James Madison’s sweep of defending CAA champion Hofstra during Valentine's Day weekend put the Dukes on the verge of accomplishing a worst-to-first transformation previously only performed by two of the league’s heritage programs.

But the words of head coach Mark Byington and his players following the 74-70 win over Hofstra on Feb. 14 evoked memories of a less dramatic but no less impressive one-season turnaround executed by Ron Hunter at Georgia State, a coach and a program whose respective CAA tenures were of the blink-and-you-missed-them variety.

That’s the same Ron Hunter and Georgia State, by the way, who battled Byington and his Georgia Southern squads 12 times for Sun Belt Conference and Peach State bragging rights between 2015-2019. Eight of those games were decided by six points or fewer, including the 2015 Sun Belt championship game, which Georgia State won, 38-36.

“Ron and I, we really have a good relationship,” Byington said last week before chuckling. “The rivalry we had with Georgia Southern and Georgia State I think (is) one of the best rivalries in the country. And I would look down at Ron during his games and I would want to go punch him in the face. He probably thought the same thing as me.

“But we would go to league meetings and we would sit down beside each other, enjoy each other and talk and enjoy a good bourbon and a steak and act like we didn’t coach in one of the biggest rivalries.”

Byington and Hunter will have plenty to discuss the next time they’re able to eat and drink in the same room.

In its first season under Byington, James Madison went 8-2 in CAA play while earning a share of the regular-season title and the No. 1 seed in the conference tournament. The Dukes, who were 2-16 and finished last in the CAA last season under Louis Rowe, are the first program to go worst-to-first since UNC Wilmington finished in a four-way tie at 12-6 in Kevin Keatts’ first season in 2014-15 after going 3-13 the previous year under Buzz Peterson. The only other worst-to-first campaign in CAA history happened in the league’s second season in 1983-84, when Richmond finished 7-3 and won the conference tournament after going 2-7 in 1982-83.

Had they played a full regular season, the Dukes likely would have matched or exceeded UNC Wilmington’s nine-win improvement in Keatts’ first campaign. But the Seahawks were not far removed from making regular forays deep into March. The program made four NCAA Tournaments in seven seasons from 1999-2000 through 2005-06 under Jerry Wainwright and Brad Brownell.

The rebuilding project Byington embarked upon at James Madison — which had five winning seasons and one NCAA Tournament appearance in the previous 20 seasons — was more akin to what Hunter was tasked with at Georgia State, which had eight winning seasons and made two NCAA Tournaments in the 21 seasons prior to his arrival. (In a neat coincidence, five of those winning seasons and one of the NCAA Tournament appearances came under the legendary Lefty Driesell, who arrived at Georgia State after a nine-season run at James Madison.)

Despite Georgia State’s meager recent history, Hunter declared during his introductory press conference Mar. 21, 2011 the Panthers would win under his watch.

“I did not come here to lose,” said Hunter, who played in three NCAA Tournaments while with Miami (Ohio) before overseeing IUPUI’s transition to Division I and directing the Jaguars to the only NCAA Tournament in school history in 2003. “I have never lost in my life. I never lost as a player. I never lost as a coach. I will not lose at Georgia State.”

Hunter added his lack of familiarity with the Panthers’ players would help hasten the rebuilding process.

“I don’t know a whole lot about us,” Hunter said. “I don’t care about the names. They start fresh from here on out. I don’t care if they played one minute or they played 40. If you’re the star of the team — I have no idea who the star of the team was or who led us in scoring. It doesn’t matter. You have to earn your way with me. You have to earn your way. Just like in life, you have to earn it. Sometimes things happen, things are new but you have to earn it and if you do that, you’ll feel a lot better about yourself.”

Byington was hired by James Madison on March 20 — one day shy of nine years to the day of Hunter’s press conference at Georgia State. But with the world shut down due to the pandemic, Byington’s introduction as the Dukes’ head coach came via a 93-second video on Twitter in which he declared “…we’re going to win here at JMU, and we’re going to win quickly.”

The Dukes’ new boss can’t wait to be in Harrisonburg to get things started! Hear it straight from him! ?⬇️

? | https://t.co/4rBaRhQGFd#GoDukes pic.twitter.com/HzhkKbA7v4

— JMU Men's Basketball (@JMUMBasketball) March 21, 2020

Like Hunter at Georgia State, Byington arrived at James Madison having experienced success as a player and a coach. He scored more than 1,000 points while playing for a pair of regular-season co-champions at UNC Wilmington from 1994-95 through 1997-98 and directed Georgia Southern to five winning seasons in seven years at the helm, one fewer than the program had in the 12 seasons before Byington arrived.

And while Byington certainly knew his star player — Matt Lewis averaged 19.0 points and 5.6 rebounds per game last season and declared for the NBA Draft before returning to school and spending his summer listening to Byington critique his defense over Zoom calls — he also wanted players, both those he recruited and those he inherited, to embrace a clean slate.

“I tried to interview them pretty hard (during) the recruiting process and figure out why they wanted to leave the place they were at before or what was important to them, what they were looking for in a college,” Byington said. “And if I didn’t hear kind of something along the lines (of) ‘I want a new start, I want to prove something, I want to win’ — if I didn’t hear those things, I kind of moved on to the next recruit. The guys that came here and even the guys that returned they all said similar things, that they had something to prove and they wanted to win.”

James Madison had its turning point game against the same foe as Georgia State nine years earlier, albeit in a loss instead of a win. The Panthers won their 11th straight game on Jan. 4, 2012, by beating VCU — which went from the First Four to the Final Four a year earlier — 55-53. Afterward, Hunter declared it was a statement victory.

James Madison closed out the calendar year Dec. 22 by nearly overcoming a 21-point deficit in an 82-81 loss to VCU. While it was the first of the Dukes’ only back-to-back losses of the season — they fell to Morgan State, 80-73, on Jan. 3 — Byington said the near-miss against a perennial Atlantic 10 favorite provided the sense of self-belief that’d been missing.

“I said, look, that team, VCU, would probably win the CAA,” Byington said. “We made a bunch of mistakes, did a lot of things great, but went toe-to-toe with them. And then I think at that point we started believing we have potential, we had a chance to be good.”

The statement win for James Madison arrived on Jan. 24, when the Dukes ended Northeastern’s perfect CAA start with a 79-72 win in the finale of a series in Boston. Afterward, the sounds of the Dukes celebrating echoed in the empty Cabot Center — a declaration they, like Georgia State in 2011-12, were not going to follow the usual "be neither seen nor heard" script for a rebuilding program under a first-year head coach.

The Dukes were less exuberant and equal parts restrained and defiant after the wins over Hofstra, the second of which was completed after Lewis was sidelined in the first half with what proved to be a season-ending knee injury. 

“I have tough guys and a lot of these guys have something to prove,” Byington said on Feb. 14. “(They’ve) been doubted. They’ve had things said about them, that they couldn’t be successful, they couldn’t do something. And I remind them of it, but I probably don’t need to remind them of it.”

Those words were remarkably similar to the ones uttered by Hunter on Mar. 2, 2012, after Georgia State opened CAA Tournament play by routing Hofstra, 85-50, in the most lopsided game in tourney history.

Hunter hinted he and his players felt overlooked after the Panthers weren’t well-represented among the league’s award-winners. Hunter didn’t win Coach of the Year honors (Bruiser Flint did after Drexel went 16-2 in CAA play) and the Panthers had two players on the All-CAA third team as well as Eric Buckner on the all-defensive team. Four players from teams that finished lower than Georgia State in the standings made the first-, second- or third-team.

“We know that we’re a good basketball team — in that locker room, we feel like we’re really good,” Hunter said. “This is a very good league and the teams that most teams talk about are well-deserved, but make no mistake. The coach and the team, we all have a little chip on our shoulder right now. We’ve had it all year. And it’s magnified by 100 right now for a lot of different reasons.”

With Lewis leading the CAA in scoring, three different James Madison freshmen earning Rookie of the Week honors since January and Byington overseeing the worst-to-first transformation, there’s a pretty good chance Byington won’t have to rely on a lack of recognition in the CAA awards as motivational fodder for the Dukes heading into the CAA Tournament.

But coronavirus-permitting, Byington will get a shot to better Hunter’s first-year feat. Georgia State fell to George Mason, 61-59, on a last-second layup in the CAA quarterfinals. It was the last CAA Tournament game for the Panthers, who weren’t allowed to play in the 2013 tournament because the school had already announced its plans to join the Sun Belt for the 2013-14 academic year.

No matter how the Dukes fare in the CAA Tournament, there’s a pretty good chance his first season with James Madison will be a topic of conversation next time Byington chats with his long-time rival and friend. 

“What he did at Georgia State was really good,” Byington said of Hunter, who departed for Tulane in the spring of 2019. “He’s a great coach. He’s got a plan in place. He knows how to put a plan in place at different programs. He’s done it now at three different schools. I would look down at him in games and I wanted to tackle him or punch him, because it was some heated games. And then after the game we would talk to each other.

“Even got to the point last year where he left to go to Tulane and I was still at Georgia Southern where I thought finally I could call him and get some advice from him. And he was very willing and open to give me some advice because he does some things I really like.”

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.