For a late January game played in a gym without any fans, the end of James Madison’s 79-72 win over Northeastern Sunday afternoon sure had a March feel to it.

James Madison forward Justin Amadi corraled the rebound from Jahmyl Telfort’s errant 3-pointer and tossed the ball to Jayvis Harvey with about two seconds left. Harvey didn’t bother waiting for the buzzer to sound to toss the ball aside, nor did his teammates hesitate to begin whooping it up and spilling on to the court.

After the buzzer finally sounded, Amadi and Julien Wooden leaped at and bounced off one another as the Dukes began congratulating one another in the empty Cabot Center. The sounds of the celebration bounced off the walls as James Madison dashed off the court and headed down the hallway to the visiting locker room.

The boisterous reaction following a team’s third league game served as a reminder the victory carried unusual implications beyond when on the calendar it occurred. At 2-1, James Madison has as many league wins this season as it did all of last season.

And the victory over previously unbeaten Northeastern was the program’s biggest win in league play at least five seasons. James Madison was already locked into the outbracket portion of the CAA Tournament when it spoiled Hofstra’s hopes to clinch the regular-season title on its home court with a 104-99 overtime win on Feb. 23, 2019.

The last time James Madison authored the type of win that declared it could be more than a middle-of-the-pack team was during the 2015-16 season, when the Dukes swept the preseason favorite and eventual regular-season champion Pride on their way to finishing tied for third with an 11-7 CAA mark and recording the program’s lone top-100 KenPom.com finish.

On Sunday, the Dukes followed a convincing defeat in Saturday’s opener — they trailed by 20 before scoring the final 11 points in a 72-63 loss — by not only becoming the first team to solve the Huskies’ byzantine perimeter defense but by proving they are more than just the Matt Lewis show. Vado Morse, who was limited to three points on 1-of-10 shooting Saturday, scored a career-high 30 points while going 5-of-11 from 3-point land. James Madison is the first CAA team this season to have two players score at least 30 points in a game.

Overall, James Madison drained 48 percent (12-of-25) of its 3-pointers against Northeastern, which entered Sunday limiting opponents to 29.2 percent from beyond the arc — the 42nd-lowest figure in the country.

“We beat a good team,” first-year James Madison head coach Mark Byington said Sunday afternoon. “Hopefully that gives us confidence and shows the guys that their work is working. This is good to validate to the players that we are heading in the right direction.”

In a way, the loss was as validating for Northeastern as the win was for James Madison. The Huskies, who established themselves as the surprise team to beat with their seven-game winning streak, remained in a semi-circle with head coach Bill Coen standing in the middle and stared at the Dukes as the victor’s celebration carried into their locker room.

The Huskies, whose roster has no seniors and just two third-year juniors, have matured faster than even Coen anticipated in a season in which they had no spring or summer practice and didn’t convene for workouts until September. On Sunday, the learning curve continued as Northeastern got its first lessons on what life is like as the hunted.

“To understand the level of their celebration when they beat Northeastern and to understand what it means to be a part of this program — that when people beat us, it’s a huge accomplishment,” Northeastern head coach Bill Coen said. “I can understand them being happy about getting a win over a first-place tam. I wanted our young team to understand the emotional level that other teams may have when they come to play a first-place team. And we have to combat that with our own emotional energy going forward, because that is what it’s going to be night in and night out from here on out.”

HOFSTRA RESTORES PRIDE WITH TOWSON SWEEP

Say it with us in the Ed Rooney voice: Niiiiiine days.

That’s how long it took for Hofstra to possibly save its season and maintain hopes of defending its championship. The Pride ran its winning streak to three games with a home sweep of Towson, whom it beat 71-58 on Saturday before hanging on for a 74-69 victory on Sunday.

The three-game winning streak was preceded by a three-game losing streak in which acting head coach Mike Farrelly was displeased with his team’s intensity. But Hofstra has displayed a greater urgency over the last three games, with the exhortations from Farrelly and the Pride bench bouncing off the walls at the empty Bob Carpenter Center and Mack Sports Complex and the Pride mounting last-second defensive stands on consecutive Sundays.

On Jan. 17, Hofstra never trailed in a 68-67 win that wasn’t preserved until Tareq Coburn closed out on Ebby Asamoah, which forced Asamoah to pause and hoist what would have been a game-winning 3-pointer after the buzzer. On Sunday, Towson trailed by 14 points before getting within a point twice in the final four minutes. In the last 30 seconds, the Pride withstood a go-ahead 3-point attempt by Jason Gibson before forcing a turnover on an errant pass by Nicholas Timberlake as the Tigers tried tying the score on their subsequent possession.

“Certainly feel a lot better,” Farrelly said of the Pride, which is 5-3 in the CAA. “The biggest thing is we’re playing with the right energy and effort. That’s got to become the standard. It can’t become a sometimes thing. I feel like we’ve preached that since right after Delaware game number one (a 74-56 loss on Jan. 15) and throughout the course of this week and it’s got to continue.”

The Pride might have also found its shooting touch over the weekend. Hofstra, which was 16-of-67 from 3-point land in back-to-back series against Northeastern and Delaware, was 23-of-49 from beyond the arc against Towson.

Tareq Coburn locked up CAA Player of the Week honors by draining seven 3-pointers — one shy of the single-game school record — and finishing with 26 points Sunday. Coburn hit five straight 3-pointers in the first seven minutes Sunday and combined with Jalen Ray to hit nine of 15 3-point attempts in the first half, which made Tigers head coach Pat Skerry’s comments last week about the Pride’s long-distance struggles sound prescient. 

“When I’m watching tape, I don’t see it,” Skerry said. “For instance, Hofstra and Ray and Coburn — I don’t want those guys to ever take a shot because everything they shoot looks like it’s going in.”

The back-to-back losses continued a frustratingly herky-jerky season for Towson, which has been paused twice due to positive coronavirus cases and entered the weekend fresh off a midweek sweep of UNC Wilmington.

“Hofstra is an excellent shooting team, but we played the way we needed to play in the last 12-14 minutes,” Skerry said. “I liked the way the guys battle late. We need that type of energy and we’ll find our footing.”

THEY’RE NOT THE ONLY ONES, WITH SPLIT EMOTIONS

Anything UNCW could do, Delaware could do better?

The Seahawks and Blue Hens each mounted late comebacks in a split of the weekend set in North Carolina. UNC Wilmington earned a 77-70 win Saturday, when it ended the game on a 13-2 run. Delaware returned the favor Sunday with a 67-62 victory which it ended with a 16-4 run.

Ryan Allen and Dylan Painter combined for all of Delaware’s points in Sunday’s game-ending run, which spanned the final 7:22. UNC Wilmington shot a season-low 34.4 percent and went 2-for-13 from the field after Jake Boggs’ 3-pointer with 11:44 left gave the Seahawks a 52-41 lead.

“Down the stretch, they wanted it a little more than we did and were locked in more than us,” UNC Wilmington head coach Takayo Siddle said. “All of the league games are (one-) possession games. It just wasn’t our night. The ball wasn’t going in for us late.”

The split left both teams with sub-.500 CAA records. Delaware is 3-4 and UNC Wilmington is 1-3.

WHERE THE RUBBER (MATCH) MEETS THE ROAD (WIN)

Maybe all Drexel had to do to snap out of its road woes was play the game on 48 hours notice.

The Dragons got a much-needed road win Saturday, when they led for the final 30 minutes of a 79-64 win over William & Mary. Drexel, which improved to 7-40 in road and neutral games under Zach Spiker, maintained a double-digit lead for the last 11:24.

James Butler scored a game-high 25 points Saturday for the Dragons, who shot a blistering 75.8 percent (25-of-33) from inside the 3-point line. Drexel also committed just 13 fouls and sent William & Mary to the line 14 times after committing 25 fouls in the previous game between the teams Jan. 17, when the Tribe scored its final 17 points from the free throw line in a come-from-behind 69-64 win. 

“I thought our guys did a good job of not fouling,” Spiker told The Philadelphia Inquirer. “Last week, we fouled. This week, we didn’t.”

With the win, Drexel improved to 2-1 against William & Mary in an eight-day span. With both teams on pause due to coronavirus cases at Elon and Charleston — their respective scheduled opponents for the weekend of Jan 23-24 — Spiker and Tribe head coach Dane Fischer agreed on Thursday to what was surely the first three-game regular season series in CAA history.

“It’ll be really interesting to play a team three times in a row — just what the different changes they make in their schemes or rotations,” Fischer said Friday.

Drexel improved to 2-3 in the CAA with Sunday’s win while William & Mary dropped to 2-4.

STATS OF THE WEEK

Hofstra’s Tareq Coburn scored the Pride’s first 10 points and 16 of its first 18 Sunday before finishing the half with 21 points. Entering Sunday, he’d scored 21 or fewer points in 76 of his first 81 games since transferring to Hofstra from St. Bonaventure. 

UNC Wilmington’s Ty Gadsden set a school record Sunday, when he made his 38th straight free throw without a miss. Gadsden, whose streak began against Mississippi on Dec. 12, broke a mark previously held by T.J. Carter, who hit 37 straight free throws in 2008.

WHAT’S NEXT

Coronavirus-permitting, the CAA has a chance to experience its busiest weekend of the year. James Madison is scheduled to host Towson Wednesday before a quartet of tentatively scheduled weekend series between Northeastern and Drexel in Philadelphia, Hofstra and UNC Wilmington in North Carolina, William & Mary and Towson in Maryland and Elon and Delaware in Delaware. Elon is hoping to return to action for the first time since Jan. 3. Charleston remains on pause until at least Feb. 6.

Jerry Beach has covered Hofstra sports since arriving on campus in the fall of 1993, when Wayne Chrebet was a junior wide receiver wearing No. 3, Butch van Breda Kolff was the men’s basketball coach for the East Coast Conference champions and Jay Wright was a little-known yet surely well-dressed UNLV assistant coach. Check out Jerry’s book about the 2000 World Series here and follow him on Twitter at @JerryBeach73.