After 3 decades in college baseball, Ike gets NCAA shot at JMU (2024)

With his players feeling that special blend of excitement and anxiety that only a college team on the NCAA tournament selection bubble experiences, James Madison baseball coach Marlin Ikenberry decided to hold practice Monday morning, in the hours before the field was announced.

That’s how Ikenberry has approached his own career-long quest to reach a regional – head down, focus on playing better and better baseball.

The 2024 Dukes were eager to play in the postseason for the first time in their college careers. The JMU program was hungry to get there for the first time since 2011.

But for Ikenberry, a 51-year-old Richmond native and former VMI player and coach, the wait has been even longer – 33 years to be exact.

“I just kept my focus on the guys and the team,” Ikenberry said Tuesday, a day after JMU was awarded an at-large bid to the NCAAs.

The Dukes will play South Carolina on Friday in the opening game of the Raleigh Regional, hosted by North Carolina State. Bryant is the fourth team at the site.

Those who know Ikenberry best said the former VMI catcher was always going to get to a regional, by sheer will, if necessary.

“Marlin’s relentless,” said fellow Richmond native Tom Slater, an assistant with the Keydets when Ikenberry played in Lexington, who later coached with Ikenberry at the institute. “He’s relentless on the recruiting trail and he’s just always been relentless chasing having really good teams. And he’s got a really good team this year.”

In college, where he caught for future Major Leaguer Ryan Glynn, Ikenberry helped VMI reach the Southern Conference tournament finals in 1993 and was part of a program-record for wins in 1994. But no NCAA appearances.

Ikenberry was an assistant on a William & Mary team that won a school-record 32 games in 2000. The next season, the Tribe won the CAA and went to the program’s first-ever regional. But, by that year, Ikenberry had left to take the head job at his alma mater.

Ikenberry spent 11 years leading the Keydets, posting six winning seasons and leading the school to its first three 30-win campaigns.

“I think Ike’s got the right kind of personality for a baseball coach,” said Old Dominion coach Chris Finwood, another Richmonder who coached Ikenberry as a player at VMI. “He doesn’t get too high or too low. He’s a good guy to play for. The players like him. They respect him and play hard for him.”

Then, after the 2014 season, Ikenberry surprised his friends by resigning, taking a job with a baseball software company. A year later, though, he was the equally-surprising choice to take over at JMU.

His first six seasons with the Dukes were uninspiring, as he put up a 126-133 mark. But Ikenberry was building and, by 2019, his program appeared poised to turn the corner. Instead, the pandemic canceled the 2020 season and COVID protocols disrupted 2021.

In 2022, JMU saw star player Chase DeLauter suffer a broken foot that cut short his season in April, then learned it would not be allowed to play in the CAA tournament since it was leaving the league.

The question began to pop up – how long would Madison stick with the affable but as-of-yet not highly successful Ikenberry? The NCAA drought, at the school that became the Commonwealth’s first to reach the College World Series in 1983, no less, loomed large.

Ikenberry would need a breakthrough and he’d have to do it in a new, tougher conference.

JMU moved to the Sun Belt in 2023 and the Dukes turned in a strong debut season, going 31-25 overall and putting up a 15-13 mark in league play. It set the stage for this year and the program’s return to the NCAAs.

“The last four years have been a crazy rollercoaster ride,” Ikenberry said. “This year, we knew we could make some noise. … It’s something we talk about every year. This year, it seemed like we had more of a direct mission.”

JMU notched an opening-weekend win at Arkansas, the No. 5 national seed in the tournament, in February and made a run to the Sun Belt tournament semifinals, one that included a win over Finwood’s ODU team for Ikenberry’s 500th career win.

It was all in pursuit of this regional appearance.

“He does so much for us, and I guess, in a way, it’s a great way of repaying him,” said junior outfielder Fenwick Trimble. “We’re really excited and wouldn’t want anyone else leading the way.”

At 34-23, the Dukes – who won their final three series of the regular season, then went 2-2 at the tournament – felt they deserved a spot in the NCAA field.

But they knew they weren’t a sure thing.

Following Monday’s practice, the team assembled for a tense selection show viewing, hopeful its season would continue, but undeniably uncertain.

“As the show went on and we weren’t being named, I started to prepare in my mind what I was going to tell the guys if we were not going to be picked,” Ikenberry said.

He didn’t have to give that speech. Instead, he can start working on his first regional pre-game pep talk.