Opportunity eludes ODU
Unbeaten Dukes can breathe after withstanding the Monarchs’ upset bid
HARRISONBURG — The so-called Royal Rivalry turned into a royal pain for Old Dominion by the time it was all said and done.
But the Monarchs hope to learn from it and build on it.
Jordan McCloud passed for 340 yards and three touchdowns, and No. 25 James Madison survived a scare late Saturday in a tense 30-27 Sun Belt Conference victory over rival Old Dominion at Bridgeforth Stadium.
The loss kept the Monarchs (4-4, 3-2 Sun Belt) two wins shy of bowl eligibility with four games left, starting next week at home against Coastal Carolina.
And they had two cracks at getting closer.
Trailing by the final margin, the Monarchs got the ball on their own 9-yard line with 32 seconds left, but quarterback Grant Wilson fumbled as he was sacked three plays later to seal the Dukes’ win.
ODU was driving near midfield with just less than two minutes left in the game and a chance to take the lead.
But an odd run up the middle on third-and-14 went almost nowhere, and a Wilson pass fell incomplete on fourth down.
“That one stings because we had ’em,” Monarchs coach Ricky Rahne said.
“I don’t believe in moral victories, and I never will.”
Reggie Brown caught nine passes for 142 yards and two touchdowns for JMU (8-0, 5-0), which had 463 total yards to the Monarchs’ 415. Elijah Sarratt added eight receptions for 139 yards and one score.
ODU’s Grant Wilson passed for 277 yards and two touchdowns. He was sacked five times.
The teams combined for four
touchdowns and a safety in a 30-point third quarter in which the Dukes could never seem to finish off the visitors.
That they came close to completing the comeback strengthened the Monarchs’ confidence.
“We’ll line up against anyone,” Wilson said. “Play our game, play our style, trust the guys around us to make plays. That’s just kind of how we roll.”
With a spooky-looking full moon peeking from behind slow-moving clouds above the sold-out venue, the Monarchs were attempting to beat a ranked team for the second time in program history. In 2018, they knocked off No. 13 Virginia Tech in a non-conference game.
“This is a good team,” ODU safety Shawn Asbury said. “When we play together and we don’t make mistakes, I feel like we can go out there and beat anybody.”
Ethan Sanchez kicked a 23-yard field goal with 10:14 left in the game to pull the Monarchs to within 30-27.
Kadarius Calloway’s 21-yard touchdown run with 2:01 remaining in the third shrank ODU”s deficit to 30-24.
McCloud’s 21-yard scoring pass to Brown widened JMU’s lead to 30-17 with just less than four minutes left in the third quarter,
Wilson’s 10-yard touchdown pass to Javon Harvey pulled the Monarchs to within 23-17 with 7:36 to go in the third quarter.
McCloud’s 3-yard touchdown pass to Sarratt in the left corner of the end zone stretched the Dukes’ lead to 23-10 five minutes into the second half.
After taking a third-down snap while practically leaning back onto the goal post, Wilson was sacked for a safety that gave JMU a 16-10 lead just seconds into the third quarter.
“I probably held the ball a little too long.” Wilson said. “I should’ve got it out. It gave them a little momentum.”
The Royal Rivalry Challenge, named for the schools’ mascots and formalized in 2022, is an all-sports contest that awards the winning team from either school a point per win. A champion is
crowned at the end of the spring sports season.
The Monarchs rushed for 138 yards, 40 more than JMU’s elite rushing defense had surrendered all season.
Asked about the third-and-14 handoff, Rahne didn’t dodge the question.
“That’s when we were getting a lot of our rushing yards, is on those type of situations,” he said. “Obviously, everyone likes to talk about how they have the No. 1 rush defense in the country. Part of that
is because they were one of the top teams in the country at sacking the quarterback. So that was what we were doing in order to be able to keep them off-balance, and it worked for us a number of different times during the game.”
A stadium-record crowd of 26,239 watched as the game’s start was delayed briefly when smoke from the Dukes’ field entrance failed to clear right away.