Rumor has it: A Tale of Two Convos
For JMU basketball, it is the best of times. It is the worst of times.
By Brian Hansen, sports editor
Posted on February 15, 2007

Kenny Brooks and his women’s team sit at 22-2 overall, 13-0 in the Colonial Athletic Association and are the most likely team to unseat 15-time CAA champion Old Dominion as the top team in the conference.

The men’s team sits at 7-18 overall, 4-11 in conference, which is good enough to “improve” to just the third-worst team in the CAA, and have failed to ever win three consecutive games since Dean Keener took over head coaching duties for Sherman Dillard.

To say these teams are at opposite ends of the spectrum would be an understatement.

To truly grasp the contrast of these teams, you need only compare their success at the Convocation Center. The women’s team has won 24-straight at home dating back to March 3, 2005 against Delaware. Last season the team went undefeated in Harrisonburg, winning all 13 games at home and this season they currently sit at 11-0 at home. All that stands in their way of a second consecutive unbeaten season at home are contests against George Mason and Towson.

The men, on the other hand, have a current winning streak of zero games at home, and sit at a less than impressive 4-9 at the Convo this season.

Keener, though, is fully aware of the dichotomy between the men’s and women’s success at home.

“Make no mistake, we need to make the Convo a difficult place to play,” the Dukes’ third-year head coach said. “It needs to be a place where our guys never take for granted but just assume this is a place where we’re going to win tonight. The women have done that now over the course of some two years.”

While it has been nearly two full years for Brooks and his crew since they’ve dropped a home game, it hasn’t always been that they were unbeatable at home.

“It hasn’t been every year, but it seems like it,” Brooks, who is in his fifth year as the Dukes’ coach, said. “However, now that our crowds are starting to get bigger, it has definitely become a great home-court advantage for us.”

During his tenure, JMU has gone 52-9 at the Convocation Center but were just 8-5 in his first full year as head coach, which was also the same year that four of this year five starters joined the team.

With seniors Meredith Alexis, Lesley Dickinson, Shirley McCall and Andrea Benvenuto along with junior Tamera Young, the Dukes make up the most experienced team in the nation. Over the last four years the group has started a total of 384 games, which is 35 games above the second-most experienced team, Oklahoma.

Playing so many games at home has bred a familiarity with playing and eventually winning at home for Alexis and crew.

The men’s team is starting one junior (Terrance Carter), who is in his first season at Madison, three sophomores (Juwann James, Colby Santos and Kyle Swanston) and a freshman (Pierre Curtis). So it may just be that they are still learning to win at home and how to use the home court to your advantage in close games.

“As you’re putting together a program, that is certainly something you have to do and we haven’t done it,” Keener said. “Not to the level that we would like to.”

Whatever it is that lends to the disparity between the two teams, only time will tell. But, for Kenny Brooks and his team, the time to win at home is now, and coach Keener and his team can only hope their time is in the not too distant future.

Brian Hansen is a senior SMAD major with a concentration in print journalism.