James Madison University’s men’s basketball team is preparing for the 2026 Sun Belt Championship, which will take place from March 3 to March 9 at the Pensacola Bay Center in Pensacola, Florida. The Dukes are seeded ninth and will face either Louisiana (No. 12 seed) or Georgia State (No. 13 seed) on Wednesday, March 4, with tipoff scheduled for 6 p.m. Eastern Time.
The Dukes concluded their regular season with a record of 17-14 overall and a 9-9 mark in conference play. They closed out the season strongly, winning five of their last six games and six of their final seven.
If James Madison wins its opening game, the team will advance to play Southern Miss (No. 8 seed) in the third round on Thursday, March 5.
Freshman Christian Brown ended the regular season with 44 blocks, ranking second among JMU freshmen historically—behind only Andre Nation’s record of 47 blocks during the 2012-13 season. Guard Cliff Davis made an impact by hitting 97 three-pointers this year, which is currently second-most in the Sun Belt Conference and third-highest for a single season at JMU. He needs four more threes to tie Kent Culuko’s mark of 101 set in the 1993-94 season.
Since joining the Sun Belt Conference ahead of the 2022-23 season, James Madison has compiled a tournament record of four wins and two losses. This includes capturing the championship title during the 2023-24 campaign.
In their most recent game on February 27, Joshua Beadle scored with less than a second remaining to give Coastal Carolina a narrow victory over JMU by a score of 69-68 at Atlantic Union Bank Center. Cliff Davis led JMU with his fourth consecutive game scoring at least twenty points; Justin McBride contributed twelve points and led with seven rebounds; Bradley Douglas added eleven points.
During this season’s matchups against Georgia State, JMU won both games: an overtime win at home (81-79) on February 12 and another victory on February 21 in Atlanta (80-65). Against Louisiana earlier this year, JMU lost narrowly after Dorian Finister hit a last-second three-pointer for Louisiana to secure a win (64-61). Southern Miss also defeated JMU this season by eight points (73-65).
This marks James Madison’s fourth appearance in the Sun Belt Championship since joining the league. The Dukes have reached at least the quarterfinals each time and secured one tournament title so far.
Cliff Davis and Justin McBride were named Third Team All-Sun Belt on March 2. Davis averaged over fifteen points per game while making nearly one hundred three-pointers; McBride led his team with an average of fifteen-and-a-half points per game while shooting almost fifty percent from the field and over forty percent from beyond the arc. As noted as of March 1, Davis is close to tying for second place all-time in single-season threes made at JMU if he makes four more shots from long range this postseason.
