Asia Boone is one of the offensive weapons that concerns James Madison coach Sean O'Regan. (Vicky Graff Photo)
James Madison coach Sean O’Regan once worked for Kenny Brooks at James Madison and now gets a chance to play against Brooks and Kentucky in the NCAA Tournament today at West Virginia.
“Being in the SEC, it’s crazy but if you really do look at the stats, we’re a similar style team. Field goal percentage is almost the same, they shoot a little bit better from three, our rebound margin is almost the same. There’s a lot of similarities in that,” the James Madison coach said.
“I think they’re really good defensively. I think they’re really, really good offensively. I think his half-court man offensive stuff is genius. That’s why I take so much from him, as much as I feel like we can execute. That’s the focus for us, being able to guard them in the half-court, because it’s what we’ve hung our hat on all year.
And what made us successful in the conference tournament and throughout the last nine games of the Sun Belt we had people in the 50s, point-wise.”
O’Regan knows that Kentucky has “really good stuff offensively” with a lot of weapons. Amelia Hassett has 92 3-pointers to lead the SEC while Boone has 89, second most in the SEC. They both broke the UK previous single season record.
Kentucky’s offense, though, goes through All-American center Clara Strack. O’Regan said Brooks likes to build his team around a strong post presence surrounded by shooters.
The James Madison coach said not many SEC teams tried to regularly double team Strack because of the way Boone and Hassett can shoot.
“They both made more three pointers than Peyton McDaniel (James Madison’s best shooter)l. Both of them. So that’s the level of a 3-point shooter,” the coach said. “Oh, by the way, they’ve got a point guard (Tonie Morgan) I think is borderline All-American, too, who can come up for the ball screen. Where do you find the cracks? That’s what we’ve been working on as a staff.
“The fun part for me is it’s not a crammed one-day prep, two-day prep. We have got some time to really dive in and watch film. But Strack, you can tell — I wouldn’t be surprised if he told his team she needs to touch every time down the floor. That’s the level of involvement she is in the offense as far as usage of touches or anything like that. She’s certainly a big piece of this.”
Brooks is not sure why James Madison is only a No. 12 seed.
“They did everything right. They played some power fours. They went out, won some of those games. They won, I think, 12 in a row. I think they were a mid to low net rating. I don’t know how they’re a 12 seed,” Brooks said.
“We don’t go out and talk about, ‘Hey, this is a 12 seed. They’re going to be upset-minded. They’re going to come out and they’re going to play hard.’ We understand that. We know what they do. We just really talk to our kids about being the best version of ourselves and we’re not talking about playing against a 12 seed. We’re playing against whatever.
“James Madison is our opponent and we got to make sure we play to the best of our ability so we can win a basketball game, but we don’t talk about another opponent’s seeding.”
