How James Madison upset Wisconsin in the NCAA tournament

Or whoever wasn’t listening two hours before but is surely listening now.

The non-upset was the Dukes’ 72-61 first-round win over Wisconsin. They never trailed in the program’s first win in the tournament’s main draw since 1983. But because of their seeds — No. 5 for the Badgers, No. 12 for JMU — the game wasn’t supposed to unfold how it did. The Dukes weren’t supposed to force 19 turnovers. They weren’t supposed to lead by double digits throughout. In the end, they weren’t supposed to celebrate, no matter how much they believed they would.

At the start of the night, in their shoe box of a locker room, Coach Mark Byington wrote two short phrases on a whiteboard:

“And so we did,” senior guard Noah Freidel said. “For 40 straight minutes.”

Where did the belief come from? For starters, 32 wins (and counting), including a non-upset of fourth-ranked Michigan State to open the season. Maybe the vibe on campus, too. It’s been quite the year for JMU athletics, most notably with its football and men’s basketball programs. In their second year as a Football Bowl Subdivision team, the Dukes went 11-2, beating Virginia by a point and Connecticut by 38. College GameDay visited Harrisonburg, Va., of all places, even as the NCAA barred then-undefeated JMU from major bowl contention. Then men’s basketball picked up the torch.

This week, those Dukes heard about being undersized against Wisconsin and 7-foot center Steven Crowl. Junior Terrence Edwards Jr., their leading scorer, saw somewhere on social media that he couldn’t stick with Wisconsin guard AJ Storr. Edwards, though, has belief in his blood. His family flew up to Brooklyn from Georgia and booked their hotels through the weekend.

JMU plays Duke — yes, the Dukes vs. Duke — at 5:15 p.m. on Sunday. Only a Sweet 16 spot will be on the line.

“Our coaches kept staying on us saying: ‘Don’t let off the gas,’” said Edwards, who finished with a team-high 14 points in 33 minutes. “I think we were doing that a lot in conference play. We kind of got bored a little bit. So coming into this tournament, we knew we were going to play teams where you can’t do that type of stuff.

“And so, yeah, that’s what y’all seen tonight, just us putting on a full 40 minutes together. And yeah, see y’all Sunday.”

Scouting Wisconsin, Byington and his staff noticed how Rutgers and Tennessee hounded the Badgers on the ball. That didn’t lead to a ton of turnovers. But it showed Byington that JMU could maybe gain an edge by pressuring Wisconsin’s guards. In turn, the Dukes flew around screens, into passing lanes, turning feet into inches, then inches to millimeters. If there was a loose ball, purple jerseys outnumbered the white ones, almost every time.

Right before the second half started, Brown gripped the edge of his shorts and looked at JMU’s buzzing crowd. He smiled a little, mouthing “Let’s go boys” to himself. And then they went. They went and went and went.

“I am nervous all the time,” said Byington, who appears as absolutely anything but. When Wisconsin made a small run in the second half, he kept slowly pacing the sideline, a folded sheet of paper in his hand. With less than eight minutes left, Wisconsin guard Max Klesmit squeezed through the defense — finding a rare pocket of space — for an uncontested layup. The ball sat on the rim for a moment, holding the whole building in place. If it rolled left, the Badgers would have trailed by only four. But it rolled right, and then Freidel hit a three in transition on the other end.

The building unclenched and erupted. Byington didn’t seem to even blink.

“So, yes, I was nervous before shoot-around, before the game and all the time,” the 47-year-old, who took over at JMU in 2020, continued. “I think it’s natural. But I think our guys, if they were a little bit nervous, they turned it into them being ready and being excited to play. There was nothing that we did out there that the guys were hesitant on. And that’s what we kept emphasizing: ‘Look, if somebody is going to get us, it’s not because we are going in and be scared or hesitant.’”

Game over, bus running, the noise picked up in JMU’s locker room. A manager FaceTimed with friends back in Harrisonburg. Brown, sitting in a corner, told reporters how the Badgers looked too relaxed on Selection Sunday when learning they would face the Dukes. Before leaving, Freidel wanted to know when their next game would tip, then was shocked that there were still teams playing on the West Coast.

“Bro, it’s really 12:30?” Brown asked Freidel. “It feels like 9:30.”

You had to forgive them. It’s hard to keep time on top of the world.