JMU Basketball Scores First D1 Win in Over a Month

| Posted on |

With their conference opener right around the corner, the James Madison basketball team went and got themselves on track. JMU beat Florida Atlantic 79-70 at home behind a game-high 19 points from senior standout Matt Lewis. The win was their first since December 20th (Alice Lloyd) and their first win over an actual D-1 program since November 29th when they topped Radford 67-59. What’s more, FAU was ranked 53 spots higher than JMU in the KenPom rankings going into the matchup.

The Dukes took a 29-25 lead into halftime before busting out 50 points in the second half. They held FAU to just 39.7 percent shooting and 26.9 percent shooting from deep.

Freshman forward Justin Amadi had 17 for the Dukes, a career-high, and the bench contributed 32 points. Julien Wooden led the bench mob with 12 while Vado Morse added 10 of his own.

James Madison, who was coming off a bad loss to No. 306 Morgan State, will now go into CAA play with a 4-4 record. They’ll open their conference slate with back-to-back home games against Elon.