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Barber: JMU’s Resilient Culture Shows Up Again
10/12/2024 10:30:00 AM | Football
By Mike Barber
JMUSports.com correspondent
HARRISONBURG, Va. – Getting back to Harrisonburg around 4 a.m. on Sunday morning, bleary from travel and frustrated with the outcome of their road loss at ULM, James Madison's football players headed to their homes to get some sleep.
The coaching staff went to work getting ready for the challenge of facing Coastal Carolina in five days.
"Our coaches pulled all-nighters," said linebacker Jacob Dobbs.
Their work, and the effort of the players during the short week, paid off Thursday night with a resounding defeat of visiting Coastal Carolina, a 39-7 blowout that may have been the Dukes' most complete performance of the season.
"Everybody fought. Everybody was resilient," said quarterback Alonza Barnett III. "Coach [Bob] Chesney challenged the whole team and I believe we stepped up to the plate."
Barnett led an offense that amassed 421 total yards, scored on all four trips inside the red zone, while the JMU defense stymied a high-octane Chanticleer offense, holding it to season lows in points and yards.
Most importantly and impressively, the Dukes (5-1 overall, 1-1 SBC) showed no ill-effects of the quick turnaround. Their ball carriers broke tackles, their receivers made contested catches and their defenders shed blocks to make tackles.
"After last week, we really didn't bring it that way," Chesney said. "I think that's something we all understood we needed to do. I thought we all showed up and got our pads down, firm foot on the ground, and ran through a lot of tackles and blocks on both sides of the ball."
Chesney has now won 10 straight games following a loss, dating back to his tenure as the coach at FCS Holy Cross. The last time one of his team's dropped back-to-back games was in 2019, when it lost at Yale and then at Syracuse, in its FBS game.
At JMU, he has taken over a program with a similar pedigree of bouncing back. Since 2000, the Dukes are now 20-3 following their first loss of the season.
Part of their success Saturday was a credit to how Chesney and his organization managed the short week.
The team got right back to work Monday morning, crammed in extra time watching Coastal Carolina video, and was still holding walk-throughs to tighten its understanding of the game plan at Wednesday night and Thursday morning.
The practices had to be carefully scripted to get in the work that was necessary to earn a Sun Belt Conference win, without being too physically taxing on players who had just battled through 90-degree temperatures in the loss in Louisiana on Saturday. JMU used GPS tracking data to carefully monitor the players' workloads in the days leading up to the game.
Chesney praised the work of the program's strength and conditioning, athletic training and nutrition staffs in helping getting the Dukes game-ready for the nationally televised Thursday night meeting with Coastal Carolina.
"It was such a different week," he said. "We had to get our legs back. Our strength and conditioning staff did a great job with the sports science side of it. From nutrition to rest to all the things we did, it was a full group effort to get to this Thursday night game day. And I thought our guys did a good job with it."
The players were quick to praise their coaches, who now have a few extra days to prepare for the next game, at Georgia Southern on Oct. 19.
"We don't do that without the guys who work down these halls," Dobbs said, motioning toward the football offices. "What you saw on that field today was the 11 guys on the field executing at a high level, but within the framework of our defense that these guys worked so hard, every single day, pulling all-nighters this week to get us ready."
Ready they were, leaving behind the previous game's disappointment and proving that resilience is still a hallmark of the program.
"The week was so short for us, and we just made it happen," said defensive lineman Lloyd Summerall III. "We knew that wasn't our best. … It was good to just come out here and play the game that we know we can play."
This story was contributed by Mike Barber, a reporter who has covered JMU for two decades at the Daily News-Record and Richmond Times-Dispatch.
JMUSports.com correspondent
HARRISONBURG, Va. – Getting back to Harrisonburg around 4 a.m. on Sunday morning, bleary from travel and frustrated with the outcome of their road loss at ULM, James Madison's football players headed to their homes to get some sleep.
The coaching staff went to work getting ready for the challenge of facing Coastal Carolina in five days.
"Our coaches pulled all-nighters," said linebacker Jacob Dobbs.
Their work, and the effort of the players during the short week, paid off Thursday night with a resounding defeat of visiting Coastal Carolina, a 39-7 blowout that may have been the Dukes' most complete performance of the season.
"Everybody fought. Everybody was resilient," said quarterback Alonza Barnett III. "Coach [Bob] Chesney challenged the whole team and I believe we stepped up to the plate."
Barnett led an offense that amassed 421 total yards, scored on all four trips inside the red zone, while the JMU defense stymied a high-octane Chanticleer offense, holding it to season lows in points and yards.
Most importantly and impressively, the Dukes (5-1 overall, 1-1 SBC) showed no ill-effects of the quick turnaround. Their ball carriers broke tackles, their receivers made contested catches and their defenders shed blocks to make tackles.
"After last week, we really didn't bring it that way," Chesney said. "I think that's something we all understood we needed to do. I thought we all showed up and got our pads down, firm foot on the ground, and ran through a lot of tackles and blocks on both sides of the ball."
Chesney has now won 10 straight games following a loss, dating back to his tenure as the coach at FCS Holy Cross. The last time one of his team's dropped back-to-back games was in 2019, when it lost at Yale and then at Syracuse, in its FBS game.
At JMU, he has taken over a program with a similar pedigree of bouncing back. Since 2000, the Dukes are now 20-3 following their first loss of the season.
Part of their success Saturday was a credit to how Chesney and his organization managed the short week.
The team got right back to work Monday morning, crammed in extra time watching Coastal Carolina video, and was still holding walk-throughs to tighten its understanding of the game plan at Wednesday night and Thursday morning.
The practices had to be carefully scripted to get in the work that was necessary to earn a Sun Belt Conference win, without being too physically taxing on players who had just battled through 90-degree temperatures in the loss in Louisiana on Saturday. JMU used GPS tracking data to carefully monitor the players' workloads in the days leading up to the game.
Chesney praised the work of the program's strength and conditioning, athletic training and nutrition staffs in helping getting the Dukes game-ready for the nationally televised Thursday night meeting with Coastal Carolina.
"It was such a different week," he said. "We had to get our legs back. Our strength and conditioning staff did a great job with the sports science side of it. From nutrition to rest to all the things we did, it was a full group effort to get to this Thursday night game day. And I thought our guys did a good job with it."
The players were quick to praise their coaches, who now have a few extra days to prepare for the next game, at Georgia Southern on Oct. 19.
"We don't do that without the guys who work down these halls," Dobbs said, motioning toward the football offices. "What you saw on that field today was the 11 guys on the field executing at a high level, but within the framework of our defense that these guys worked so hard, every single day, pulling all-nighters this week to get us ready."
Ready they were, leaving behind the previous game's disappointment and proving that resilience is still a hallmark of the program.
"The week was so short for us, and we just made it happen," said defensive lineman Lloyd Summerall III. "We knew that wasn't our best. … It was good to just come out here and play the game that we know we can play."
This story was contributed by Mike Barber, a reporter who has covered JMU for two decades at the Daily News-Record and Richmond Times-Dispatch.
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