NEWARK, Del. — As the nation celebrates the real start of March Madness and the lead in to NCAA Tournament selections, there won’t be many bigger upsets than the one Hofstra pulled off Thursday in the CAA women’s quarterfinals.
The Pride (11-21), seeded ninth and winners of just three conference games in the regular season, took down No. 1 seed James Madison, 57-50. A Dukes team that thoroughly dominated the conference in the regular season will head home early and await their postseason fate, one that now likely once again includes the WNIT.
Of course, in reality, this wasn’t the same JMU team that lost just one CAA game coming in and beat opponents by an average of 16 points. The Dukes had won 13 straight and had an RPI ranking of No. 26, but came in limited by injuries and saw the healthy bodies continue to drop as the game began, though JMU coach Sean O’Regan believed his team still had the players to win.
“I thought we fought really hard,” O’Regan said. “I thought everyone of the kids out there gave us everything they had. I just feel like we’re good enough to beat Hofstra without those two.”
Those two in particular were Kamiah Smalls and Lexie Barrier. JMU (25-5) played virtually the entire game without their junior leaders with the injury situation going from bad to worse in the game’s first 45 seconds. With the Dukes already holding first-team All-CAA guard Smalls out of the starting lineup after injuring her right hand Saturday in the regular season finale, second-team all-conference pick Lexie Barrier went down on Hofstra’s opening possession.
In addition, point guard Madison Green, who was also injured on the final play Saturday, was held out by the medical staff and reserve forward Brey Bellerand left the game holding her shin in the second half, though O’Regan said she could have returned.
“It’s first-team all-conference, and should have been player of the year, and second-team all-conference,” O’Regan said. “Yeah, that’s the bulk of our points, rebounds, assists. The whole nine yards.”
Barrier, fell to the floor in tearful agony, holding her own right hand and was taken to the locker room, never to the return to the JMU bench. With a pair of double-digit scorers out, the Dukes looked to the Siena transfer Jackie Benitez for offense. The CAA sixth-player of the year, in the starting lineup for the just the third time, scored Madison’s first five points, but the Dukes clung to a 3-point lead when Smalls checked in late in the first quarter.
Smalls played just two minutes, the most allowed by the JMU trainers, and didn’t score before returning the bench when it became clear her team would have to look elsewhere for production.
After the quick start, Benitez mostly struggled from the field and it was power forward Devon Merritt who carried the load for the Dukes offensively, but even with a 10-point lead at halftime, JMU couldn’t get enough consistency going to shut the door on the Pride.
“At the end of the day, it’s basketball and we’ve got to adjust,” Merritt, who led JMU with 15 points and eight rebounds, said. “We played hard. We did what we could. It just didn’t work out today. Like Coach O said, there was a lid on the basket for a while. We were fighting, doing what we could. They just wouldn’t fall.”
Benitez finished with 12 points on 5 of 27 shooting, Aneah Young had 11 points and eight rebounds and Kayla Cooper-Williams finished with five points, 12 rebounds and three blocks for the Dukes, who held Hofstra to 33 percent shooting.
JaKayla Brown scored 17 to lead the Pride while Boogie Brozoski got all 14 of her points in the second half after scoring 42 a night earlier against Elon.
With nothing falling for the Dukes, Smalls on the bench and Barrier nowhere to be seen, Hofstra went on a 21-2 third quarter run and led by as many as nine late in the period before JMU began to come back.
The Dukes regained the lead in the fourth quarter, but back-to-back offensive fouls on Merritt, the second of which sparked anger from the JMU bench, killed any momentum and the lead went back and forth before the Pride was able to put the game away at the free throw line in the final minute.
“For us to come in and compete at a high level and beat them is a great honor,” Hofstra coach Krista Kilburn-Steveskey said. “I have a ton of respect for JMU and I’m just proud of my players today.”
