Women’s Hoops Carries No. 1 Seed into Sun Belt Championship

NEW ORLEANS – James Madison turned in an unblemished 18-0 record in league play to earn the No. 1 seed and a bye to the tournament semifinals of the 2025 Hercules Tires Sun Belt Conference Women's Basketball Championship.

The conference tournament will be held March 4-10 at the Pensacola Bay Center in Pensacola, Fla.

JMU will compete in the first semifinal game, scheduled for March 9 at 12:30 p.m. ET (11:30 a.m. CT). There, the Dukes will face the winner of Game 9 between No. 4 seed Coastal Carolina and the victor of Game 7.

Arkansas State (19-10, 15-3 SBC) earned the No. 2 seed, while Troy (19-12, 13-5 SBC) notched the No. 3 spot in the conference tournament.

The Dukes are pursuing their second conference tournament title in the last three seasons and an automatic bid to the NCAA Women's Basketball Championship for the first time since 2023. Meanwhile, JMU claimed the outright Sun Belt regular-season conference title for the first time as a member of the league. The regular-season title is the program's 15th overall, second since joining the Sun Belt in 2022-23 and first outright since the 2018-19 campaign when the Dukes went 17-1 as members of the Colonial Athletic Association.

JMU completed the 2024-25 regular season on a 19-game winning streak, the longest such streak under the direction of Head Coach Sean O'Regan and the most consecutive victories by the program since posting a 20-game winning streak from Jan. 8 through March 12, 2016. Additionally, the Dukes' 27-4 overall record marks the 18th time in the last 20 years that the program has achieved 20 or more wins in a season.

At 18-0 in Sun Belt play, JMU has recorded its fourth season with a perfect conference record, previously going 12-0 in the Colonial Athletic Association in the 1986-87, 1987-88 and 1988-89 seasons. Moreover, the 2024-25 Dukes are the eighth team in league history to go undefeated in conference play since the league expanded to double-digit conference games for the 1991-92 season, joining Louisiana Tech (1993-94, 1995-96, 1998-99, 1999-00, 2000-01) and Middle Tennessee (2006-07, 2011-12).

Action will commence on Tuesday, March 4 with the second, third and fourth rounds to follow on consecutive days. The quarterfinals will take place on Saturday, March 8, and the semifinals on Sunday, March 9. The championship game will take place at 2 p.m. ET (1 p.m. CT) on Monday, March 10, and will broadcast nationally on ESPN2, while the rest of the action will be on ESPN+.

For more information, click to visit the Hercules Tires Sun Belt Conference Women's Basketball Championship page. Tickets remain available through Ticketmaster.

Calendar