Survival Of The Fittest

HARRISONBURG — The thought was repeated over and over again.

“It was tough,” James Madison senior wide receiver John Miller said. “Since we were the number one team coming into the season, we got everybody’s best shot.”

Miller spoke with a smile on his face as his teammates celebrated a few feet away outside the locker room at Rhodes Stadium following the Dukes’ 31-3 win at Elon to cap a perfect regular season and secure a second straight outright Colonial Athletic Association title.

There wasn’t any doubt this past Saturday that JMU was the best team on the field, but to survive all 11 games with opponents mostly playing above what their record would indicate brought a sense that the Dukes could breathe during the trophy presentation.

They knew they would have a bye into the second round of the postseason.

“It felt a lot harder than it was last year,” second-year JMU coach Mike Houston said after beating the Phoenix. “You just felt like every week, you got everybody’s best. Everybody geared up for you each week.

“To be in that situation, for our kids to go out and focus on what’s in front of them and not listen to the noise, but to just take things one game at a time and one play at a time as preseason number one and go wire-to-wire, it says a lot about the maturity of this team and says a lot about what they have.”

Top-seeded JMU hosts the winner of Saturday’s first-round meeting between Patriot League champion Lehigh and CAA runner-up Stony Brook on Dec. 2 at 2 p.m. inside Bridgeforth Stadium.

Last year, the Dukes were the fourth seed and dashed to Toyota Stadium in Frisco, Texas — the site of the FCS title game this year as well — by beating New Hampshire and Sam Houston State before upending the previous five-time reigning champ North Dakota State in the semifinal at the FargoDome. The season culminated with a 28-14 win over Youngstown State in the championship.

This time around, JMU has home-field advantage up until the championship game, but Houston and company still believe — based on the experiences through last year’s playoff run — that each week over the next month will only get more difficult.

“Every single game in the playoffs is everybody’s best shot and we’ve talked a lot about getting everyone’s best shot throughout the entire year, but when you get to the playoffs all the chips are on the table,” senior quarterback Bryan Schor said Sunday after the team was awarded the No. 1 seed. “Everyone is pulling out everything they have to get the win, so I think playing the game, the physical games, is going to be the most difficult part about making the run in the playoffs.”

What Houston hopes is that how JMU managed to finish unbeaten in the regular season carries into December.

He said every opponent raised its level of play exponentially when they faced the Dukes.

JMU won in the final minute against Richmond earlier this month. A September road win at Delaware was competitive through the fourth quarter.

“Look at Richmond. That’s probably the best game Richmond played all year,” Houston said. “You look at Maine. You look at New Hampshire. You look at Villanova. Delaware.

“Every game that we went into, we went in as the number one team in the country. And anytime you’re sitting there with that label, everybody is going to be gunning to knock you off and it gives them a little more juice, so it did make it difficult.”

The Dukes’ path to get back to the championship game could include meetings in the quarterfinal against No. 8 Southern Utah or the semifinal against No. 4 Central Arkansas, if the highest-seeded teams win out. Fifth-seeded South Dakota State, which features a couple of NFL prospects, could be a potential semifinal opponent, too.

Senior safety Raven Greene said the approach JMU used in the regular season wouldn’t change for the postseason.

“We just really had to make sure we kept a level head,” Greene said. “We had to be us and that’s something that Coach Houston and [defensive coordinator Bob] Trott emphasize all the time.”