James Madison vs. Yale in Mens Basketball Tonight

[JMU Duke Dog]

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HARRISONBURG, Va., (Dec. 26, 2005) – James Madison University’s men’s basketball team returns from the holiday break to play in a tournament Thursday (Dec. 29) and Friday (Dec. 30) at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi.

JMU will meet Yale in Thursday’s tournament opener at 7 p.m. (Eastern time), and host Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and Savannah State will play in the second game. The winners and losers will meet Friday with the host team playing the second game, whether it’s the championship or consolation contest. The Dukes have not played any of the other three tournament teams.

JMU is 2-5 and hasn’t played since dropping a 72-65 decision last Wednesday (Dec. 21) at Youngstown State. Yale is 5-5 after falling 76-63 at Providence last Thursday (Dec. 22).

This week’s tournament will be only JMU’s third appearance in Texas, and the meeting with Yale will be only the second time the Dukes have met an Ivy League team.

JMU’s other games in Texas were at Stephen F. Austin in the opening round of the 1986-87 National Invitation Tournament and at Houston in its 1994-95 opener.

The Dukes’ other Ivy League opponent was Cornell in the first round of a 2001-02 regular-season tournament at the University of Richmond. JMU won that game and went on to beat Virginia Military Institute in the event’s championship game. The Dukes’ only regular-season tournament appearance since the 2001-02 games at Richmond was in the 2002-03 San Juan Shootout.

Last Wednesday at Youngstown State, the host Penguins hit on 15 of their last 23 shots in rallying for their win over JMU. Guard Domonique Crawford scored all of his 20 points during the final half after playing only four first-half minutes.

JMU got a team-individual-season-high 25 points from junior forward Cavell Johnson (Fort Washington, Md./Notre Dame Academy), 15 points from senior guard Daniel Freeman (Waynesboro, Va./Waynesboro) and 13 points and 12 rebounds from freshman forward Juwann James (Jacksonville, Fla./Raines).

Johnson hit on 10 of 15 shots, Freeman had his third-straight double-figure scoring effort, and James had his third scoring-rebounding “double-double” of the season.

After this week’s tournament, JMU will host Virginia Tech Jan. 2 (Monday) in a 4 p.m. game that will be televised by regional cable affiliate Comcast SportsNet.

Tickets are available for the Virginia Tech game through the JMU athletic ticket office and on line at JMUSports.com. The athletic ticket office telephone number is 540-568-3853 (JMU-DUKE).

JMU will return to Colonial Athletic Association play Jan. 5 at Hofstra and will host CAA foe Towson Jan. 7.

[JMU Duke Dog]

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Short-Handed Madison Hopes To Get Hot In Texas
Dukes look to put their tough loss to Youngstown State behind them when they play Yale tonight

By Dustin Dopirak

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas – The horror of the James Madison basketball team’s devastating loss at Youngstown State last week appeared to be a distant memory at Wednesday’s practice, the Dukes’ third after taking four days off for Christmas after that game.

After leaving snow-covered Ohio in a mood typically reserved for funerals, the Dukes appeared re-energized in sunny Corpus Christi, where temperatures are expected reach the 80s while JMU plays in the Flint Hills Islander Classic today and Friday at the America Bank Center.

But the effect of that loss – a soul-crusher in which the Dukes blew an 18-point lead to lose 72-65 to the struggling Penguins – typically can’t be understood in practice, only in games. When JMU plays Yale (5-5) tonight at 7 p.m. in the first round of the tournament, coach Dean Keener hopes his team will have that defeat, as well as the rest of its four straight losses, out of its system.

"You hope that they will use that as a motivational tool, but at the same time you can’t have a hangover where it effects the next game or the next practice," Keener said after practice at Texas A&M Corpus Christi’s on-campus field house. "And I don’t think they have. … Our practices has been pretty good, pretty energetic. I think all of them are anxious just to play again."

And the Dukes (2-5) will have plenty of opportunities. They have another game Friday against either host Texas A&M Corpus Christi or Savannah State, who play each other after the JMU/Yale game today. The winners will play each other in the title game and the losers will play in the consolation game. A&M, the host school will be playing in the late game Friday regardless.

After that, the Dukes get Virginia Tech at home on Jan.2, then travel to Hofstra to begin the Colonial Athletic Association season on Jan. 5 before returning to the Convocation Center to host Towson on Jan. 7. In all that’s five games in 10 days, leaving no time to lament past losses, no matter how discouraging.

"We just gotta bounce back," junior guard Ray Barbosa said. "Things happen like that and games go that way, but you know what, you come back the next day and start working on things, do the right things and come back strong and try to win these two games."

The Dukes will have to do that without two of the forwards who have started for them, as well as a swingman that was providing depth. Senior forward David Cooper is recuperating from knee surgery and junior forward Cavell Johnson was suspended Tuesday for violating an undisclosed team rule. Redshirt freshman guard Joe Posey was also suspended for what Keener called "conduct detrimental to the team" which stemmed from an incident Monday regarding post-practice wind sprints.

Losing Johnson, who was second on the team in scoring with 13.4 points a game and second in rebounds with 7.9, leaves the Dukes with just three available post players. Freshman Juwann James, the team’s leading scorer and leading rebounder will start in one forward spot, and Keener said Wednesday that he still wasn’t sure if junior Chris Cathlin or sophomore Gabriel Chami would play in the other spot.

Both have played sparingly this year with Chami seeing just 8.7 minutes per game this year and Cathlin averaging 4.4.

The Dukes will be even more depleted Friday, when Cathlin will be sitting out because of his religious beliefs as a Seventh-Day Adventist. He does not play between sundown on Fridays and sundown on Saturdays.

That means the Dukes will likely be using a four or five-guard lineup at times in both games, though Keener said JMU would likely not start that way.

"I think that could be to our advantage if we play the right way," Keener said of a small lineup. "It gives us a chance to maybe open the floor up a little bit. Maybe we can be effective defensively as well trying to speed the game up with a smaller quicker lineup."

That might work well if the Dukes can dictate the pace of the game, but it could mean serious trouble if they cannot.

The Bulldogs have succeeded when they have kept games to a slow pace, but struggled when they haven’t controlled the tempo. They have won all five of the games in which they have held their opponents to 70 points or less but have lost all five in which they’ve allowed more than that.

Part of that is because of a turnover problem that is even worse than hapless JMU’s. The Bulldogs give the ball away 19.8 times per game compared to the Dukes’ figure of 16.7.

"It’s just poor play and we’ve got to get better," Yale coach James Jones said.

But in a slow game the Bulldog’s height can be trouble. Yale brings a towering squad with two 6-foot-10 players in senior center Dominick Martin and sophomore center Matt Kyle. They have seven other players 6-6 or taller, while the Dukes will only have four of at least that height.

The Bulldogs outrebound their opponents by an average of 39.4 to 35.6. That’s despite the fact that Martin, last year’s leading rebounder, had to sit out the first seven games of the season because of Ivy League eligibility rules, which only allow students to be on campus for eight semesters. Martin had to sit out a season after a year at Princeton, and had already gone through eight, but petitioned for and received a ninth because he changed majors. He decided to use that semester in the spring in order to play the bulk of the season. In his three games since returning, he’s averaging 10.7 points and 8.0 rebounds per game.

Leading scorer Sam Kaplan (12.9 ppg, 3.5 rpg) has also missed time, sitting out the past two games with a scratched cornea. He is, however, expected to play today. Two other players, sophomore guard Eric Flato (10.9 ppg) and sophomore forward Caleb Holmes (10.0 ppg) average double digits.