(01-27-2015 01:19 PM)JMUDukesFan Wrote:  

(01-27-2015 01:15 PM)2Buck Wrote:  I agree with this to a certain extent. The other issue is in this age of kids needing constant stimulation to keep them engaged the product needs to be fun and exciting. In addition to a winning team and playing rivals / national programs, they need more pep band and the arena putting on a show with T-shirt cannons, give-aways, shot contests, etc I think the school could create an experience that the kids would WANT to go to. Find a way to incorporate the screens they're staring at into the game real-time (social media). Make it fun and a destination and they'd come.

Have you been to a game lately? They're already doing all of this at every single home game.

I agree.....I think JMU gets that I see them putting a lot of effort into the gameday experience.

(01-27-2015 01:07 PM)2Buck Wrote:  Okay, I'm a product of the Carrier / Lefty era. Perhaps my expectations are unrealistic. But here's the difference between what some are satisfied with and what I'm looking for.

Mediocrity Embracers: We're no longer at the bottom of the CAA, we're in the middle and through some luck and flukes maybe each year we have a shot at the CAA tournament and getting into the NCAA's so we can hope to win a play-in game to be a 16 seed and be nationally embarrassed.

My Expectation: The men's program should be on a level like the women's. Total domination of a sh!tty conference and borderline top 25. ESPN currently has the women's team as a NUMBER 7 seed if they win the CAA. If they don't they SHOULD most likely get in as an at-large. I can remember us losing the CAA auto-bid during the Lefty era and watching the ESPN selection show where we were right up there as contenders for an at-large bid. Dick Vitale talking about us and Lefty. We didn't get it but we were good enough to be in those national conversations.

There is NO reason Mason, ODU, VCU and Tech can have national level programs and we're still wallowing in sh!t. Except for UVA and W&M we should be on top of the friggin state, not a laughing stock. Where's your pride people? WTF???

1981 - 82 MBB

2Buck please take a look at the year of my graduation from JMU. Unless you were around, please don't tell me what my expectations should be. By the way, take notice, this was the one and only at large birth into the NCAA tourney for JMU MBB.

Now the air is clear, I totally agree with you in that our men should be dominating the CAA as our women do. While I am not going to take the stance purplehazed takes with the people who are ultimately in charge of getting the right coach to come to JMU, but back in the day, it would be nothing for Lou to have Ron and Dean Ehlers working their tails off helping bring a top recruit to JMU. Brady has no such help or support.

(01-27-2015 01:31 PM)BleedingPurple Wrote:  

(01-27-2015 01:07 PM)2Buck Wrote:  Okay, I'm a product of the Carrier / Lefty era. Perhaps my expectations are unrealistic. But here's the difference between what some are satisfied with and what I'm looking for.

Mediocrity Embracers: We're no longer at the bottom of the CAA, we're in the middle and through some luck and flukes maybe each year we have a shot at the CAA tournament and getting into the NCAA's so we can hope to win a play-in game to be a 16 seed and be nationally embarrassed.

My Expectation: The men's program should be on a level like the women's. Total domination of a sh!tty conference and borderline top 25. ESPN currently has the women's team as a NUMBER 7 seed if they win the CAA. If they don't they SHOULD most likely get in as an at-large. I can remember us losing the CAA auto-bid during the Lefty era and watching the ESPN selection show where we were right up there as contenders for an at-large bid. Dick Vitale talking about us and Lefty. We didn't get it but we were good enough to be in those national conversations.

There is NO reason Mason, ODU, VCU and Tech can have national level programs and we're still wallowing in sh!t. Except for UVA and W&M we should be on top of the friggin state, not a laughing stock. Where's your pride people? WTF???

1981 - 82 MBB

2Buck please take a look at the year of my graduation from JMU. Unless you were around, please don't tell me what my expectations should be. By the way, take notice, this was the one and only at large birth into the NCAA tourney for JMU MBB.

Now the air is clear, I totally agree with you in that our men should be dominating the CAA as our women do. While I am not going to take the stance purplehazed takes with the people who are ultimately in charge of getting the right coach to come to JMU, but back in the day, it would be nothing for Lou to have Ron and Dean Ehlers working their tails off helping bring a top recruit to JMU. Brady has no such help or support.

I didn't tell you what YOUR expectation should be, I stated MY expectation. There may be very few others that feel the way I do and that's fine. My hope would be if there are enough who do, and are willing to step up contributions and financial support of the athletic program (especially a jump to FBS) then the school leadership needs to step it up and make a commitment (or hire the proper people to get it done). If not FBS I'm fine with going all-in on basketball and moving the the A-10 or Big East or something more desirable than where we are. But without basketball on a scale like the women's program that's never going to happen.

If the focus "has" been on academics then I'm just not seeing an improvement over when I went to JMU, I'm actually seeing a slide. Again, just my opinion and take it for what it's worth. If the school has little worth for my opinion then I'll just slip back into the apathetic morose with the 93% of other grads.

As I and others have stated ad nauseam, alumni giving is the only hope the school has of maintaining, let alone improving, academics and athletics. Student fees and state / federal funding is only going to continue to dry up. My observation of current leadership efforts: I see disenfranchisement and squandered opportunity.

(01-27-2015 01:22 PM)ShadyP Wrote:  

(01-27-2015 01:19 PM)JMUDukesFan Wrote:  

(01-27-2015 01:15 PM)2Buck Wrote:  I agree with this to a certain extent. The other issue is in this age of kids needing constant stimulation to keep them engaged the product needs to be fun and exciting. In addition to a winning team and playing rivals / national programs, they need more pep band and the arena putting on a show with T-shirt cannons, give-aways, shot contests, etc I think the school could create an experience that the kids would WANT to go to. Find a way to incorporate the screens they're staring at into the game real-time (social media). Make it fun and a destination and they'd come.

Have you been to a game lately? They're already doing all of this at every single home game.

I agree.....I think JMU gets that I see them putting a lot of effort into the gameday experience.

I've not been to a game in years, I live in Charlotte but it's good to hear they are trying. Guess they need focus groups or some other way of engaging students to see what it will take. I just know when I went the place was on fire. Felt like a high school gym but it was packed and loud and everyone was on their feet the whole game. Helped being drunk but they need to analyze what appeals to current students. Maybe weekend games are geared more towards grads / local families but during the week it's got to be students.

People were pretty critical of JMU's out of conference schedule this season. As it turns out, JMU has played a fair number of teams with pretty gaudy records, many of which resulted in losses (but offered some quality competition to the Dukes, of course). Pulled these records yesterday:

VA - 19-0
Valpo - 19-4
High Point - 16-5
Ohio State - 16-5
Radford - 14-7
Norfolk State - 14-9
Richmond - 10-9

(01-28-2015 11:28 AM)Dukes84 Wrote:  People were pretty critical of JMU's out of conference schedule this season. As it turns out, JMU has played a fair number of teams with pretty gaudy records, many of which resulted in losses (but offered some quality competition to the Dukes, of course). Pulled these records yesterday:

VA - 19-0
Valpo - 19-4
High Point - 16-5
Ohio State - 16-5
Radford - 14-7
Norfolk State - 14-9
Richmond - 10-9

Absolutely.....just b/c they are not the wish-list names that folks want to see as opponents does not mean it is not a decent OOC schedule.

Does JMU have a rival in the CAA?

It appears Elon would be our rival, given the football schedule final game?

Not sure there is a real 'rival' and peer institution in the CAA for JMU. To be a real conference rival you would mean you play all-sports (or at least football and mens basketball) in the CAA. Having said that that leaves rival options as.....
- Elon ---- no freaking way
- Towson ---- no one cares about towson to a rival level
- Del --- just does not feel like a rival to me. Does anyone really 'hate' UD.
- W&M ---- rival yes, but not really a peer institution but this is probably as close as it gets int he current CAA.

(01-28-2015 01:38 PM)ShadyP Wrote:  Not sure there is a real 'rival' and peer institution in the CAA for JMU. To be a real conference rival you would mean you play all-sports (or at least football and mens basketball) in the CAA. Having said that that leaves rival options as.....
- Elon ---- no freaking way
- Towson ---- no one cares about towson to a rival level
- Del --- just does not feel like a rival to me. Does anyone really 'hate' UD.
- W&M ---- rival yes, but not really a peer institution but this is probably as close as it gets int he current CAA.

Agree, W&M is it, and its hard for me to hate on those guys. They are certainly not the sweater wearing, think they are somebody Ticks, and not the a$$wipes of old dirty. Sometimes Tribe fans do some dumb things, but mostly they do it to themselves. Delaware has lost their mojo to be anybody's rival and today is probably closer to being a rival of Towson than any other school.

(01-28-2015 01:56 PM)BleedingPurple Wrote:  

(01-28-2015 01:38 PM)ShadyP Wrote:  Not sure there is a real 'rival' and peer institution in the CAA for JMU. To be a real conference rival you would mean you play all-sports (or at least football and mens basketball) in the CAA. Having said that that leaves rival options as.....
- Elon ---- no freaking way
- Towson ---- no one cares about towson to a rival level
- Del --- just does not feel like a rival to me. Does anyone really 'hate' UD.
- W&M ---- rival yes, but not really a peer institution but this is probably as close as it gets int he current CAA.

Agree, W&M is it, and its hard for me to hate on those guys. They are certainly not the sweater wearing, think they are somebody Ticks, and not the a$$wipes of old dirty. Sometimes Tribe fans do some dumb things, but mostly they do it to themselves. Delaware has lost their mojo to be anybody's rival and today is probably closer to being a rival of Towson than any other school.

Don't you love being in the CAA?

(01-28-2015 03:07 PM)HolyCityDuke Wrote:  

(01-28-2015 01:56 PM)BleedingPurple Wrote:  

(01-28-2015 01:38 PM)ShadyP Wrote:  Not sure there is a real 'rival' and peer institution in the CAA for JMU. To be a real conference rival you would mean you play all-sports (or at least football and mens basketball) in the CAA. Having said that that leaves rival options as.....
- Elon ---- no freaking way
- Towson ---- no one cares about towson to a rival level
- Del --- just does not feel like a rival to me. Does anyone really 'hate' UD.
- W&M ---- rival yes, but not really a peer institution but this is probably as close as it gets int he current CAA.

Agree, W&M is it, and its hard for me to hate on those guys. They are certainly not the sweater wearing, think they are somebody Ticks, and not the a$$wipes of old dirty. Sometimes Tribe fans do some dumb things, but mostly they do it to themselves. Delaware has lost their mojo to be anybody's rival and today is probably closer to being a rival of Towson than any other school.

Don't you love being in the CAA?

For sure ---- I am repeatedly told by JMU that we are among our peer institutions in the CAA.

I definitely feel animus towards UR and Nova in football. I would classify UNC-W, Maine and W&M as teams that I feel familiar with more than rivals. I never felt any sort of rivalry rivalry for UNH, UD, , Towson, URI, Hofstra, Drexel, or NE.

Just wanted to bump this discussion back to the top as the Dukes have now won 4 of the last 5. Despite being absolutely creamed in Boston @ NU, i think the Dukes have played better on the whole, and shown the ability to win games in multiple ways. I mean this by the fact that they have won games with scores in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s.

Some specifics:
Ron Curry has clearly elevated his game to an upper classman type status. he gets better as games go on and has shown the ability to "close" which is a skill i believe this team has lacked in the past (the ability to finish games)
Yohanny Dalembert has made great strides and looks great in the post. He is good this year with the potential to be great as enters year 3 and 4 (hopefully, he doesnt transfer)
Role players: Jackson Kent is still inconsistent but has shown the ability to score the basketball. Vodo may have had his best game as a Duke last night v. UD. Cabarkapa has shown the ability to add a few meaningful minutes into each game while sometimes looking like a complete mess. Still, anything from him is better than the net zero he was for the first 1.5 years of his JMU career.

Just want to hear your thoughts at the 2/3-3/4 mark of the season. Two tough games with W/M and UNCW will have an impact on the immediate standings, but the 5 following games give us a chance to make up any ground if we do lose both of those games.

(01-29-2015 10:48 AM)DukeDoggyDogg Wrote:  Just wanted to bump this discussion back to the top as the Dukes have now won 4 of the last 5. Despite being absolutely creamed in Boston @ NU, i think the Dukes have played better on the whole, and shown the ability to win games in multiple ways. I mean this by the fact that they have won games with scores in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s.

Some specifics:
Ron Curry has clearly elevated his game to an upper classman type status. he gets better as games go on and has shown the ability to "close" which is a skill i believe this team has lacked in the past (the ability to finish games)
Yohanny Dalembert has made great strides and looks great in the post. He is good this year with the potential to be great as enters year 3 and 4 (hopefully, he doesnt transfer)
Role players: Jackson Kent is still inconsistent but has shown the ability to score the basketball. Vodo may have had his best game as a Duke last night v. UD. Cabarkapa has shown the ability to add a few meaningful minutes into each game while sometimes looking like a complete mess. Still, anything from him is better than the net zero he was for the first 1.5 years of his JMU career.

Just want to hear your thoughts at the 2/3-3/4 mark of the season. Two tough games with W/M and UNCW will have an impact on the immediate standings, but the 5 following games give us a chance to make up any ground if we do lose both of those games.

Some good analysis. I think with winning the last 4-5 the team's confidence is going up. This reminds me of 2 years ago when they improved that last 1/3 of the season and won the CAA tournament after not looking so good early on. (Going 7-3 the last 10 including the NCAA tournament) I went to the GA State game in Atlanta that year and they looked horrendous and I was wondering if they would win 10 games all season.

winning with this roster is actually really impressive. We dont have anyone who is particularly eye popping in terms of talent or athleticism. This speaks to Brady's ability to coach when he is beyond distractions.

It does help when you are not having to take away focus from every practice, game prep and game day to babysit one player. I bet managing Nation took at least 25% of Brady's time alone. That has a major impact.....like the Knucklhead in class who takes 50% of the professors time in class.

UNCW poster here.

Just a few comments based on what I've read here.

The basketball/football tug of war seems to be getting worse, not better, for those not in the Big 5 conferences. With their autonomy, and ability to make rules that do not apply across the NCAA board, where is football going for those not in their cabal?

As far as basketball, don't forget, VCU, GMU and ODU came to the top of the CAA only after UNCW collapsed under the stupidity of an idiotic Chancellor. Prior to that, we topped the CAA yearly, and went to the Big Dance pretty often.

The point is, the CAA has a great chance to move back in that direction. When you look at the A10, their student numbers only average about 1,000 more than the CAA. Furthermore, Charleston hired a Brad Brownell protégé who spent a long time at Wichita State. Their defense already looks a LOT like our glory years, when we ranked in the top 25 nationally consistently, and the top 10 more than once.

If you add in the fact that UNCW is DETERMINED to get back to our glory years, I see a good CAA basketball road ahead. If we can get at least 3 consistently good teams, and I think we can, basketball should get back on track as far as national attention.

Imagine UNCW taking the place of VCU as a style matter, and CoC taking the place of the GOOD UNCW teams with a stifling defense? That would at least increase the quality of CAA basketball overall, and the ships will rise with the tide. I think JMU is well positioned to get on track in the near future. I know our fans aren't expecting a win at your house this week.

(01-29-2015 11:21 AM)ShadyP Wrote:  It does help when you are not having to take away focus from every practice, game prep and game day to babysit one player. I bet managing Nation took at least 25% of Brady's time alone. That has a major impact.....like the Knucklhead in class who takes 50% of the professors time in class.

That goes for the other players as well. It's always present. It's in the room. You can quite literally feel it. I hate that it had to happen at all, but clearly it's been a net positive.

Sometimes you gotta cut TO to let everyone else move forward.

(01-27-2015 01:07 PM)2Buck Wrote:  Okay, I'm a product of the Carrier / Lefty era. Perhaps my expectations are unrealistic. But here's the difference between what some are satisfied with and what I'm looking for.

Mediocrity Embracers: We're no longer at the bottom of the CAA, we're in the middle and through some luck and flukes maybe each year we have a shot at the CAA tournament and getting into the NCAA's so we can hope to win a play-in game to be a 16 seed and be nationally embarrassed.

My Expectation: The men's program should be on a level like the women's. Total domination of a sh!tty conference and borderline top 25. ESPN currently has the women's team as a NUMBER 7 seed if they win the CAA. If they don't they SHOULD most likely get in as an at-large. I can remember us losing the CAA auto-bid during the Lefty era and watching the ESPN selection show where we were right up there as contenders for an at-large bid. Dick Vitale talking about us and Lefty. We didn't get it but we were good enough to be in those national conversations.

There is NO reason Mason, ODU, VCU and Tech can have national level programs and we're still wallowing in sh!t. Except for UVA and W&M we should be on top of the friggin state, not a laughing stock. Where's your pride people? WTF???

I definitely know what you mean, I was young when Lefty was here but remember the late years with Lefty and early years with Dillard and always thinking any time now we'd get right back up there with VCU, GMU, ODU, UNCW. Instead, UNCW fell off like we did and the rest left the conference. Really kind of feels like we took too long to get back to that level. We should be hoping to be around VCU's level, we should at least be hoping to get to where if we have a good year and don't win the tournament we can hope for an at large.

Now it's kind of hard to imagine that happening, both for us and probably UNCW too. When we were a bad team in our conference, but in a conference where the best teams are on that level then it's definitely not hard to imagine getting back to where we're up there at the top of that conference. Now we're a pretty good team in our conference, and our conference is one that is going to produce a 16 seed or close to it, definitely no at large bids. Seems much less likely to get back to the level we're hoping for when that means getting to where we are way above what you can expect out of the best team in our conference.

Also hard to imagine us making a conference move that gets us back to a situation like before. CUSA, MAC, Sun Belt... None of them have basketball like the CAA could be if teams hadn't left and like the CAA was before they did leave. Even if we were to decide to totally focus on basketball instead of football(not that I want us to, but just hypothetically), it's not like a solid basketball conference like the A10 would want a team with one NCAA Tournament appearance in 20 years and a 16 seed with a play in game in that one appearance.

It's really depressing how unlikely it seems for JMU basketball to get back to what I always expected it to eventually get back to. Hopefully I'm wrong, hopefully if we don't end up in a new conference then Drexel, Hofstra, Towson, UNCW, Delaware can get back up to when they were at their best and JMU along with them.

(01-28-2015 01:38 PM)ShadyP Wrote:  Not sure there is a real 'rival' and peer institution in the CAA for JMU. To be a real conference rival you would mean you play all-sports (or at least football and mens basketball) in the CAA. Having said that that leaves rival options as.....
- Elon ---- no freaking way
- Towson ---- no one cares about towson to a rival level
- Del --- just does not feel like a rival to me. Does anyone really 'hate' UD.
- W&M ---- rival yes, but not really a peer institution but this is probably as close as it gets int he current CAA.

Definitely lost our biggest ones. W&M is without a doubt the biggest rival left and they shouldn't be a rival, they should be the nerds we beat up on every year. The only other one I'd even kind of call a rivalry is Delanowhere.

(01-29-2015 02:28 PM)82hawk Wrote:  UNCW poster here.

Just a few comments based on what I've read here.

The basketball/football tug of war seems to be getting worse, not better, for those not in the Big 5 conferences. With their autonomy, and ability to make rules that do not apply across the NCAA board, where is football going for those not in their cabal?

As far as basketball, don't forget, VCU, GMU and ODU came to the top of the CAA only after UNCW collapsed under the stupidity of an idiotic Chancellor. Prior to that, we topped the CAA yearly, and went to the Big Dance pretty often.

The point is, the CAA has a great chance to move back in that direction. When you look at the A10, their student numbers only average about 1,000 more than the CAA. Furthermore, Charleston hired a Brad Brownell protégé who spent a long time at Wichita State. Their defense already looks a LOT like our glory years, when we ranked in the top 25 nationally consistently, and the top 10 more than once.

If you add in the fact that UNCW is DETERMINED to get back to our glory years, I see a good CAA basketball road ahead. If we can get at least 3 consistently good teams, and I think we can, basketball should get back on track as far as national attention.

Imagine UNCW taking the place of VCU as a style matter, and CoC taking the place of the GOOD UNCW teams with a stifling defense? That would at least increase the quality of CAA basketball overall, and the ships will rise with the tide. I think JMU is well positioned to get on track in the near future. I know our fans aren't expecting a win at your house this week.

As much as I hated them, those Wainwright/Brownell teams were a joy to watch. So well coached. Pretty much the template for upstart mid-majors with how well they defended and played as a team.