CAA Preseason Ballot And The Challenges Ahead Of JMU
As a new member of the Colonial Athletic Association media crowd, my ballot for preseason men's basketball poll and awards arrived the other day. Voting was a privilege that proved simultaneously simple and challenging.
Simple: Northeastern will be one of the best mid-major teams in the country and College of Charleston shouldn't be far behind. UNCW forward Devontae Cacock is a dominant scorer and rebounder, but reigning CAA Player of the Year, Hofstra's Justin Wright-Foreman, owns the title until somebody takes it away.
Challenging: The middle of the league is packed tight. I could have put teams No. 3 through No. 8 in just about any order and come up with a reasonable justification for it. That's because there is so much returning talent across the conference narrowing it down to 10 players on the all-conference ballot was tough.
Here’s what my picks wound up looking like:
2018-19 CAA MEN'S BASKETBALL PREDICTED ORDER OF FINISH
Northeastern
Charleston
Hofstra
UNCW
William & Mary
JMU
Delaware
Elon
Drexel
Towson
2018-19 CAA MEN'S BASKETBALL PRESEASON ALL-CONFERENCE TEAM
Top 10 players (regardless of position) in RANK ORDER. No. 1 selection is a vote as preseason Player of the Year.
Justin Wright-Foreman - Hofstra
Devontae Cacock - UNCW
Grant Riller - C of C
Vasa Pusica - Northeastern
Nathan Knight - W&M
Shawn Occeus - Northeastern
Stuckey Mosley - JMU
Tyler Seibring - Elon
Jarrell Brantley - C of C
Ryan Allen - Delaware
James Madison is a great example.
Senior guard Stuckey Mosley averaged 18.4 points, fourth-best in the conference, and 4.5 rebounds while earning third-team All-CAA last season. In many years and many leagues, that's a resume that almost automatically puts a player on the preseason first team. Just not the CAA in 2018-19.
Same goes for sophomores Darius Banks and Matt Lewis, who each made the all-rookie team last season. My first instinct was one or both would be in line for all-conference honors, but then I looked closer at the CAA as a whole.
All 10 players on my ballot were all-conference and/or won a major award such as Defensive Player of the Year or Rookie of the Year.
With transfer rules becoming more player-friendly, it's been a trend in recent years for top mid-major players to jump to power conference programs. But the CAA mostly avoided it during the offseason and nearly every team in the conference, Towson a notable exception, has a core group of players returning. Riller and Brantley each averaged more than 17 points for Charleston’s NCAA Tournament team. For Northeastern, Occues is one of the nation’s best defenders to go along with the offensive firepower of Pusica. Wright-Foreman could carry Hofstra to the league title and the same goes for Cacock at UNCW.
So despite the fact JMU has Stuckey, Banks and Lewis in the backcourt and returning starter Develle Phillips (8.8 points per game and 6.3 rebounds), the Dukes landed in the middle of the pack because of all the experienced stars spread across the league.
If the CAA is ever going to return to the days of being a multi-bid league in the NCAA Tournament, this season could be a start toward rebuilding its reputation. That’s good for JMU, but also creates a tough challenge for the Dukes in what otherwise looks like a season in which they could make a serious leap in the win column.
That’s not to say it won’t happen.
Mosley is capable of playing at an MVP level, and if the Dukes have figured out how to win close games — 18 of JMU’s 22 losses were by single digits, including overtime losses to Charleston, Hofstra and William & Mary — finishing somewhere in the Top 5 of the conference is a real possibility.
It’s just that you could say the same thing about almost every team in the league.