{"id":4908,"date":"2013-01-20T21:12:52","date_gmt":"2013-01-21T02:12:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/?p=4908"},"modified":"2013-01-20T23:02:09","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T04:02:09","slug":"jmu-blown-out-by-towson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/?p=4908","title":{"rendered":"JMU Blown Out By Towson"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/CuWQfMGjZF4\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>If you happened to set aside a few hours from your precious weekend to relax and take in JMU&#8217;s game against Towson, I&#8217;m sorry. I did the same thing and it was miserable. JMU didn&#8217;t even deserve to be in the same gym with Towson. The Tigers won 73-47 but it wasn&#8217;t really that close. It was a tight contest in the first half, but that was primarily due to the fact that Towson couldn&#8217;t get anything going with its star player, Jerrelle Benimon, sitting out with foul trouble. With Benimon out, the Dukes should have been able to take over the game. Instead, they let Towson go on a 10-0 run late and went into the break trailing 31-28. And that was the good half. That means that my bipolar fandom is in full swing. Some days,\u00a0I&#8217;m sure they&#8217;re good enough to get hot and make a run. Today is not one of those days.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In the second half the wheels came off for JMU. That&#8217;s not true. The Dukes were consistently awful for the entire game. They really didn&#8217;t play any worse in the second half than they did in the first half. The difference was that Towson bounced back from a poor first half of its own, to play pretty well in the final twenty minutes. And playing pretty well, but not great, was all it took to beat JMU by 26 points. For the game JMU shot a hard-to-believe 14 for 55. That&#8217;s right, JMU shot 25% from the field. Poor shooting days can be forgiven (even 14-55 days). It&#8217;s harder to forgive a team just not showing up ready to play. Yesterday, it sure seemed like JMU wasn&#8217;t ready to play. And that isn&#8217;t even too surprising at this point. We must sound like a broken record, but when JMU plays to its potential, the Dukes can beat anyone in the CAA. All to often however, the Dukes fail to match the intensity and effort of their opponent. And that&#8217;s a recipe for disaster.<\/p>\n<p>Once again, we can never be sure which JMU team will show up. The good one that plays with a ton of energy and is fun to watch? Or the one that sleepwalks through 40 minutes? Despite the up and down nature of the season, a few things are becoming clear. First of, this team really struggle shooting the basketball. Yesterday&#8217;s 25% shooting performance stunk, but wasn&#8217;t as much of an outlier as you&#8217;d hope. JMU is only shooting 36.1% this year in conference play. Somehow that&#8217;s only the second worst in the CAA, but it&#8217;s awful. JMU just can&#8217;t shoot. In fact in CAA games, seven team&#8217;s actually have a FG% that is equal to or greater than the Dukes&#8217; 40.3 eFG%. If you&#8217;re not familiar with eFG% (which accounts for the fact that three-point field goals are worth more than two-point field goals) and want to learn more <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nba.com\/bucks\/features\/boeder-120917\">here&#8217;s a great summary<\/a>. If you don&#8217;t care, just trust me when I say that is not an encouraging trend. Small sample size or not, JMU needs to start putting the ball in the bucket. And they need to keep the opponent from doing so. The Dukes are 0-8 when teams shoot better than 45.5%. For a defense that holds the opposition to 43.1% FG on average, that&#8217;s not much of a margin of error.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<iframe src=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/plugins\/like.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fjmusportsblog.com%2F%3Fp%3D4908&amp;layout=standard&amp;show_faces=true&amp;width=450&amp;action=like&amp;colorscheme=light&amp;height=80\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\" style=\"border:none; overflow:hidden; width:450px; height:80px;\" allowTransparency=\"true\"><\/iframe>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you happened to set aside a few hours from your precious weekend to relax and take in JMU&#8217;s game against Towson, I&#8217;m sorry. I did the same thing and it was miserable. JMU didn&#8217;t even deserve to be in the same gym with Towson. The Tigers won 73-47 but it wasn&#8217;t really that close. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[144,268],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6551,"url":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/?p=6551","url_meta":{"origin":4908,"position":0},"title":"Dukes Lose Close One to Towson","date":"February 27, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"JMU lost to Towson 69-66 on Senior Night in the Convo. It was a game that the Dukes could have, and probably should have, won. Unfortunately, JMU missed free throws down the stretch (and throughout the entire game really), while Towson shot lights out from the stripe. The Tigers were\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;JMU Basketball&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"andrey semenov","src":"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/jmusportsblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/andrey-semenov.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6575,"url":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/?p=6575","url_meta":{"origin":4908,"position":1},"title":"All CAA Honors and CAA Tourney Musings","date":"March 7, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The CAA Basketball Banquet took place this evening in Baltimore. The highlight of the event was the announcement of All CAA honors. Towson's Jerrelle Benimon was selected as the conference player of the year for the second year in a row. We didn't have a vote (imagine that), but if\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;JMU Basketball&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"brn_andre031713b_10458217_8col","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jmusportsblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/brn_andre031713b_10458217_8col.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6104,"url":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/?p=6104","url_meta":{"origin":4908,"position":2},"title":"JMU Picked to Finish Seventh in CAA Hoops","date":"October 23, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Yesterday was CAA Basketball Media Day in Baltimore, Maryland. Just like every year, it was a chance for all of the league's coaches to drop meaningless quotes, dole out plenty of over the top praise for their peers, and attempt to convince the audience (and themselves) that their guys outworked\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;JMU Basketball&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"Mascots in Baltimore","src":"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/jmusportsblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/Mascots-in-Baltimore.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6487,"url":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/?p=6487","url_meta":{"origin":4908,"position":3},"title":"Dukes Compete, But Cannot Shoot","date":"February 5, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Well, the men's team went on the road to Towson's nice new arena to take on the CAA Preseason favorite Tigers and the conference's best player Jerelle Benimon. Ultimately, the results were about as expected as the Dukes fell 80-71. But we did learn a few things about both teams\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;JMU Basketball&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"andrey semenov","src":"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/jmusportsblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/andrey-semenov.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5025,"url":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/?p=5025","url_meta":{"origin":4908,"position":4},"title":"Clutch Free Throws Propel JMU to Win Over Towson","date":"February 12, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"JMU bounced back after a disappointing loss to Drexel and beat Towson 75-70 tonight. The win moved the Dukes back into second place at 15-12 (9-5). Towson dropped to 14-13 (9-5) and tied with JMU. It also avenged an earlier ugly 73-47 loss at Towson last month. JMU showed once\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;JMU Basketball&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jmusportsblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/d-moore.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2114,"url":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/?p=2114","url_meta":{"origin":4908,"position":5},"title":"Denzel Drops 40 in Win Over Towson","date":"February 15, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"There is no point in burying the lead here, the headline says it all. Denzel Bowles scored a career high 40 points and led JMU to a 72-61 victory over Towson. Bowles was an absolute beast, going 14-20 from the floor and 12-17 from the charity stripe. It's a good\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;JMU Basketball&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jmusportsblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/02\/db.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4908"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4908"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4919,"href":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4908\/revisions\/4919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}