March of 2024 is where you start. Twelfth-seeded James Madison, a program most of America knew as a football school with a good band, walked into the NCAA tournament and throttled fifth-seeded Wisconsin 72-61 — the program’s first tournament win, delivered with a swagger that said the Dukes hadn’t come to be happy-to-be-here. They defended like maniacs, they shared the ball like the 2014 Spurs, and for one long weekend in Brooklyn, they were the story of the bracket. Duke ended the run in the second round, but it didn’t matter. JMU basketball had arrived.
Here’s the thing people forget: the 2024 magic wasn’t out of nowhere. It was the dividend of a decade-plus of patient, serious program-building in Harrisonburg. The Dukes had been to the dance in 2013, winning the CAA title under Matt Brady. And long before that, they were a March regular in the early 1980s — three straight tournament trips in 1981, 1982, and 1983 under Lou Campanelli, a run that remains the program’s golden-age foundation. The 2024 team didn’t invent JMU basketball. It reawakened it.
Mark Byington was the architect of the reawakening, and the moment he left for Vanderbilt after the Wisconsin upset, the natural question hung over the Shenandoah Valley: was the magic about the coach, or the program? James Madison answered by hiring Preston Spradlin on March 29, 2024 — a coach who’d built a genuine mid-major power at Morehead State over eight seasons — and watching him keep the machine humming. Spradlin won his debut, led the Dukes to their third straight 20-win season in 2024-25, ripped off a 10-game conference winning streak — just the third such streak in program history — and grabbed a share of the Sun Belt regular-season championship. Then the Sun Belt coaches picked JMU first in the preseason poll heading into 2025-26. The message was unmistakable: this isn’t a one-March wonder. This is a program.
Spradlin’s roster-building tells you exactly what kind of program it is. The 2025-26 Dukes are a veteran, transfer-portal-smart group — the modern mid-major formula, executed well. Eli Wilborn, the 6-foot-8 junior forward from Middletown, Connecticut via Duquesne, anchors the frontcourt at 252 pounds of blue-collar presence. Justin Taylor, the 6-foot-6 senior from Charlottesville via Syracuse, brings high-major pedigree and two-way versatility. Justin McBride, a former four-star recruit from Plano, Texas who came through Oklahoma State and Nevada, gives JMU an inside-out mismatch weapon; Spradlin said his addition would “change the entire complexion” of the team, and you don’t say that about a role player.
The backcourt is where the Dukes’ identity lives. Ike Cornish, the 6-foot-6 senior from Baltimore via Nicholls, is a long, disruptive guard built for Sun Belt wars. Cliff Davis, a fifth-year guard from Thomasville, Georgia via UTRGV, and Bradley Douglas, a fifth-year from Eustis, Florida via Georgia Southern, bring the kind of grown-man steadiness that wins road games in February. Paul Lewis — a redshirt junior from Woodbridge, Virginia who started his career at Vanderbilt — and sophomore Paul Jones III, a Suffolk, Virginia native via Winthrop, round out a guard rotation with real depth. This is a team built to do what JMU does: defend, share, and out-tough people.
That identity — defense first, togetherness always — is what made the Wisconsin win possible, and it’s what gives JMU its edge in a Sun Belt that keeps getting better. The league wars are real: App State, Georgia Southern, Marshall, the annual gauntlet where everybody’s building is loud and nobody gives you anything. JMU’s history in the league is short — the Dukes only arrived from the CAA in 2022 — but it’s already decorated: a tournament title, a regular-season crown, and that 10-game winning streak. The program belonged immediately.
The building matters, too. The Atlantic Union Bank Center — 8,500 seats, opened in 2020, one of the finest mid-major arenas in the country — has become a genuine fortress. When the Dukes are rolling and the student section is shaking the place, it’s one of the toughest trips in the Sun Belt. The Wisconsin upset remains the building’s immortal memory, but the 2024-25 regular-season title run gave it a second life: proof that the arena could hum for a championship chase, not just a single magical March.
And the culture keeps compounding. The JMU alumni team, the Founding Fathers, competed at The Basketball Tournament in the summer of 2025 — with the Dukes hosting at the Atlantic Union Bank Center — a sign of a program whose former players still want to wear the name. That’s what winning does: it builds a family that outlasts any single roster.
So what’s the ceiling now? The 2026-27 season shapes up as the next chapter of the Spradlin era — a program no longer sneaking up on anyone, picked to win its league, with a veteran core and a coach who has won everywhere he’s been. The dream is another March run, and the math says it’s realistic: the Sun Belt is a one-bid league most years, but it’s also a league where a tested, veteran team can go win three games in three days and ruin somebody’s bracket all over again.
What defines James Madison is the 2024 magic — a 12 seed’s masterpiece over Wisconsin, the program’s arrival on the national stage. But the deeper truth is the one Spradlin keeps proving: the magic wasn’t a fluke. It was a foundation. The Dukes are building something in Harrisonburg, and the next run is the dream that keeps the whole Valley believing.