HARRISONBURG — An up-and-down regular season for James Madison came crashing to a finish Saturday as a comeback attempt against visiting William & Mary never fully materialized and the Dukes dropped a second game in three days, 70-66.
A week that began with JMU riding high with the possibility of a fourth-place finish in the Colonial Athletic Association fresh off an upset of regular season champion Hofstra, ended with losses to Elon and the Tribe. Now, the Dukes (13-18, 6-12 CAA) enter the conference tournament seeded eighth with the knowledge their next loss is a season-ender.
“We obviously lost two games we thought we could win,” JMU senior guard Stuckey Mosley said. “We believe if we had played our best we would have won. But now it’s behind us. Now it’s win or go home so we’re going to be focused on the next game.”
That next game is now 4 p.m. Saturday against No. 9-seed Towson to open the CAA Tournament.
Nathan Knight had 29 points and nine rebounds to lead William & Mary (14-16, 10-8), which finished the regular season on a five-game winning streak to secure the No. 4 seed. An overall solid defensive performance for the Dukes wasn’t enough to overcome 6 of 23 shooting from behind the 3-point arc.
Dwight Wilson finished with 16 points and 15 rebounds to lead JMU, but the big games from Knight and Justin Pierce who had 14 points and 18 rebounds sunk the Dukes. Along with Matt Milon, who scored 18, the trio accounted for the lion’s share of the Tribe’s offense, while JMU’s leading scorers Mosley and Matt Lewis finish a combined 11 for 38 from the floor and Darius Banks sat out with an injured left hand.
“I don’t think we are getting bad shots,” JMU coach Louis Rowe said. “Stuckey didn’t shoot the ball well. Matt didn’t shoot the ball well. Is it part of the fact that we’ve played those guys so many minutes? I would live with those shots. Maybe we should throw it in to DJ a little more, but I thought we got good shots. I thought the ball moved well.”
Coming off arguably its poorest defensive effort of the season Thursday against Elon, JMU opened the game in a half court trap that seemed to disrupt the Tribe a bit early on. The Dukes forced three turnovers in the first four minutes, but had trouble converting the defense into baskets on the other end.
Knight scored William & Mary’s first 10 points, mostly coming off passes over the top of the trap, but the Dukes largely shut down the rest of the Tribe in the first half and JMU finally got a little something going on offense and a couple of 3-pointers by freshman Matthew Urbach, getting some minutes in place of Banks, helped JMU make it a 29-26 Tribe lead at halftime.
Urbach finished with nine while Mosley scored 12 to go along with nine rebounds in his final game at the Convocation Center. Lewis finished with 15.
Madison battled back to take the lead early in the second half, but much like the first, William & Mary had an answer for each JMU run and a 3-pointer by Milon midway through the second half gave the Tribe an 11-point lead.
JMU climbed back within two, and stayed in striking distance most of the way. But just as its done much of the final three weeks of the season, William & Mary made just enough plays down the stretch to hang on and a loss sent JMU to the play-in round of the CAA Tourney for the third time in Rowe’s three seasons leading his alma mater.
“To be great in this league, you have to convert on plays,” Wilson said. “So 16 and 15 is all good, but if it doesn’t result in a W, it doesn’t mean nothing to me.”
