Next Up - A Hot James Madison In The 2024 NCAA Tournament

And a spot in the Sweet Sixteen is on the line.

The first thing that we thought about JMU after the Dukes dominated Wisconsin last night was this: why isn’t Mark Byington’s name popping up in searches?

Because the guy looks like a great coach.

He started at Charleston, then moved to Virginia before moving back to Charleston to work with Bobby Cremins for seven years. He was the interim coach after Cremins burned out, then took a job at Virginia Tech before finally getting his own gig at Georgia Southern.

He had two losing seasons early at Georgia Southern before turning in three 20-win campaigns.

After that, he moved back to Harrisonburg, in his home state of Virginia, taking the Madison job.

And in four years, he’s been terrific. He got through Covid reasonably well, finishing 13-7 in 2020-21 and 15-14 in 2021-22.

Since then he’s been off to the races, putting together a 22-11 season last year and this year’s crazy 32-3 record.

Madison started off the season with a bang, upsetting Michigan State in overtime, 79-76.

In retrospect, it wasn’t really an upset, but at that point, it was seen as one. It’s worth remembering that in that game, the Spartans shot 1-20 from three point range and, more importantly, were just 23-37 from the free throw line. Not to take away from JMU’s big win but it could have easily gone the other way in regulation.

About the only negative thing you can say about Madison’s season is they didn’t play that many great teams. Between Michigan State and Wisconsin, JMU’s best opponents were arguably Kent State, Appalachian State and Akron. They all had really good seasons, but they weren’t powerhouses.

Kent State was a double OT thriller, App State claimed two of the three losses JMU has on the season and the Dukes beat Akron 73-59 in the MAC-SBC Challenge.

As we saw against Wisconsin, Madison is an aggressive, physical team. If you want to sleep poorly tonight, imagine combining NC State and Tennessee but closer to the Wolfpack. JMU is not a plodding team like Rick Barnes tends to have. These guys get up and down. Imagine a team full of Jaylen Blakeses and you get the idea. That’s how they come at you.

Alternatively, you could look to when West Virginia beat Duke up in the NCAA tournament back in 2008. It took that Duke team a while to be able to play in those sorts of games.

And aside from shooting out to an early 18-8 lead, the Dukes forced 19 turnovers from Wisconsin. And unlike Vermont, they scored on those turnovers - a lot.

When you look at JMU’s shot chart from the Wisconsin game, you immediately notice two things: first, an awful lot of their baskets came right around the rim and second, while they took a fair number of threes, they only hit 5-17. However, in the Sun Belt championship game, Madison hit 11-19 from behind the line.

Another thing to be concerned about is who’s on JMU’s roster: first, there’s TJ Bickerstaff. Well traveled, he played at BC last year and has a lot of insights into Duke. Second is Jaylen Carey and his brother, Vernon, played at Duke of course. Third is Bryant Randleman, who is a native of Durham and while we can’t be sure of this, we’re guessing Duke didn’t recruit him much.

You have to wonder about all three of those guys and how they will find motivation.

Even beyond them though, almost everyone is from Virginia, D.C., North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia or Florida, and all of them grew up with Duke as a dominant power. They’ll be ready.

Unlike a lot of schools at their level, Madison has some size and some heft. Jerrell Roberson is 6-9 and 225. Bickerstaff is 6-9 and 220. Julien Wooden is 6-8 and 225 and Carey is built very much like his brother at 6-8 and 245.

These are not shrinking violets.

And it’s an experienced team: Byington has six seniors, five juniors and four sophomores. And importantly, these guys, several of whom transferred in, have been beaten up a good bit, and now they’re applying those lessons, much as Duke did in 2010.

Other than Jeremy Roach and Ryan Young, the current Blue Devils do not have that advantage.

Byington has an eight-man rotation although Randleman is close to double digits at 9.0 mpg.

Three point shooting was (literally) hit or miss against Wisconsin but there are capable shooters here. Randleman is hitting 42.9 percent, Wooden 40.7 percent, Noah Friedel 38 percent, Michael Green 36.6 percent and Edwards 35.1 percent.

We thought some of their more reckless threes against Wisconsin would have been disastrous in, say, a regional final, but this is also true: they added to the chaos they created for the Badgers.

In a nutshell, the Dukes were faster, stronger, and more aggressive at every turn than was Wisconsin.

This presents some particular issues for Duke.

Kyle Filipowski has said he kind of likes it when people try to beat him up, but the fact is that he tends to get in foul trouble in those types of games. That’s also true for Mark Mitchell in some ways. He won’t be able to roll over defenders here like he could against Vermont and foul trouble is a concern for both bigs.

But it’s also true for Tyrese Proctor. He’s a wonderful guard but he’s still pretty thin. He could take a real beating here.

The truth of this game is that it will come down to one team that’s much more talented but a lot younger vs. one that is not as highly talented, but which is more physically mature and has a deeper knowledge of the game and how to play together to win.

That’s not a knock on Duke at all. It’s just simple reality.

The Dukes are going to try to hit the Blue Devils with a 2x4 before Duke realizes they’re in a rockfight.

One thing we noticed against Wisconsin - not that it mattered - was that JMU is occasionally undisciplined on offense. They took some shots that seemed rushed. It worked to their advantage because the long rebounds just got the Badgers further into the honeytrap and they ended up playing (poorly) at JMU’s pace.

Wisconsin was kind of a patsy in this game in a way though. The Badgers have been a deliberate, patterned team for decades. Dick Bennett got there in 1995 and if you think son Tony’s Virginia’s offense is frustrating, his high-strung father, who invented the Pack Line, was fine with games in the 30s and 40s. After one year under his former assistant Brad Soderberg, the Badgers hired Bo Ryan. And while the taciturn Ryan was successful, his teams were generally ponderous.

Wisconsin came to Duke for a game in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge and when the Badgers came out, their sheer size was stunning. That team was massive.

Duke ran circles around them, much like JMU did.

Greg Gard took over in 2015 and didn’t really speed things up a whole lot. So that’s what we mean about them kind of being a patsy Friday.

All that said, can Duke win Sunday?

Yes, Duke can. It’s still a young bunch of Devils, but if they apply the lessons they’ve learned over the last two years, if they don’t wither when JMU comes at them hard and if they play hard and smart basketball, of course they can win.

But JMU is playing with immense confidence. They’re not really a 12 seed. Accomplishment-wise, they’re more like a 5 seed.

Confidence wise?

More like a 2 seed.

It’s going to be a really interesting afternoon to say the least.