Riley Stapleton – What an incredible performance, again, when it mattered most. 10 catches for 100 yards and two TD’s. He has been nothing short of sensational when the lights have been brightest on the field in his career and his play will be missed. Here’s hoping he gets a shot to keep playing somewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
JMU Nation – We’ve come a long way. Taking over The Star as ours instead of the NDSU breastaurants. Being loud in the right places. Really starting to learn to bring it in the 60\/40 atmosphere of an NDSU Frisco game. Hell, we even have know-nothing-but-say-everything bandwagon fans who are barely connected to JMU these days yelling stupid things in the stands these days. We’ve got a few more levels to go, but we’re on our way. Plus very good job on streamers this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This senior class – Simply, thank you from the bottom of our purple hearts for the greatest 4-5 years we’ve ever experienced as Dukes fans. Patrick, Rondell, Carter, Daka, Nooch, Tutt, Maginley, Dmitri and on and on. These are names we’ll never forget and it’s been a pleasure watching you grow on and off the field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That first drive – Hell yes! That was awesome (Farley voice). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The roster – Stop complaining and worrying. Go look at the two-deep from this game and come back when you’ve added in Ukwu, all three (that we know of so far) transfers, plus Tucker-Dorsey and Currence and Douglas. Look hard at the list again (Fornadel, Amos, Davis, Ratke, Harry, Percy\/Jawon\/Latrele\/SVH, Wilson, Azanama, Greene, Adeeb, Green, etc.). Dukes need to win the opener against Delaware and 9-2 or 10-1 would be very much in the mix again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The MRD’s – We 100% applaud the decision to let these talented kids – also the very best fans we have – give a halftime performance (SWP > Get It On) that cared ONLY about what true Dukes wanted to see and hear and nothing for what the television or the NCAA or the Bison fans would ever understand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Heart – Lots of nits to pick on gameplan but we’ve got a whole podcast to worry about that tomorrow. Team fought back, gave up only 7 points in the second half, made an enormous 4th down stop to give themselves a chance, and came three yards away from tying the game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rashad – Anyone ever even notice Watson in the game except when he got wrecked trying to run the reverse again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Bad<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Special Teams – Not much to say about not being ready for the play that proved the difference in the game or the lack of a single use of Harry’s unique abilities all year. Changes need to be made here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lack of aggressiveness in game plan – Make no mistake, NDSU won this game because they caught the Dukes (somehow) with two trick plays (the fake FG and the fake reverse) and had one great player make a bunch of other broken plays. The Dukes tried nothing of the sort and still had a chance to win. Hate to see it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Failure to spy Lance or adjust – He ran 30 times. No other player ran more than 7 times and they barely threw, and didn’t throw well when they did. He was their only weapon. He’s basically Rodney Landers in the run game but we’d have liked to see more from the Dukes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Ugly<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Frisco weather – Again. How can we rig the post-2025 bidding for a Florida (FAU), NOLA (Tulane), Vegas (UNLV), or Arizona (??), or SoCal (??) location. Hell, if we want crappy weather in January, let’s just split the difference from Fargo to the ‘Burg and play it in Detroit or Columbus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n FCS Refs – Not the reason the Dukes lost (see above) but man it’s consistently awful to have a game that so many people have invested so much in marred by crews who are way over their heads for this level of speed and physicality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In-Stadium Announcer – To be fair, the in-game media and production work was not nearly as skewed toward the Bison as two years ago (weren’t doing the first down thing or at least were leaving it to fans of both teams to handle themselves), but the stadium announcer’s frequent botching of pronunciations of players’ names showed a complete lack of preparation and effort. The fact that the botching was universally related to players of color is inexcusable. If you didn’t notice, I don’t really know what to tell you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/jmusportsblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/EBDA3A3HIZC47KRU6XGVS22AUQ.jpg?resize=970%2C726\")