JMU’s NCAA tournament run has come to an end, but JMU basketball is looking forward. Friday evening, the Dukes came up short at fending off all of the odds that were stacked against them.
History, Tiger Woods and even President Obama all picked against JMU on Friday evening in a game where Indiana eventually prevailed 83-62.
The Hoosiers used an early blitz from freshman point guard Yogi Ferrell, who had 14 points in the opening minutes, to coast to an easy 43-22 lead by halftime. Indiana led by as much as 33 points before JMU pulled it back closer to a 20-point differential in the waning stages of the game.
Freshmen guards Andre Nation and Charles Cooke, who were primarily responsible for the late-game sharpshooting, both set career-highs with 24 and 18 points, respectively.
Despite the loss, the Dukes were grateful for the opportunity and know this won’t be such a rare occurrence in the future.
“They saw up close and personal, firsthand, what it means to be part of a great team,” said head coach Matt Brady.
For redshirt senior Devon Moore, the experience was all about the significance of the moment.
“I played in an NCAA tournament game,” he said. “A lot of people that play basketball want to be here and they’re not.”
Like other dances, the Dukes wanted to have fun and stay loose.
The Dukes were able to do just that with a five-day Dayton residency last week.
The shenanigans started all the way back in Harrisonburg as Cooke laid down his version of the now-famous “Brady Rap” inside the airport before departing for Dayton.
“We always laugh and joke at what he says so we just wanted to make a song out of it, knowing it’d be a great remix,” Cooke said.
Nation named Cooke as the “team’s biggest goofball” during Thursday’s media session. During the same press conference, Nation wasn’t shy about telling the world that the pepperoni and cheese Hot Pockets were his go-to.
The fun continued throughout the week as Nation channeled his inner Spike Lee, directing and filming “Nation Vision.” These were a series of shorts, shot on the NCAA tournament trip from his perspective using a team-issued iPad.
This archived video footage will serve as great incentive in future seasons as a goal to strive for future NCAA tournament berths. This JMU program will remember Dayton.
“We’ve seen how hard we have to work,” Nation said.
The farewell tour for seniors Moore, A.J. Davis, Rayshawn Goins, Alioune Diouf and Gene Swindle (in addition to fifth-year senior Andrey Semenov, who may receive a sixth year of eligibility from the NCAA for medical hardship) played one last encore set inside the University of Dayton Arena against Indiana. The torch has now officially been passed down to a soon-to-be sophomore class whose potential has a particularly high ceiling.
It’s rare at the college level to find a team laden with seniors and freshmen with not much depth in between.
“They’ve set the bar high,” Brady said of the seniors. “This is the bar for our program, and we’ve got to be able to get better every day.”
For freshmen Ron Curry, Taylor Bessick, Cooke and Nation, their time has come to take over this team and make sure future Marches are equally fraught with madness.
“As far as [leadership] goes, next year we just want to come in, and we just want to play our game,” Cooke said. “Of course we want to take a leadership role on the team, but we just want to stay aggressive, want to be smart and make leadership decisions.”
Cooke and Nation scored 32 of JMU’s 40 second-half points against Indiana. The sky is the limit for these two, but they credit a lot of their success to the seniors, who fathered them into the program.
“They took us underneath their wing from day one,” Nation said. “So I love them boys. Those are my brothers, man.”
Whether it was off the court or inside the gym, they made sure this freshman class felt right at home.
“From day one they just taught us so much,” Cooke said. “They just told us a lot of details about the game of basketball that we didn’t know coming into college basketball.”
The mortar has been delivered to the Convocation Center, and it’s seemingly a great time to start constructing a resilient NCAA tournament contender.
“What we did as the six seniors was lay the groundwork for those underclassmen,” Davis said. “I feel good about passing down the torch to them.”
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