{"id":10080,"date":"2017-12-17T22:54:19","date_gmt":"2017-12-18T03:54:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/?p=10080"},"modified":"2017-12-17T22:54:19","modified_gmt":"2017-12-18T03:54:19","slug":"dukes-destroy-south-dakota-st-return-to-frisco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/?p=10080","title":{"rendered":"Dukes Destroy South Dakota St., Return to Frisco!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Someone’s starting to look a lot like a certain other heroic RB!<\/p><\/div>\n

So it was a big, bad Missouri Valley team. And the Dukes were banged up. And they were underdogs in the desert by kickoff. And they turned an insane FIVE first quarter turnovers into just seven points.<\/p>\n

And none of that meant a darned thing to the boys in purple! Needless to say, we are beyond thrilled that this team stepped up in an enormous way, with a big assist from a raucous Bridgeforth December crowd, and silenced all the doubters. Wait, what’s that you say? The defending champs riding a 26-game winning streak, including a true road game at the team they face next, are an early 3 point dog? Haha, well we’ve got 19 more days to worry about all that. Today we’re here to celebrate Saturday’s surreal performance with the good, bad, and ugly.<\/p>\n

The Good<\/strong><\/p>\n

10 – That’s right, there are two digits in the number of turnovers JMU caused on Saturday. When the Dukes scored only one TD off the five in the first quarter, we were nervous that would haunt them. Little did we know they were just getting warmed up! This number is obviously the thing that made this game surreal, but it was a HUGE credit to Bob Trott’s game plan.<\/p>\n

Outpost Buttons – TeeDee the Squirrel making a tiny cameo on this week’s button was outstanding and for those that collect them, seems sure to make this one a favorite.<\/p>\n

Next Man Up – No doubt I’m going to go on way too long talking about these guys on the pod tonight, but Bryce Maginley, \u00a0Justin Bethea, and Landon Word were absolutely outstanding filling in for numerous injured Dukes. Filling in for Curtis Oliver, the fifth-year senior Bethea held up beautifully in one-on-one coverage all night, including a great play on SDSU’s all-everything Tight End when the game was still competitive. Kyre Hawkins was shaken up for a while in this game and Word didn’t miss a beat. That’s another transfer getting comfortable. And oh by the way, Maginley made arguably the biggest play of the night with that massive hit that caused the fumble that set off the avalanche of turnovers and set the tone for what JMU was willing to give physically to win this ballgame. Also, his pops is also going to be a fixture of “cool” at Dukes games for the next few years!<\/p>\n

Pass Rush – In case you forgot JMU has some athletes that, when turned loose in the game plan by Bob Trott’s masterful scheming, can wreck havoc. We’ve seen the Dukes consistently play their base defense without a lot of blitzing most of this year. But they clearly decided to show SDSU QB Taryn Christion he wasn’t the only one with quicks. Carter, Ankrah, Urquhart, Robinson were fantastic and it was fairly clear early in the game that Christion was shook that he was getting run down from behind by linemen and linebackers. Brown, Moreland, and Robinson all got their own chances so the Jacks never knew where the rush was coming from. Yes, rushing so many opened lanes for the running game and an occassional slant pass, but as fans this was so so so much fun to watch the Dukes attack all night.<\/p>\n

Raven Greene – If you’re gonna break the all-time JMU record with your 14th career interception, might as well do it in style! Raven’s interception return for a long TD was the icing on the second half BFS party.<\/p>\n

Riley – The Dukes would love to get John Miller back in three weeks, but with Alls and Eldridge cranking it up lately, this offense is starting to hum the last two weeks. And oh yeah, almost overnight Riley Stapleton has gone from in\/out of the lineup to a near-unstoppable force of 6’5″ FCS beast!<\/p>\n

Jimmy ‘effin Moreland – There are many reason Jimmy is one of our all-time favorite Dukes players, and all of those reasons were on display this week. Get a PI call? No worries, just make a one-handed pick 40 yards downfield next. Get beat inside for a TD? Again, just forget it and put it behind you like all the great DB’s, then go back out there pick off two more, get a half a sack, and spend most of the night in one-on-one press man coverage against the 1st team All American WR. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Jimmy was probably the player most responsible for crushing the souls of the Bunnies this week when the realized JMU’s #2 corner was better than anybody on their team.<\/p>\n

Marcus Marshall – Not sayin’, but just sayin’, these last two weeks sure did look a hell of a lot like playoff Khalid didn’t they? And his biggest play of the night wasn’t even on offense, but rather the huge 40 yard kickoff return after SDSU had closed to 14-10 right before the half. That return set the stage for the biggest score of the night as the Dukes marched right down (thanks Riley) and punched in another TD in less than a minute.<\/p>\n

JMU’s in-stadium media\/music person – Whoever you are, that stroke of brilliance at the start of the fourth quarter was breaking out the old Alabama classic “If You’re Gonna Play in Texas” (you gotta have a fiddle in the band) was next level stuff!<\/p>\n

Students! – Again, that was incredible work by the students on attendance and involvement.<\/p>\n

The Bad<\/strong><\/p>\n

Injuries – When you only have 63 scholarships and you play 15 games two years in row, there’s simply no way to get through unscathed. But JMU has a lot of question marks we’ll all be following over the next two plus weeks.<\/p>\n

The Ugly<\/strong><\/p>\n

Frisco ticket crunch – It just sucks. No way around it. When the Frisco Stadium is smaller than Bridgeforth and you’re matching up with an equally great fanbase like NDSU, there’s just gonna be a lot of disappointed and\/or priced out fans. Yes, we wish against wishing there was some way they could move this game to SMU or the Cotton Bowl or hell, sell out the lower bowl of Jerry-World, but the NCAA cabal, as usual, doesn’t give one single shit about FCS or fans or anything else except making the most money with the least effort ever. It’s already a joke that the stadium is hot garbage compared to either BFS or the FargoDome. It’ll be awesome that it’s sold out and will be as intense as any FCS\/1-AA title game has ever been, but it sucks for fans.<\/p>\n

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