Getting Over The Hump

HARRISONBURG — Unprompted, Yohanny Dalembert addressed a topic that despite being four months away is clearly on the minds of many of the players on James Madison basketball’s senior-laden roster — their lack of success in the postseason.

“I’m pretty sure we’re one of the hardest working teams in the league — and it shows every year — but we just can’t get past that first round [of the Colonial Athletic Association tournament],” the senior forward said. “We just have to take it game-by-game first of all, and hopefully we’ll see a big progress from the last three years.”

That progress, of course, is the program’s first conference tournament win since the Dukes won the CAA Tournament and an NCAA Tournament play-in game in 2013 before being bounced by top-seeded Indiana. In the three seasons since JMU made the NCAA Tournament, the Dukes have lost all four postseason games in which they’ve played — three in the CAA Tournament and one in the 2015 CollegeInsiders.com Tournament. The past two conference tournament losses have been particularly frustrating because not only was JMU the higher-seeded team, but it actually defeated its quarterfinals opponent the week before in the regular-season finale.

Every coach will say that the key to winning games in March is being able to win the close ones, a trait JMU struggled with during the conference portion of its schedule last season. The Dukes were 4-6 in games decided by single digits, including 1-3 in those decided by a single basket.

The other key to winning in the postseason is not starting off slowly in a game, which is what happened in last season’s CAA Tournament loss to William & Mary. Senior Shakir Brown pointed to that game — the Tribe answered a 6-1 JMU spurt to begin the game with a 10-plus-minute, 20-0 run — as the types of mistakes the Dukes must avoid this season.

“We can’t start off slow,” Brown said. “When we get down, we’ve got to be able to get ourselves back in the game. We put ourselves down and then we tried to get back too late and it was already over.”

Only one member of this year’s squad was around for that magical 2012-13 season — senior Dimitrije Cabarkapa — and he was sitting out while taking his redshirt year. So for the other seniors on this year’s roster, there is plenty of urgency to work harder to prepare themselves to exorcise those late-season demons.

That is where new coach Louis Rowe and his staff enter the equation.

Dalembert and his teammates have already seen a difference in the way Rowe is approaching this season, and Dalembert admitted the change was probably a good thing for the program. The senior repeated the word “intensity” four times when asked to describe the changes Rowe has brought to the Dukes, later adding that the new coach has also made things more competitive.

Those drills that foster competition have started to build up a mental toughness in JMU that Dalembert said was lacking toward the end of last season.

“When we got fatigued towards the end of the year, it was hard for us to stay tough on the road versus different teams,” he said. “Now that the new coaching staff is all about conditioning and mental toughness, I think that’s going to help us through that bump that we’ve been getting stuck at every year.”

Although Rowe said a CAA title is obviously a goal for the season, he hasn’t been preoccupied with that objective. Instead, he is honing in on the day-to-day steps it will take for the Dukes to win that championship and leaving any anticipation about the games to his players.

“I’m a big prep guy, I want to spend as much time prepping,” Rowe said. “I know for the guys they’re looking at [the Nov. 11 season opener at Old Dominion], I’m looking at tomorrow and the practice. I try not to focus too far ahead.”