The Golden Eagles tangle with a Dukes team that just barely missed the NCAA tourney with a spot in the WBIT quarterfinals on the line.
2025 WBIT
Second Round
#1 James Madison Dukes (29-5, 18-0 Sun Belt) vs Marquette Golden Eagles (21-10, 12-6 Big East)
Date: Sunday, March 23, 2025
Time: 3pm Central
Location: Atlantic Union Bank Center, Harrisonburg, Virginia
Streaming: ESPN+
Live Stats: Stat Broadcast
Twitter Updates: @MarquetteWBB
Bluesky Updates: @AnonymousEagle
All Time Series: Marquette leads, 2-0
Current Streak: Marquette won a pair of neutral site games in 1992 and 1994 against the Dukes. The first was hosted by Arizona State, and the second was hosted by Iowa, and Marquette won both by double digits.
When it comes to postseason tournament play, the “how did these two teams get here” item is a big part of a preview. There’s a hyper-specific version of this for James Madison, but also a 30,000 foot version that’s particularly important here. The literal version for the Dukes is they beat Davidson in the first round of the WBIT, 77-50, behind a four-pack of double digit scoring outings led by 19 from Kseniia Kozlova, who tacked on 10 rebounds, too. That final score is lopsided, but that was very much not the case after the first quarter when Davidson was leading, or at the half when JMU was up five, or even heading to the fourth quarter when the Dukes were up eight.
The 30,000 view of “how did James Madison get here?” is two overtime losses. As you can see from the top of the page, JMU has lost five times this season. Three of them we can ignore: at Notre Dame, home against Texas, and at NC State. Three losses, all blowouts, all to top 20 NET teams, all of whom are hosting the first two rounds of the NCAA tournament with a #3 seed or better. Whatever, things happen.
JMU’s only other non-conference loss was 85-83 in overtime to Northern Arizona on a neutral floor in St. Petersburg, Florida. The Dukes got pushed to overtime after holding a four point lead late after a wild swing back and forth in regulation, and James Madison was up seven early in the overtime period before handing the lead back, and a Peyton McDaniel turnover with 31 seconds left switched the chance to win from JMU to NAU. That still left three seconds left to figure it out, but McDaniel missed a layup, and Kozlova missed the front end of two free throws on the offensive rebound…. and JMU committed a lane violation on the second.
Boom: Quadrant 3 loss.
The other overtime loss came in the Sun Belt tournament championship game. James Madison led by as many as 17 in the first half, but couldn’t hold it together after that, eventually handing the lead over to Arkansas State in the fourth quarter and giving up a game tying bucket with 46 seconds left. The Dukes never led in the extra session after a 7-1 opening by ASU, and that was that.
Boom: Quadrant 4 loss and no automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.
18-0 in regular season Sun Belt games. 20 game winning streak. 28-3 in regulation this season, with all three losses to teams judged by the selection committee to be top 12 in the country. Not good enough for an at-large bid.
And so here we are.
The four-pack of double digit scorers thing for James Madison is pretty standard for them, as they have four women who average between 10 and 17 points per game. Peyton McDaniel is the leader at 16.4 per night, and she’s going to do an awful lot of her shooting from behind the three-point line. 206 of her 448 attempts on the year are long balls, and she converts 34.5% to makes. The scoring is heavily centered on that group of four, and the rebounding is, too. McDaniel leads the team in rebounding at 8.4 per game as a 6-foot guard, but Ashanti Barnes (6’2”, 7.9/game) and Kseniia Kozlova (6’3”, 7.5/game) aren’t that far behind her.
This game is probably going to be won on the defensive end, one way or another. The Dukes are not killing it on the offensive end, no matter how diverse their scoring is. They struggle to shoot threes as a team (under 30%), and they’re a little reliant on not turning it over and getting to the free throw line to build up their efficiency. Going the other way, James Madison kind of maps out like Marquette as a defensive presence: They force you into bad shots, they don’t force turnovers almost to the point of it being a problem, and they hit the defensive glass hard. That’s not different from what MU does, with the Golden Eagles being worse at shooting and rebounding defense but better at forcing turnovers.
The point is that somebody’s defense is going to end up dictating how this game goes. If Marquette can dial up the defense that locked down Drake in the second half on Thursday, it might be the Golden Eagles moving on to the quarterfinals. Heck, if Marquette can find a way to dial up the offense that buried the Bulldogs, that might be a way to get it done as well. Defense has been MU’s calling card all year, but when the offense clicks, it really gets moving. It’s just never been consistent for 40 minutes pretty much all year.
At the end of the day, what we have here is a contest between a team that’s probably still annoyed at missing the NCAA tournament and a team that’s thrilled to be overachieving their preseason projections and just wants to keep their head coach’s first season going as long as possible. Statistically, it looks like two evenly matched teams, and the BartTorvik.com projection bears that out: JMU by 1, 66-65. Emotions and Want To might be the difference on Sunday afternoon.