HARRISONBURG — Both sides have the same dilemma.

“But that’s what makes football so good,” James Madison spur Wayne Davis said. “You really have to put two and two together to find out a good game plan.”

JMU opens its season in nine days at West Virginia. Neither the Dukes nor the Mountaineers know as much as they’d like to about each other since both teams dealt with coaching transition this offseason.

Curt Cignetti was hired to be the JMU coach and replaced Mike Houston, who left for the same job at East Carolina. West Virginia hired Neal Brown away from Troy and he steps in for Dana Holgorsen, who took the same gig at Houston. The first-year coaches, Cignetti and Brown, then brought in their own assistants to create entirely new staffs for their respective programs.

Earlier this week Cignetti said the Dukes would begin their West Virginia-focused practices today following two-plus weeks of training camp.

This will give Madison a jump on the unknowns.

“It’s a little bit more of guessing as to what they’re going to do,” Dukes offensive coordinator Shane Montgomery said. “With West Virginia, you’re looking at their personnel that’s coming back even though they’re going to have a different scheme. So when you’re watching West Virginia film, you’re really just watching it to look at their personnel and get a gauge for what those guys can do. Obviously, Troy’s defensive staff came to West Virginia, so that’s what you base [scheme] on.”

Davis and quarterback Ben DiNucci said they’ve already watched West Virginia’s spring game to get a feel for the Mountaineers’ roster and made sure to watch tape of Troy from last season to understand how WVU could operate the Saturday after next.

Troy’s defense was third best in the FBS with 31 takeaways last year. Former Troy defensive coordinator Vic Koenning followed Brown to West Virginia.

“It’s tricky though because their defensive coordinator is from Troy,” DiNucci said. “So we’ve got to watch some of their film to see schematically what they’ll do, but got to watch some West Virginia tape, too, to see their players and who they’ve got back and how those guys play.”

West Virginia returns more starters on defense — defensive end Reese Donahue, linebacker Dylan Tonkery, safety JoVanni Stewart and cornerbacks Hakeem Bailey and Keith Washington Jr. — than it does on offense. Though JMU defensive coordinator Corey Hetherman got a bit of reprieve when West Virginia named Oklahoma transfer Austin Kendall its starting quarterback a few hours after JMU named DiNucci its starter this past Tuesday.

At least Hetherman now knows who the opponent’s signal-caller is.

“It’s a new coordinator. It’s a new head coach. It’s going to be a new quarterback,” Hetherman said. “They only return three out of 11 starters on offense, so it’s our job to do our research and find out who these guys are that they’re going to plug into these positions.”

Hetherman said he has an idea of what some West Virginia offensive players are capable of. Mountaineers offensive lineman Colton McKivitz is the only preseason All-Big choice the team has, but fellow offensive lineman Josh Sills has started 22 games and running back Kennedy McKoy has rushed for 1,870 yards and 19 touchdowns in his career.

“The two offensive linemen that return are very good football players,” Hetherman said. “I know they have six guys with game experience upfront. They have three running backs who have done a really good job with the football, so we know they’re going to try to run the ball and pound the football on us. Some tight ends return and they have a couple of receivers that played and had some receptions and did some good things on film.”

Davis said: “I looked at some of the Troy cutups for formations and the type of offense they’re going to run, so I’m trying to mix it in together right now.”

Montgomery said, regardless of what West Virginia does or who the Mountaineers use on offense or defense, that JMU must execute its own plan of attack.

“I think when you go into the first game, I think you want to be simple yet sophisticated,” Montgomery said. “You want to make sure we can play fast, but not simple enough that they know exactly what we’re doing every time. So we’ll find out what we do best from here until Aug. 31, who our best personnel is and we’ll have a good game plan as we hit the field on that Saturday and we’ll see how our guys react to playing in that atmosphere.”

James Madison cornerback Rashad Robinson was named to the Senior Bowl watch list by the organization on Wednesday.

Robinson, a fifth-year senior, missed all of 2018 with turf toe, but was an All-American in 2017. He named a preseason All-American and to the preseason All-Colonial Athletic Association team earlier this summer.

In his career, he has 103 tackles and 10 interceptions.

This past January, former Dukes cornerback Jimmy Moreland became the first JMU product to play in the Senior Bowl. Moreland is now a member of the Washington Redskins after the franchise drafted him in the seventh round of this past April’s NFL Draft.