Dukes Lose To No. 346
Hampton Beats Madison, 69-65
Posted: January 8, 2013
HAMPTON — The James Madison coaching staff’s biggest challenge heading into Monday’s basketball game at Hampton may have been convincing the Dukes that their opponent was good enough to beat them.
The Pirates entered the night ranked 346th out of 347 teams in Division I basketball, according to RealtimeRPI.com, and had won just two of their first 12 games.
“I did everything I could and we as a staff did everything we could to let them know,” JMU coach Matt Brady said. “[The Pirates] have been in every game they’ve played – at Richmond; at Wilmington they lost by one. At Ohio University, they lost by [eight]. You don’t do that unless you’re doing some good things.”
Whether the message got across or not, James Madison still delivered a clunker and lost to the lowly Pirates 69-65 in front of a tiny crowd of 745 at Hampton’s Convocation Center.
The Dukes’ four-game win streak now looks like a distant memory after consecutive losses on the road against weak competition. Dropping Saturday’s game at struggling Georgia State was bad, but falling victim to one of the bottom teams in the flimsy Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference sunk the Dukes (7-8) even deeper.
“Yeah, we knew,” freshman guard Andre Nation said, when asked if the team was aware of Hampton’s extremely low ranking.
“It’s basketball; anything can happen,” Nation said. “But you don’t want to lose to the worst team in Division I basketball. I don’t know, man. I’m shocked, I’m mad. All that at the same time.”
Hampton was indeed ranked dead last in Division I Sunday before climbing a notch Monday.
The Dukes trailed by 14 points with 4:20 remaining before a furious, full-court-press-fueled 14-2 run sliced the deficit to two points with 2:04 left. JMU failed to get any closer, though, and Hampton escaped with just its third win of the season.
“We let them get a double-digit lead, and then we fought really hard at the end, but like the last game, we can’t sustain a terrific effort for 40 minutes,” said Brady, who could be heard from the locker room after the game yelling at his players about playing hard only in spurts.
JMU led from its opening possession and stretched its advantage to as many as 11 in the first half. Hampton climbed back and gained its first edge on a Deron Powers 3-pointer 1:21 before halftime. A Du’Vaughn Maxwell alley-oop slam capped a 22-8 Pirates run, and Hampton went into the intermission ahead 30-29.
Hampton coach Ed Joyner said he saw the Pirates begin to play with confidence – something they’ve failed to do all season – when they made that run in the first half, and it carried over.
Nation threw down a ferocious two-handed dunk from the baseline to tie the score at 34-apiece early in the second half, but it was no momentum-changer for the Dukes. Hampton scored the next nine points to take its largest lead of the game to that point.
“We should have capitalized on that and we didn’t,” Nation said. “Came back and they smacked us.”
After JMU committed turnovers on three of four possessions, A.J. Davis paused Hampton’s nine-point run with a 3-pointer from the wing out of a timeout. The Pirates kept coming after the Dukes, though. Suddenly hot from the field, Hampton scored 17 points in less than four minutes to move ahead 61-47 on another 3-pointer from Powers, a freshman who finished with a game-high 19.
Hampton, which had averaged just 56.6 points throughout its first 12 games, shot 50 percent in the second half and 46.2 percent for the game. The Pirates entered Monday shooting a paltry 36.6 percent from the field.
After the game, Brady catalogued a series of mental mistakes his team made on the defensive end of the floor. He agreed that his Dukes, it appears, have taken a step backward after showing great signs of improvement throughout December.
“I used that term with our team,” Brady said. “I do think we took a step backwards in the last 48 hours, 72 hours.”
The Dukes dropped to 1-7 without senior forward Andrey Semenov, who missed time early in the season with a groin injury and could be out another week or two with a sprained left ankle.
This was JMU’s final non-conference game of the season. The Dukes resume Colonial Athletic Association play Wednesday against UNC-Wilmington in Harrisonburg. It will be the Dukes’ first home game since Dec. 16, and it will be their fourth game in a fourth city in an eight-day stretch.
The Dukes didn’t use weary bodies as an excuse for the loss against Hampton.
“We just lost,” said senior forward Rayshawn Goins, who led JMU with 16 points and 12 rebounds. “They just outplayed us. Wasn’t anything special. … They played a hell of a game and they scored more points than us at the end of the day.”
Nation and Devon Moore joined Goins in double figures with 13 points apiece. Moore led the late-game charge, scoring 10 of his points in the final 5:34.
After Nation made two free throws to cut the deficit to 68-65, the Dukes’ press induced a steal with 13 seconds left. But JMU did not get a good look at a game-tying 3. Freshman Ron Curry instead forced a contested, off-balance shot that missed. Hampton’s Jasper Williams made one of two free throws on the other end to dash the Dukes’ faint hopes of a comeback.
“We went to our trap defense, tried to get deflections,” Nation said of the comeback. “We got a lot of deflections, but we could have been doing that from the jump. We just didn’t come out with that intensity.”
And because of the lackluster performance, the Dukes came away with what might be their most damaging loss of the year.
“When you step on the court it doesn’t matter about their rankings,” Goins said. “We didn’t dwell on their ranking; we just lost.”
JAMES MADISON
Goins 4-9 8-12 16, Curry 2-5 0-2 5, Diouf 1-6 0-0 2, Nation 4-10 5-6 13, Moore 4-10 4-4 13, Davis 3-5 0-0 9, Cooke 2-3 0-0 5, Bessick 0-1 2-2 2, Swindle 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 20-49 19-26 65.
HAMPTON
Maxwell 5-11 1-4 11, Meikle 0-1 0-0 0, Okoroba 2-2 0-0 4, Williams 2-6 2-4 6, Powers 6-10 4-6 19, Dunning 3-7 2-4 9, Brown 2-4 3-8 8, Mercado 4-11 2-2 12. Totals 24-52 14-28 69.
Halftime—Hampton 30-29. 3-Point Goals—James Madison 6-22 (Davis 3-5, Cooke 1-2, Curry 1-4, Moore 1-4, Diouf 0-1, Goins 0-1, Nation 0-5), Hampton 7-19 (Powers 3-5, Mercado 2-8, Dunning 1-1, Brown 1-2, Williams 0-3). Fouled Out—Cooke. Rebounds—James Madison 33 (Goins 12), Hampton 35 (Maxwell 10). Assists—James Madison 8 (Curry, Goins, Moore 2), Hampton 16 (Powers 5). Total Fouls—James Madison 24, Hampton 18. A—745.
The Pirates entered the night ranked 346th out of 347 teams in Division I basketball, according to RealtimeRPI.com, and had won just two of their first 12 games.
“I did everything I could and we as a staff did everything we could to let them know,” JMU coach Matt Brady said. “[The Pirates] have been in every game they’ve played – at Richmond; at Wilmington they lost by one. At Ohio University, they lost by [eight]. You don’t do that unless you’re doing some good things.”
Whether the message got across or not, James Madison still delivered a clunker and lost to the lowly Pirates 69-65 in front of a tiny crowd of 745 at Hampton’s Convocation Center.
The Dukes’ four-game win streak now looks like a distant memory after consecutive losses on the road against weak competition. Dropping Saturday’s game at struggling Georgia State was bad, but falling victim to one of the bottom teams in the flimsy Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference sunk the Dukes (7-8) even deeper.
“Yeah, we knew,” freshman guard Andre Nation said, when asked if the team was aware of Hampton’s extremely low ranking.
“It’s basketball; anything can happen,” Nation said. “But you don’t want to lose to the worst team in Division I basketball. I don’t know, man. I’m shocked, I’m mad. All that at the same time.”
Hampton was indeed ranked dead last in Division I Sunday before climbing a notch Monday.
The Dukes trailed by 14 points with 4:20 remaining before a furious, full-court-press-fueled 14-2 run sliced the deficit to two points with 2:04 left. JMU failed to get any closer, though, and Hampton escaped with just its third win of the season.
“We let them get a double-digit lead, and then we fought really hard at the end, but like the last game, we can’t sustain a terrific effort for 40 minutes,” said Brady, who could be heard from the locker room after the game yelling at his players about playing hard only in spurts.
JMU led from its opening possession and stretched its advantage to as many as 11 in the first half. Hampton climbed back and gained its first edge on a Deron Powers 3-pointer 1:21 before halftime. A Du’Vaughn Maxwell alley-oop slam capped a 22-8 Pirates run, and Hampton went into the intermission ahead 30-29.
Hampton coach Ed Joyner said he saw the Pirates begin to play with confidence – something they’ve failed to do all season – when they made that run in the first half, and it carried over.
Nation threw down a ferocious two-handed dunk from the baseline to tie the score at 34-apiece early in the second half, but it was no momentum-changer for the Dukes. Hampton scored the next nine points to take its largest lead of the game to that point.
“We should have capitalized on that and we didn’t,” Nation said. “Came back and they smacked us.”
After JMU committed turnovers on three of four possessions, A.J. Davis paused Hampton’s nine-point run with a 3-pointer from the wing out of a timeout. The Pirates kept coming after the Dukes, though. Suddenly hot from the field, Hampton scored 17 points in less than four minutes to move ahead 61-47 on another 3-pointer from Powers, a freshman who finished with a game-high 19.
Hampton, which had averaged just 56.6 points throughout its first 12 games, shot 50 percent in the second half and 46.2 percent for the game. The Pirates entered Monday shooting a paltry 36.6 percent from the field.
After the game, Brady catalogued a series of mental mistakes his team made on the defensive end of the floor. He agreed that his Dukes, it appears, have taken a step backward after showing great signs of improvement throughout December.
“I used that term with our team,” Brady said. “I do think we took a step backwards in the last 48 hours, 72 hours.”
The Dukes dropped to 1-7 without senior forward Andrey Semenov, who missed time early in the season with a groin injury and could be out another week or two with a sprained left ankle.
This was JMU’s final non-conference game of the season. The Dukes resume Colonial Athletic Association play Wednesday against UNC-Wilmington in Harrisonburg. It will be the Dukes’ first home game since Dec. 16, and it will be their fourth game in a fourth city in an eight-day stretch.
The Dukes didn’t use weary bodies as an excuse for the loss against Hampton.
“We just lost,” said senior forward Rayshawn Goins, who led JMU with 16 points and 12 rebounds. “They just outplayed us. Wasn’t anything special. … They played a hell of a game and they scored more points than us at the end of the day.”
Nation and Devon Moore joined Goins in double figures with 13 points apiece. Moore led the late-game charge, scoring 10 of his points in the final 5:34.
After Nation made two free throws to cut the deficit to 68-65, the Dukes’ press induced a steal with 13 seconds left. But JMU did not get a good look at a game-tying 3. Freshman Ron Curry instead forced a contested, off-balance shot that missed. Hampton’s Jasper Williams made one of two free throws on the other end to dash the Dukes’ faint hopes of a comeback.
“We went to our trap defense, tried to get deflections,” Nation said of the comeback. “We got a lot of deflections, but we could have been doing that from the jump. We just didn’t come out with that intensity.”
And because of the lackluster performance, the Dukes came away with what might be their most damaging loss of the year.
“When you step on the court it doesn’t matter about their rankings,” Goins said. “We didn’t dwell on their ranking; we just lost.”
JAMES MADISON
Goins 4-9 8-12 16, Curry 2-5 0-2 5, Diouf 1-6 0-0 2, Nation 4-10 5-6 13, Moore 4-10 4-4 13, Davis 3-5 0-0 9, Cooke 2-3 0-0 5, Bessick 0-1 2-2 2, Swindle 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 20-49 19-26 65.
HAMPTON
Maxwell 5-11 1-4 11, Meikle 0-1 0-0 0, Okoroba 2-2 0-0 4, Williams 2-6 2-4 6, Powers 6-10 4-6 19, Dunning 3-7 2-4 9, Brown 2-4 3-8 8, Mercado 4-11 2-2 12. Totals 24-52 14-28 69.
Halftime—Hampton 30-29. 3-Point Goals—James Madison 6-22 (Davis 3-5, Cooke 1-2, Curry 1-4, Moore 1-4, Diouf 0-1, Goins 0-1, Nation 0-5), Hampton 7-19 (Powers 3-5, Mercado 2-8, Dunning 1-1, Brown 1-2, Williams 0-3). Fouled Out—Cooke. Rebounds—James Madison 33 (Goins 12), Hampton 35 (Maxwell 10). Assists—James Madison 8 (Curry, Goins, Moore 2), Hampton 16 (Powers 5). Total Fouls—James Madison 24, Hampton 18. A—745.