Add another topic to James Madison football coach Mickey Matthews’ no-comment list – repeating as Division I-AA national champions.
"There’ll be no talk of repeating," Matthews said Monday at his final weekly press conference of the year. "We’ll just talk about getting better. It’s hard to get there. When you get there, it’s hard to win."
Matthews, who also won’t talk about a potential pay raise and contract extension after capturing the school’s first football title, might not want to talk about a repeat, but everyone else who follows the Dukes surely will.
JMU beat Montana 31-21 Friday in Chattanooga, Tenn., to capture the I-AA championship.
While the Dukes will lose several talented seniors – including center Leon Steinfeld, tight end Tom Ridley, linebackers Kwynn Walton and Trey Townsend, and safety Rodney McCarter – they also bring back many of their top players.
"We haven’t taken the seniors’ names off the depth chart yet," Matthews said. "I don’t have the guts to do it. But I’ve said this repeatedly: Our best players are our young players."
On offense, quarterback Justin Rascati, a transfer from Louisville, is only a sophomore, as are receivers D.D. Boxley and Ardon Bransford, tackle Corey Davis, and tailbacks Alvin Banks and Maurice Fenner. Guard Matt Magerko, an AP All-American, is a junior, as is tailback Raymond Hines.
Defensively, star safety Tony LeZotte – another All-American — is only a freshman. So is his backup, Nick Adams, and linebacker Michael Brown, a transfer from Virginia Tech.
Linebacker Akeem Jordan and defensive end Kevin Winston are both sophomores, while defensive tackles Frank Cobbs and Demetrius Shambley and cornerbacks Clint Kent and Leon Mizelle are juniors.
The question will be the offensive line, which loses three of five starters. The returnees — including Magerko and Davis along with reliable backup Harry Dunn — will hope to repeat the domination this year’s front five inflicted on opponents.
JMU won a school-record 13 games and the national title with an overpowering running game and defense, splendid special-teams play and a big-when-it-had-to-be passing attack.
"I learned at Marshall, you’re not going to win the national championship unless you’re good in all areas," Matthews said. "You have to be good at everything because at some point in time somebody is going to expose you."
Early in Friday night’s championship game, it appeared the Dukes might be about to be exposed. Montana drove down the field on the opening drive, taking a 7-0 lead. That, Matthews said, is when being a veteran team and coming out of the tough-as-always Atlantic 10 really paid off for the Dukes.
"The reason we won is, we’re a very experienced football team," Matthews said. "We’ve been there and done that. We played a very bad first quarter. A less experienced football team would have folded."
Instead, the Dukes completely dominated the next three quarters. JMU piled up all but 2 of its 446 yards after the opening quarter and gained all of its 32 first downs in that span.
Fenner’s 164 yards made him the second Madison back to go over 1,000 yards on the season. Hines, who missed the title game with broken ribs, reached that plateau against William & Mary a week earlier. It is the first time two backs have gone over 1,000 yards in a season for JMU.
In the second half, the Dukes completely out-muscled Montana’s defensive front, seizing control of the game and, ultimately, the championship.
"I don’t think Montana wanted to play a doubleheader," Matthews said. "I think Montana had had enough."
Looking back at the team’s improbable title run – JMU had three straight non-winning seasons coming into 2004 and became the first school to win the I-AA title without a single postseason game at home – Matthews said quarterfinal foe Furman was the best team his Dukes faced, not national runner-up Montana.
He also said that playing in the A-10, the first conference to ever have four teams reach the quarterfinals, helped ready his team for playoff-intensity football.
A rain-soaked win over Villanova early in the year, intense preparation for the daunting matchup with I-A West Virginia and the team’s dramatic come-from-behind win over Maine were all key points in building championship character, Matthews said.
"I think the Villanova game certainly gave us confidence," Matthews said. "I think the way the kids prepared for West Virginia, they thought they were going to win the game. And those last three or four minutes of Maine, it’s hard to underestimate those three things."
Matthews did feel the national press and the NCAA football committee underestimated his team. The sixth-year coach said he "still didn’t understand" how William & Mary’s 46-yard field goal into the wind as time expired that gave the Tribe a 27-24 win at JMU in the regular season could have kept the Dukes from hosting at least one game in the playoffs, especially after Madison set an attendance record at home this season.
As for the media, Matthews said he and his players felt that Montana got most of the national attention and credit heading into the championship match, something the Dukes used for motivation.
"I got tired of reading how many times they’d been in the finals," Matthews said.
Not surprisingly, JMU was ranked No. 1 in the final Sports Network I-AA poll, released Monday, receiving all 67 first-place votes. Montana was second, followed by William & Mary, Sam Houston State, Furman and New Hampshire.