{"id":6269,"date":"2013-11-24T15:06:13","date_gmt":"2013-11-24T20:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/?p=6269"},"modified":"2013-11-24T20:15:36","modified_gmt":"2013-11-25T01:15:36","slug":"dukes-fall-to-towson-in-season-finale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jmusportsblog.com\/?p=6269","title":{"rendered":"Dukes Fall to Towson in Season Finale"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"5235c9b06354d.image\"<\/a>JMU lost to Towson 28-17 yesterday. It was the final game of a disappointing 2013 season for JMU. The Dukes finished 6-6 overall and 3-5 in the CAA. If you’re a glass half-full sort of person, you could rationalize the loss by saying that it came down to just a few plays. That’s pretty much true of every football game ever (except UNC-ODU, because ouch). The Tigers made the plays when they had to. The Dukes did not. And that’s your season in a nutshell. Over and over again, JMU made mistakes instead of big plays. Thus, they’ll be sitting at home watching the playoffs instead of playing in them. Again.<\/p>\n

We’re not going to pick this one apart too much. As stated above, JMU had some costly mistakes that prevented them from being victorious. They committed penalties on defense that extended Towson drives and penalties on offense that took points off the board. Not good. Sure, there will be plenty of fans questioning the play calling, because that’s what fans do. To me at least, that wasn’t the story though. Yes, there were times I wished the coaches would have done things differently. And I doubt anyone will ever be able to convince me that there was a good reason we didn’t see Khalid Abdullah featured as a ball carrier more all season. But the in game play calling bothered me far less than Dukes overall approach to games this year. Far too often they played down to the level of competition, played without discipline, or quite frankly looked unprepared. Theoretically, all the symptoms point to the same root cause. In game play calling seems fixable with relatively minor changes. The broader based problems probably take major changes to fix though. And we’ll leave it at that for now.<\/p>\n

Regarding this particular game, the upset was there for the taking. At the risk of sounding like sour grapes, if Towson truly was the 5th best team in the country as their ranking indicated, then JMU picked a bad year to miss the playoffs. Towson’s Terrence West is a stud carrying the ball. And the Tigers defense was impressive at times. But they were far from dominant and let a JMU team with nothing to play for hang around all day. They simply sat back in the second half and waited for the Dukes to shoot themselves in the foot. Which they did. Repeatedly. On second thought, maybe that was the secret to Towson’s success and what separates good teams from bad teams. A team need not be flashy or dominant to do big things. Sometimes they simply need to limit the mistakes and let their opponents beat themselves. Towson did that a lot this season. They certainly did yesterday. Good for them and good luck to them in the playoffs.<\/p>\n

We’re going to let things simmer for a few days and then try to put a bow on the 2013 season. There are plenty of questions for the Dukes this offseason. And since they’re not going to be playing another game until next September, we’ve got plenty of time to discuss them. The season was definitely a disappointment on many levels. It would have been great for Stephon Robertson, Jordan Stanton, Dae’Quan Scott, and all of the other seniors go out on a better note. They didn’t and that’s life. We still enjoyed watching them play for four years and appreciate all the hard work they put in for JMU. Now it’s time to move on though. None of us know what the future holds in store for JMU football. It’s simply not acceptable however, for a program with resources like JMU’s, to miss the playoffs consistently.<\/p>\n

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