James Madison beat Old Dominion 63-27 last season, the fourth straight win for the Dukes in this series and the entire Sun Belt-era history of it. JMU has won all four meetings since the two schools joined the league. Sun Belt coaches made the Dukes the East favorite again this summer, giving them 11 of 12 first-place votes to Old Dominion's one. They arrive at S.B. Ballard Stadium on Saturday at 6 p.m. ET on ESPN+ for the conference opener.
Old Dominion gets there at 1-2 after losing 20-17 at home to East Carolina, its second straight defeat. The frustrating part is that ODU did not really get beaten. The Pirates scored 17 of their 20 points off Monarchs miscues, a trick-play touchdown after a fumbled fourth-down punt snap, a 67-yard interception return, and a field goal set up by a Devin Roche fumble. Ricky Rahne's summary was blunt: "We made too many mistakes to win the game," and he noted that East Carolina had not necessarily made plays to win so much as made fewer plays to lose.
One play carried most of the weight. Up 17-10 and driving on the opening possession of the second half, Henicle threw on third-and-18 and Ayden Duncanson intercepted it and ran it back 67 yards to tie the game. Old Dominion did not score again.
What the loss actually told us
Two things, pulling in opposite directions.
The defense is real. Justin Watts forced a fumble that Daevon Iles returned 23 yards for a touchdown, ECU finished with 276 total yards, Mario Thompson had nine tackles and a sack and Jack Forrest added 2.5 tackles for loss and a sack, though the unit never got off the field on the go-ahead field-goal drive. Blake Seiler is still running that side of the ball, and it shows. He is the one coordinator who did not change, and his group has spent three weeks playing better than 1-2.
The passing game is not. Colton Joseph, the 2025 Sun Belt Offensive Player of the Year who threw for 2,624 yards and rushed for 1,007, is at Wisconsin now, and Kody Cook was promoted from wide receivers coach to run the offense and coach the quarterbacks. Henicle went 8-of-20 for 94 yards against ECU, and Zialis Blackmon's 42-yard catch, the first of his career, was nearly half of that. Cook has a running game that works and a passing game that produces one play a night.
Saturday
The model gives Old Dominion a 10% chance to win, and that is honest. A team that keeps handing opponents short fields is playing the wrong opponent to do it against. But the Sun Belt standings are the reason to care beyond the rivalry. Win and ODU's path to the conference title game sits around 11%; lose and it drops to roughly 0.2%, two different Octobers, not a number that slides between them over the course of the night.
So watch the small stuff, because the small stuff is what has beaten this team. Clean snaps on punts. Henicle throwing the ball away on third-and-18 instead of into Cover 3. If ODU's defense gets anything like the ECU version of itself and the offense simply does not donate points, this becomes a game rather than a repeat.
The full picture is in the interactive guide, and the methodology explains where the percentages come from.