James Madison men's basketball coach Matt Brady admits to being caught off-guard recently by his trio of talented sophomores.

CAA Rookie of the Year Julius Wells, point guard Devon Moore, and forward Andrey Semenov were an instant hit for Brady in his first year at JMU, combining for a school freshman-class record 1,010 points last season.

But Brady, whose second year of preseason practices begins at 7 p.m. Friday, expects the three to be even better this season.

"It's very unusual that I've been around a group that has, from one year to another, improved as rapidly and as much as these three guys have improved," Brady said Wednesday. "You can make the argument that they're our three most improved basketball players."

"We just worked on our skills, things that we knew were our weaknesses last year," said Wells. " We've worked hard to make them our strengths this year."

The success of his freshman class was just one of the storylines from Brady's first year in Harrisonburg. At 21-15, the Dukes finished with the school's highest win total since the 1992-93 season. It was also the program's first winning record since 1999-2000.

When they beat William & Mary in the first round of the CAA Tournament last March, it marked the team's first trip to the league's quarterfinals in five years. And they became the first JMU team to play a postseason game since Lefty Driesell's NCAA Tournament squad lost to Florida in 1994.

"We got some extra practices, and three extra games," said Brady, whose team advanced to the semifinals of the inaugural CollegeInsider.com Tournament before losing 81-43 at Old Dominion.

"We just know that we made a lot of progress, but we still have a long ways to go," said Wells. "Losing by 40 to ODU at the end of the season was a wake-up call for us to show that we came a long way, but we still have hard work to do."

"What it really left in our mouths, more than anything else, was a sour taste," said Brady. "And that's been a boon to us as a staff, because we don't have to drive these guys any harder than they're driving themselves."

Brady says he expects JMU to be picked "somewhere in the middle of the pack" at next week's CAA Media Day in Washington, D.C.

But Brady won't be satisfied if that's where his team finishes.

"Year in and year out I think our goal is to be a program that's to be reckoned with. We want to give ourselves to be regular season champions here, or CAA Tournament champions," he said. "If we can do one of those two things, then we've had a great season."