The quick turnaround shouldn’t impact James Madison too much, according to Dukes coach Curt Cignetti.
Second-seeded JMU (12-1) hosts Northern Iowa (10-4) on Friday in the quarterfinals of the FCS playoffs at 7 p.m.
“We’re not going to make a lot of adjustments, to be honest with you,” Cignetti said about the accelerated kickoff on Monday during the Colonial Athletic Association coaches teleconference.
Cignetti said he’s planning to keep the team’s regular routine as close to normal as possible. JMU will keep its Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday practices the same, and he said Thursday’s practice might be shortened slightly.
“And Friday, because it’s a night game, we’ll build some meetings in during the afternoon,” Cignetti said. “So we kind of lose the Friday walkthrough on the field, which is a 15-minute walkthrough, and maybe a little bit of meeting time, but we’re going to try to stay on schedule.”
More of a challenge is preparing for the unfamiliar opponent. JMU and Northern Iowa have never met.
There are hardly any ties between the two programs, though Dukes first-year offensive coordinator Shane Montgomery coached against the Panthers in Missouri Valley Conference action during his eight-year run on staff at Youngstown State.
“They do seem to change quite a bit week to week both on offense and defense,” Cignetti said of Northern Iowa. “We watched the first three games working backward on their defense. They’re a four-down defense and we thought we had a beat on ‘em with what was going on and then all of a sudden you put the next game on and they’re three-down and almost exclusively three-down from that point on with mixing in a four-down.
“So there’s a little bit of an unknown in terms of what you’re going to see, but that’s football.”
Regardless of how Northern Iowa lines up defensively, it boasts the nation’s seventh-best scoring unit (17.7 points per game allowed).
“They haven’t given up many points,” Cignetti said. “This will be one of the better defenses we’ve seen this season without question.”
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- Cignetti compared Northern Iowa’s Elerson Smith to JMU defensive end John Daka. Cignetti said Smith, who has 21.5 tackles for loss and 14 sacks, is quick-twitch like Daka.
- Cignetti said he thinks Northern Iowa has really good team speed on defense and that the secondary runs really well.
- When asked if the Dukes’ offense played the best it has all year in Saturday’s 66-point outburst and win over Monmouth, Cignetti responded: “It’s hard to make an argument against our production offensively from Saturday.”
- Dukes senior defensive end Ron’Dell Carter was named a finalist for the Bill Dudley Award, which honors the top Division I player in Virginia, on Monday by the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Carter, the Colonial Athletic Association Defensive Player of the Year, has 56 tackles, 24 tackles for loss and 10.5 sacks this season. Virginia quarterback Bryce Perkins and Virginia Tech linebacker Rayshard Ashby are the other finalists. About Carter, Cignetti said: “Ron’Dell is the total package and has a great work ethic.”
