James Madison University will return to the NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship as the No. 12 seed and play against fifth-seeded Kentucky on Saturday, March 21. The game is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. at Hope Coliseum in Morgantown, West Virginia, and will be broadcast nationally on ESPNU. The winner will advance to face either No. 4 West Virginia or No. 13 Miami (Ohio) in the second round on Monday.
This marks James Madison’s 14th appearance in the NCAA Championship and its second under Head Coach Sean O’Regan. The Dukes secured an automatic bid after winning their second Sun Belt Conference Championship with a 69-52 victory over Troy on March 9 in Pensacola, Florida.
Peyton McDaniel and Ashanti Barnes led the team during the Sun Belt tournament final, combining for 47 points and each recording double-doubles. McDaniel was named Most Outstanding Player of the championship after finishing with 28 points, ten rebounds, four assists, and four steals. Barnes contributed 19 points and twelve rebounds.
As a No. 4 seed in their conference tournament, James Madison had to win three games in three days to claim the title, defeating South Alabama, Georgia Southern, and Troy along the way. The Dukes are one of five teams seeded fourth or lower to earn an automatic qualification into this year’s NCAA Tournament.
James Madison is seeking its ninth win in program history at the NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship and its first since defeating Gonzaga in March 2014. The team also aims to become the first Sun Belt Conference school to win an NCAA Tournament game since Little Rock did so in March 2015 and hopes for its first ranked victory since beating UCLA in November 2014.
Individually, Peyton McDaniel has reached several career milestones including more than two thousand points and one thousand rebounds—one of only two active Division I players with those numbers this season. Other notable achievements include Brianna McLeod ranking fourth nationally among non-starters with fifty-one blocks this season; Bree Robinson tying a program record with eighty-two steals; and Zakiya Stephenson joining Robinson as teammates each surpassing one hundred assists this year—the first such duo at JMU since the 2013-14 season.
The Dukes have nine top-75 national rankings across various statistical categories including rebounds per game (13th), scoring margin (34th), field goal percentage (36th), scoring offense (42nd), assists per game (62nd), field goal percentage defense (55th), and offensive rebounds per game (68th).
