons discussing, arguing over, and generally ranting about, potential conference realignment news. But with our recent capitulation to our #CAAlyfesentence, we’ve got even less ideas what you all want to hear about as we head towards the end of the 15-16 year, much less throughout the truly silly summer season. We’ll obviously have some Football Spring Game coverage (hopefully with a little input from our redshirt/freshman guru Mike Evangelista) and we’ll be tracking JMUSB fave Gabby Weiss and crew on the links along with all the other teams (lax) we hope will be seriously in the hunt for some hardware, but at this point we wanted to turn to you all, our invaluable community and source of ideas, to see what you’d be interested in us trying to fight over this spring? So let us know in the comments or on Twitter/FB what you’d like us to dive into. And yes, these ideas are welcome to be non-sports, as the oldest of our readers know we used to invest significant offseason time to “Late 90’s H’burg bands” (let’s hear it for Puddleduck!), defunct Valley eateries (Luigi’s how we miss thee), and of course the late great Sanjeev and Mike’s Chevron.
