Virginia Tech at James Madison. Thank the WNIT for this arranged marriage that comes to Harrisonburg on Thursday when the Dukes and Hokies face off for a spot in the Sweet 16. Sure, reaching the final eight is at stake, but that other storyline is pretty special no matter how much the coaches of both programs want the night to be about the kids who play the game.
Kenny Brooks is coming home exactly three years to the day from when he left it to coach in the ACC. Waynesboro’s own is a product of JMU’s College of Business (make time, Coach, to check out the digs that are set to replace Showker along with the new D Hall) and forever weaved into the fabric of Dukes basketball. He played for Lefty, was a men’s assistant and was a woman’s assistant before becoming the winningest coach in JMU history.
Yet he returns to the Valley in a weird spot. A few weeks ago, he likely never imagined himself drawing up plays in the visitors locker room (bet you can count the times on one hand he’s been in there) at the Convo against a handful of players he recruited. He’ll share a sideline separated by the stat crew on press row with Sean O’Regan, his pupil and disciple.
“I feel a little bit for Kenny; I really do. I talked to him today,” said O’Regan, who clarified that all sentiment will be wiped away at tipoff.
Nobody doubted these teams would play one day, but a wild set of circumstances makes it sooner rather than later.
It’s been a draining couple of weeks for the Dukes and Hokies. Make no mistake. Playing at the end of March is a privilege, even though both of these teams imagined themselves in the bigger dance. The Hokies couldn’t solve a brutal ACC despite nearly pulling off a handful of upsets. Close doesn’t translate to an at-large bid. Contrast that with JMU, the best team in the CAA all season until freakish injuries to leading scorers Kamiah Smalls and Lexie Barrier came at the worst possible time, the quarterfinals of the CAA Tournament. The NCAA released a graphic showing the Dukes as one of the last four out, a slight to their 25-5 record at the time but not surprising given how the committee operates.
Achieving in the WNIT is often about who wants to be there and who wants to pack it in. Tech and JMU opted for the former.
With Smalls and Barrier sitting out the Dukes’ WNIT opener against MEAC regular-season champion North Carolina A&T, we weren’t sure the Dukes would win. Ugly as it was though, they prevailed, and the Hokies dominated Furman in their first-round game. More so, we doubted JMU’s chances against South Florida in the second round; how healthy could Smalls be, after all? Asked and answered with her 17-point, two-assist, 28-minute performance despite a broken ring finger and a taped hand. (She’s 90-95 percent, O’Regan tells us. Barrier, with a trio of broken fingers, is done for the season.)
With Tech’s victory over VCU in the books earlier in the day on Sunday, O’Regan found out about 30 seconds before the final buzzer that JMU would play host to Brooks’ Hokies.
Surreal.
“It would be emotionally draining for me,” O’Regan admitted.
These two guys don’t just share an alma mater and a commitment to the two most successful programs in Virginia. They were fast friends dating back to O’Regan showing up in Harrisonburg as a 17-year-old, looking for a manager’s spot on the team Sherman Dillard coached. Brooks was Dillard’s assistant. What blossomed was both friendship and successful professional relationship with O’Regan serving as Brooks’ assistant for nine seasons, a span that included the first JMU win in the NCAA Tournament since 1991.
After the Hofstra loss two weeks ago, O’Regan appreciated the text from Books “He’s there when I need him,” he said.
That brings us to the now, with Brooks ready to coach his first game at the Convo since JMU’s 73-72 victory over Elon on Feb. 28, 2016. Since then, his Dukes have fared quite nicely under O’Regan, 67-25 in his first head coaching job with 11 of those losses coming his first season.
It’s been a smooth transition — one of the reasons everybody wearing purple is stoked for Thursday’s game. On one hand, O’Regan says, “If he had left and they brought in a different coach, if I had made their life miserable . . .” who’s to say what Thursday night would be about?
“But they have pride in what we’re doing, and that’s the fun. We hope we can come out in front of 4,000 to 5,000 people and beat an ACC team at home.”
Is there extra with Kenny in the building? How could there not be?
But bottom line for O’Regan and this team and he’s adamant — “I swear, and I really mean this, for me, I feel like I need to honor him. I understand as well as anybody that you come back here and that’s a big deal for him. Yeah, you want to win for 2,000 reasons, but for me it’s an opportunity for our kids to play an ACC school at our place. It’s going to be an awesome crowd. This is not an out-dual Kenny night.”
This is about survive and advance.
Virginia Tech at JMU. 7 p.m. Thursday. Winner gets Georgetown.