HARRISONBURG — Completion of spring football is now a week in the past for James Madison.

The Dukes wrapped drills with their annual spring game last Saturday and won’t reconvene until they start summer workouts next month and don’t put full pads on again until August camp when they begin preparations for their 2019 opener at West Virginia.

With that mind, there were conclusions to draw and observations to take note of during coach Curt Cignetti’s first set of practices leading JMU.

From fresh schemes and systems to rapidly-rising-up-the-depth-chart personnel, here are takeaways from the Dukes’ spring:

A few players mentioned throughout the five weeks of practice what defensive end John Daka said following the team’s spring game.

“Speed and violence,” Daka said are the most important traits to first-year JMU defensive coordinator Corey Hetherman.

Daka said Hetherman wants the unit to play aggressively. Fellow defensive end Ron’Dell Carter said Hetherman is incorporating plenty of blitzes and stunts to deploy regularly.

Though the Dukes were without six starters on defense — Carter, defensive tackle Adeeb Atariwa, defensive tackle Mike Greene, defensive back Wayne Davis, cornerback Rashad Robinson and safety Adam Smith — by the time the spring game kicked off, some of those defenders practiced enough to understand Hetherman’s priority is to get a unit filled with experience playing fast.

With 10 starters returning and Robinson, a 2017 All-American back after missing last year with an injury, the consensus from players is to become one of the top defenses in the country again.

Last year, JMU was sixth nationally in total defense (289.5 yards per allowed per game) and scoring defense (14.6 points allowed per game). But two years ago, the Dukes topped the FCS in scoring defense (11.1 points allowed per game) and were third in total defense (252 yards allowed per game).

“I feel like we’ll definitely have a year where we’ll get back to where we were two years ago,” said safety D’Angelo Amos, who did practice throughout the spring and had a 65-yard interception return for a touchdown during the spring game. “We’ve been a solid defense and downgraded a little bit last year, but we’re definitely going to get back this year.”

Quarterback Cole Johnson’s 13-yard scamper on a scramble was the longest run for a JMU quarterback during the team’s spring game last Saturday.

Afterward, Cignetti said he purposely didn’t call any designed runs for the quarterbacks in the scrimmage, which is something that will change come fall.

“We limited the offense today. There were some things we held,” Cignetti said. “And when you don’t run the quarterback, you lose that dimension, too, because we will run the quarterback some.”

And in practices over the past five weeks, quarterbacks worked with running backs on read-option runs in order to perfect the timing of when to hand it to the running back and when to keep it on a carry.

1: Isaac Ukwu: With Carter sidelined for the final few practices, Isaac Ukwu earned first-team reps and made the most of them. He was consistently in the backfield and racked up two sacks in the spring game.

“Isaac reminds me of me last year, in a sense,” said Daka, who had four sacks in last year’s spring game to setup his 10-sack junior season. “[Ukwu] had to wait his turn for two years, which is the same as me. He’s always had the ability and he’s getting the chance to showcase it. He’s taken the opportunity and run with it, so I’m very happy for Isaac.”

2. Gage Moloney: The battle for the quarterback spot will continue into the summer as Johnson and Ben DiNucci thrived in the spring game, and Gage Moloney put together a solid spring.

Moloney said this spring he was the most comfortable he’s been since high school and it showed. He was more decisive and quicker to release the ball from the pocket.

Moloney, at 6-foot-2, 215 pounds, also showed feet good enough to fit well with how Cignetti wants to incorporate the quarterback in the running game.

The job is likely still DiNucci’s to lose — he was a third-team All-Colonial Athletic Association choice, started all 13 games for JMU last year and improved this spring — but Moloney is much more part of the competition than he was going into 2018.

3. Solomon Vanhorse: Running back Solomon Vanhorse quickly became a favorite of Cignetti’s this spring.

“He can run it, he can catch it and does what he’s supposed to do,” Cignetti said.

The 5-foot-8, 171-pound walk-on is still slotted behind juniors Percy Agyei-Obese and Jawon Hamilton, but has put himself in position to compete for carries considering how frequently Cignetti wants to run the ball.

Vanhorse had a game-high 103 all-purpose yards in last Saturday’s spring game.