— By David Walsh

An emotional Marshall team playing for something bigger and striving for its fifth victory battled an opponent striving for Group of Five bragging rights.

In the end, James Madison, a candidate to be Group of Five kingpin, got a 49-yard touchdown pass from Alonza Barnett III to Wayne Knight with 2:16 left to secure a 35-23 win over the Herd in the annual ‘Play for The 75’ game Saturday before a crowd of 26,727 at Joan C. Edwards Stadium.

James Madison leads the Sun Belt Conference East Division at 6-0 and is 8-1 overall. The Dukes received votes in both national polls last week.

“Congratulations to James Madison. They’ve got heck of a football team,” Herd coach Tony Gibson said. “We got a locker room hurting right now for a lot of different reasons. We wanted this game

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