March 15, 2009

More from Michael:

I’m feeling anxious and melancholy right now for a number of reasons. Davidson’s exclusion from the NCAA tournament is not one of them. This season, the Year After, started in earnest with a four-point loss on the home court of one of the best teams in the country, on national TV, in which Stephen had 44 points, after which my phone rang with a call from a friend in the basketball business, who started the conversation by saying: “Whoa.” We saw gyms full and records fall. We saw a win in the program’s old second home in the city of Charlotte. We saw a win in the world’s most famous arena in which the buzz was for one of ours. One man moved from Oregon to Davidson to watch his alma mater’s basketball team. A man and his son from Florida with no connection at all to the school bought season tickets and started flying up from Tampa for Saturday games. Two kids from Michigan drove all the way down, just for a game at Belk Arena in January, and then turned around and drove back. Bob Knight called Stephen Curry the best passer in the history of college basketball. Now comes the NIT. Davidson has been playing basketball for 101 years. Only 15 of those years have ended with national postseason play. More than half of those 15 berths have come under Bob McKillop. This is one of them. This is the fifth in a row. That’s never happened before. It is the continuation of the most consistently fine time to be a fan of Davidson College’s basketball team in at least the last 40 years and maybe ever.

Comments?

March 11, 2009

An e-mail from Barry Dailey:

I’m a UConn grad and have lived in Davidson for 14 years. It took a lot of Davidson basketball to get me to replace my Huskies Hat for the Wildcat. It was Thomas Sander who finally coaxed me into Wildcat Country. Never saw a player who not only always seemed to be positioned so thoughtfully on the court – but at the right angle. Not only was his body where it was supposed to be, but his feet too. Textbook feet. Great high school coach + Bob I guess.

Anyway we went to Chattanooga. After Sunday’s game we were at the hospitality event at the Sheraton. Understand we are not insiders to the program. We keep our distance but remain captive to how artfully Bob runs things. So he comes up to our table, leans over and introduces himself to our 7-year-old girl who has a Wildcat tattoo on her cheek and a Wildcat basketball in her hands. “Hi Megan, I’m Bob McKillop.” (The guy was less than 2 hrs from a really tough loss.) His emotion was all over his face. He looked exhausted – but his class would not be denied. He stays a while and chats with my wife and I. … Strangers mind you.

When most coaches would be at the bar or hidden away in their hotel room … not this guy.

After Sunday’s game we again talked with our daughter about how there are lessons to be learned when you win and when you lose. How Steph embraced those C of C guys after the game … not with that half hug kids do … but a real, sincere embrace to kids that just beat Davidson – again. No pouting and no excuses. Good luck guys… great game. That’s how you lose. That’s how you live.

Yesterday our daughter was awarded the “school bear” for sportsmanship by her gym teacher… coincidence I suspect but who knows?

Comments?

March 9, 2009

Kruse on 16point8.blogspot.com:

There are always reasons.

Antwaine Wiggins made Stephen work hard, and struggle, and that was not a surprise. He’s done it before.

Charleston beat Davidson on the offensive glass, and that wasn’t a surprise, either. Some of those offensive rebounds came late in the game, and made a big, big difference.

All sorts of other things, too, are right there in the box score – Will and Bryant a combined 1-for-14? – but I’m not a big box score man anyway.

If you’ve watched this team, not just on the TV or the web feed, if you’ve been to Belk, if you’ve been around Davidson, if you’ve been around this group, and if you’ve watched and felt how this season has developed, and how these guys have developed – and how they haven’t – you sort of saw this coming. Easy to say now. But you did.

This has been a fun year, at least at times, and even here and there a really fun year, but mostly – mostly it’s been a long year. I don’t mean season. I mean year. Last March to this March.

There was no off-season this year.

What happened with Davidson basketball over these last 12 months, for the coaches and for the kids and for the program and for the institution they represent, was totally unprecedented. There was no blueprint.

It’s going to take some time, maybe, to sort this out, but something interesting was at work ever since Jason took that shot.

I’ve listened to enough fans the last few months say that the wins this year didn’t feel as good as they once did and that the losses felt worse than they ever had.

Fans are tired.

The guys on the team? They’re not robots. They’re not pros. They’re very serious about their basketball, yes, but – they’re college kids, they’re students.

I think they’re exhausted.

And I’m not even talking about physically.

Cremins, in the press conference after the game last night, unprompted, said this:

“Maybe they’re tired from what they did last year. They might be tired. They might be a little tired.”

McKillop, back at the hotel, in the lobby, with people packed in around him in a large, open room, and with people leaning over railings from the balconies above, said this:

“I don’t know if you understand the pressure that’s been on our guys since last April.”

It’s tough to measure pressure. Expectations. Exhaustion. There’s no box score for stuff like that. But those things, and anybody who’s been paying attention knows this – those things, all season long, were thick in the air around this team.

One final thing from last night: When the buzzer sounded, the TV cameras, I’d imagine, did something they haven’t done in a while. They shifted away from Stephen Curry. Charleston was jumping and hollering and TV cameras love winners.

So there was a moment there, perhaps, however small, when Stephen was, for the first time in quite some time, relatively unwatched.

He walked over to the bench. He stood at the rear of the line of his teammates as they started to walk up the sideline to shake the hands of their opponents. He looked down for not long and then looked back up. He seemed to take a deep breath.

And then he did what he’s always done. He tapped his chest, quick, with his right hand, and he pointed up high.

He turns 21 on Saturday.

Comments?

Feb. 21, 2009

16point8.blogspot.com:

Stayed down here in the Sunshine State for this one. Been busy. Been sick. Got a Charlotte mag piece due soon. So: watched it on the tube.

Stuff:

1. The last really good Davidson team that played better basketball in January than it did in February was maybe the ’95-’96 team. Or perhaps the ’04-’05 team. One of the trends within the Davidson basketball story over the last decade and a half or so has been consistent, constant in-season improvement, and it’s been a really cool trend. That doesn’t make it a rule.

2. Got a call at halftime. The caller said: “There’s a level of exhaustion to this year. I’m tired. And I’m not playing.”

3. Butler was the better team. The five-point margin at halftime wasn’t right. The game even at that point felt like what it was for most of the second half -- a 10- to 15-point kind of deal.

4. McKillop has talked, always, for as long as I’ve been following Davidson basketball, about the tissue-thin line between success and failure.

5. Things I liked about Butler: Those kids looked like college kids. They played defense. They won loose balls. They earned “slobber” points, one of the ESPN guys said, which I thought was a neat way of putting it. Back on the night this BracketBuster matchup was announced, on the radio after whatever game that was, McKillop, and then Bryant Barr, too, talked about how Butler was not only a great team but a great program. That distinction means a lot to McKillop, I think, because he knows well how hard it is to win this year, then the next year, then the year after that. My point here is: There’s no shame in losing to Butler. I’d much rather the team at my school lose to Butler than to any of the many outfits in the college game with gunslingers for coaches and knuckleheads for kids.

6. Another McKillopism: “Proud peacock today. Feather duster tomorrow.”

Comments?

Feb. 3, 2009

Kruse:

The Elite Eight. Going for win No. 20 with nine regular-season games left on the schedule. Dick Vitale coming to town. The most beloved college basketball player in America -- a student at Davidson College. A decade ago, in my reporting for the old book, I had sort of a stock question for the men who played for Davidson in the glory days in the ‘60s and those who tried to keep them up or get them back.

Can it happen again?

Some people thought yes.

More people thought no.

These interviews happened in 1998 and 1999. It’s interesting, given what’s happened since, especially these last few years, to re-read their words now.

Charlie Marcon ’65, Dec. 18, 1998, Bethlehem, Pa.: “It’s a delusion. I think it’s very naïve to think Davidson could ever do it again.”

Danny Carrell ’63, Oct. 15, 1998, Richmond, Va.: “Davidson can never do it again.”

Tom Franz ’84, Oct. 15, 1998, Richmond, Va.: “Absolutely not. It’ll never happen. It would be an absolute stroke of luck for it to happen. I just don’t think Davidson is going to get the kind of kids necessary to maintain that caliber. You might get one – but not enough. And that’s okay.”

Bill Jarman ’63, November 1998, Gastonia: “I don’t think so. Because now the emphasis on basketball is a total commitment – and the academics at Davidson aren’t going to allow that.”

Bill Beermann ’64, Feb. 17, 1999, on the phone from Jacksonville, Fla.: “I don’t think they can get the kind of players the bigger schools can get – guys who think they can be NBA players. Lefty was in an era when he could find these guys and recruit these guys. He was way ahead of a lot of other coaches in recruiting. That just doesn’t happen today. I don’t think it’s possible for a school of Davidson’s size to appeal to enough of those high-quality players.”

Davis Liles ’70, Nov. 16, 1998, Charlotte: “Now I think kids look at where they can go to get the most exposure and sign a big contract in the NBA two years later. That kid’s not coming to Davidson.”

Pepper Bego ’86, Feb. 10, 1999, Charlotte: “What hurts Davidson is its conference. Kids nowadays want to get exposure. The top 50 high school kids want the short stop to the NBA. And the academics, they’re uncompromising – at Davidson, you’ve got unrelenting academic pressures.”

Terry Holland, Oct. 29, 1998, Charlottesville, Va.: “It’s driven by the conferences today. TV is the whole game. That may not be true in two years, six years, 20 years from now. But Davidson has no control over that.”

Jerry Kroll ‘70, April 15, 1999, on the phone from Houston: “The game has moved on. I certainly think it’s possible – but highly unlikely.”

Ace Tanner ’87, Jan. 19, 1999, Charlotte: “I think the scene of college basketball has changed too much. Revenue generation has become the primary motivation. Big-time programs – their coaches are getting a million dollars from Nike and half a million from merchandising. It’s very hard to compete with that for a small liberal arts school like Davidson.”

Dick Snyder ’66, Nov. 15, 1998, Paradise Valley, Ariz.: “Never say never. The thing about basketball is, it’s still conceivable because you only need a couple of guys with a good supporting cast. I think it’s still possible. But I think it’s much harder than it used to be.”

Tim Bowker ’80, Dec. 15, 1998, Delran, N.J.: “I think they could get in the rankings every once in a while. That’s possible. But to expect that every year is unfair. You’re just not playing from the same gene pool. If Davidson is worried about maintaining its academic standards – and I think it should be – it should be very satisfied with having a competitive program.”

Mike Dickens ’69, October 1998, Bethesda, Md.: “You can build a program with one great player a year. But the thing that probably makes it difficult today is the TV contract is so critical. Not being a member of a conference with a TV package is a major drawback. Kids today want to play in a conference that gets a lot of publicity. … But top 64 year in and year out can be done. And every two, three or four years, when the stars are aligned right, you could win a game or two. I don’t see why Davidson couldn’t get to the Sweet 16. The goal should be to be in the tournament every year.”

John Gerdy ’79, Dec. 18, 1998, Conestoga, Pa.: “The basketball program is right where it needs to be. Challenge for the Southern Conference championship every year, win 20 games, go to the NCAAs every few years – that’s perfect.”

Wayne Huckel ’69, Nov. 5, 1998, Charlotte: “It depends on McKillop’s ability to get one or two players who can make the program. He could do it. But I think it’s unlikely. That’s not a knock. It’s just a fact of life.”

Doug Cook ’70, Dec. 16, 1998, Montclair, N.J.: “You don’t need a lot of basketball players to have a really good program. You need one or two great players and a supporting cast.”

Todd Haynes ’81, Feb. 18, on the phone from Bloomington, Ill.: “I think it can get back into the top 25. With basketball, if you get one or two really good players to come in, I can see them getting into the top 25. Coach McKillop has come close. He’s been maybe just one franchise player away from being there.”

Tony Orsbon ’69, Nov. 12, 1998, Charlotte: “What Bob McKillop needs most is that one guy who is an All-American. This team that Davidson has right now could go fairly deep into the NCAAs if they had what they don’t have right now – that one All-American. Davidson can get him. It’s possible. But it would take some extraordinary effort.”

Larry Horowitz ’75, November 1998, Charlotte: “It only takes one player.”

Pinky Hatcher ’68, October 1998, Atlanta: “It’s a great dream. You just need one kid.”

Comments?

Dec. 12, 2008

16point8.blogspot.com:

I could've missed this somewhere, but I read pretty much everything, and McKillop did say this the other night in the press conference after the game at the Garden:

"Stephen Curry is loved by his teammates. Loved."

Comments?

Dec. 9, 2008

More Kruse:

He never stops shooting.

Never.

Not ever.

Back before LAST season, back when I had seen Stephen play in person all of once, back before the second straight 29-win season, back before Gonzaga, Georgetown, Wisconsin and a shot in the air -- back before all that -- I went to Davidson to report a story for Charlotte magazine and this is what the coaches told me: The kid can miss a shot. He can miss two shots, three shots, four shots, five shots, 10 shots. It doesn't matter.

He never stops shooting.

Lives in the moment. Never about the last one. Always about THIS one.

And so this is what I found myself writing, over and over, in my notebook tonight at the Garden.

He never stops shooting.

Back rim.

He never stops shooting.

Front rim.

He never stops shooting.

In and out.

He never stops shooting.

So there's more to say about tonight, much more, and I'll get to it, but right now I kind of want to go meet Meg and Chip and Eddie for drinks at the Playwright on 35th between 5th and 6th.

Just quickly, though, just so we're clear about what happened here. These guys played at Madison Square Garden tonight and they did so without their best defender. They got out-rebounded 58-32, which is hard to do, and gave up 29 offensive rebounds, which is hard to do, too. They missed seven free throws. A freshman walk-on played nine minutes. Most of the team was in foul trouble most of the night. And Stephen missed more shots than he has in goodness knows how long.

And they won.

On ESPN.

In The World's Most Famous Arena.

And when Stephen hit that first late three deep from the left wing, and then that second late three deep from the right wing, ESPECIALLY that second late three, this place was nothing but noise for No. 30 and the rest of the kids from the village.

"He is," McKillop told all the people at the press conference after the game, "a very, VERY rare young man."

Comments?

Dec. 6, 2008

On Lefty's Legacy:

Davidson head coach Bob McKillop is a compelling figure. He’s the New Yorker who, for the past twenty years, has strolled down the sleepy streets of a southern college town to pick up his mail. He’s an enigmatic speaker with a penchant for metaphor whose delivery is as impeccable as his dress, yet he’s eminently humble. As a coach, he’s a brilliant tactician. His keen eye for detail and tireless commitment to the unsloppy way make him the envy of his peers. If there is a truly beautiful strategist in the modern game, he lives twenty feet from campus and once dreamt of the day that his college’s apparel would be sold in the local airport. But even more, McKillop has a way of inspiring his squads to play beyond themselves that is nonpareil.

It’s easy to credit McKillop for all of the successes of the past few seasons (with a healthy nod to the Lohengrin-like Steph Curry for the past two), but a story published today by Charlotte-based radio station WFAE gives us new reason to acknowledge the contributions of his players. Shortly after the heart-in-mouth ending of last season, the players issued a four-page memo to their coach. Said McKillop in the interview: “They met as a team and put together this four page manifesto, and it covered a variety of topics from the standpoint of basketball technique, training methods, practice sessions, schedule, involvement in the community, the way we would travel, diet.”

That’s a beautiful thing. I quickly began to miss the point though, wondering who the chief architect might’ve been. Lovedale did have a way with words in that elite eight post-game interview. But Rossiter has the heart of a lion. Max is tenacious on the ball, but with a pen? Could Curry’s glorious flurry on the court translate into the sort of striking rhetorical flourishes surely contained in what McKillop dubbed a manifesto? Civi? No.

The beauty of this gesture is that it reflects a group of intensely focused young men whose collective zeal for self-improvement has transcended the student-teacher paradigm. Better put, these players have taken the initiative. They have risen to all the calls and now, they have effectively raised their own bar. Perhaps the bit of the report that struck me most was the sound bite of freshman walk-on Will Reigel. Reigel has tallied a total of eight minutes on the floor in his collegiate career, yet his words evince the same drive and focus as those of his teammates. And that makes sense, because the vision is a synergistic one, where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

“Our team unity sets us apart from other schools and other teams. We’ve got a motto, trust commitment care, and we live by it, by the code. And treat each other with all three of those things all the time, and it’s really big for us.”

Comments?

Dec. 5, 2008

On 16point8.blogspot.com:

"Stephen has the ability to be one of the best basketball players ever to put on a Davidson jersey." -- Davidson coach Bob McKillop on Stephen Curry in September 2006

"I think he has a chance to be one of the best players ever to put on a Flames jersey." -- Liberty coach Ritchie McKay on Seth Curry in November 2008

Stephen Curry.

Seth Curry.

Dell's boys.

Everyone knows the story of Stephen by now. Skinny kid in ACC country. No big-time offers. Now look: from a good mid-major get to Southern Conference star to first-team All-American. One of THE faces of all of college hoops. The questions, of course, all along the way: What didn't the big coaches see? What did they MISS?

Well, it's still early, but Seth had 23 points in the first college game he played, he had 26 in Liberty's upset over VIRGINIA, he had 21 in a double-overtime win over William & Mary...

Is it happening AGAIN?

This is the new wrinkle in the Stephen Curry story. It's not just Stephen anymore. Seth, too, now. I don't want to get all crazy here, and oversell, and overshoot, but I can't help but think that within the story of these two brothers -- the story of this FAMILY -- are some of the most compelling reasons we watch sports.

We want to know what makes some people succeed and others fail. We want to know what makes some of us overachieve when most of us don't. And we want in the worst way to believe in the things we can't scout, or measure, or even explain.

Comments?

Dec. 3, 2008

On 16point8.blogspot.com:

For two decades Bob McKillop worked to build Davidson basketball into a program that matters and is respected and is part of college basketball’s national conversation. He did that. He did it, always, with a team-first philosophy, every player playing his role, one five beats five ones, BALANCE.

The irony heading into this year, then, was that it ultimately took the emergence of one brilliant kid.

It doesn’t play that way in McKillop’s head, and not in Stephen’s head, either, and not anywhere in that little locker room in Belk, and it shouldn’t.

But being a part of the national conversation means you lose a good deal of control over who tells your story and how.

And it felt, sort of, at least to me, like some kind of line had been crossed, or was starting to be crossed, with Stephen’s 44-point game in the loss at Oklahoma. The one-man-team talk was getting louder.

Stephen is the show.

He is.

He’s a good show even on a bad night. On most nights he’s a great show. And on transcendent nights? Davidson wins tournament games.

The hope, though, is that it never turns into show for the sake of show, at the expense of sport. That it doesn’t go sideshow or freak show. It’s the difference between a concert and the circus.

So.

The zero game.

What it did, in retrospect, was offer a clear answer to anybody who had started to wonder: Points or wins?

Show or sport?

Concert or circus?

Here’s what Jimmy Patsos ended up doing: He helped shift the national narrative back to where McKillop and Stephen and the team and the program and really the college as a whole had wanted it to stay all along.

Comments?

Nov. 20, 2008

Base Rich on Lefty's Legacy:

More than potential, close losses reveal a lot about a team’s character. This team never gave up. They pushed and pushed and will continue to push until the final buzzer sounds. This is the great spirit that Coach McKillop funnels into his system, a system imbued with huge ideas. Let us raise our heads and take in the big picture.

Comments?

More from March 24, 2008

Stan Brown on DavidsonCats.com:

Our players are great kids. I know that isn’t news, but I thought I’d share this story.

When I decided to try to get tickets for Raleigh on line, I asked my kids if they wanted to go. About a 400-mile drive, watch game, drive back. We’d done Duke (270) and Chattanooga (100 and midnight when we got home) and the Furman game at Davidson (255) as day trips this year.

Older son, Madison (14), had just gotten back from a school bus trip to NYC. He had no interest in any more miles for a while. No. 2 son was in. Wife insisted that we get a hotel room and drive over Thursday evening rather than leave in the middle of the night.

As we were saying our goodbyes on Thursday, No. 1 son says “Hey, Dad, tell Thomas Sander I said hi.” I asked him if he thought Thomas would know who he was. “Sure, I’m the kid in the Davidson shirt who always wore the Tennessee Vol hat. He’ll know me.”

Hmmmmmmmmm.

We had waited in the lobby after the Duke game, so my boys could see the players and No. 2 son could get some autographs. Thomas was one of the first players to come out. After he had spoken to his folks, we approached him. He was so nice to my sons. They really liked him. They couldn’t believe how tall he is. He thanked us for coming to support the team. Class kid. We chatted briefly about his AAU teammate from Cincy, UT player Ryan Childress, who was William's camp counselor last summer (who’d said to say hi to Sander when we went to see Davidson play).

After the game at Chattanooga, we waited down on the floor for the players to come out after showering and changing. A couple players came back to the bench area on the floor, but not many. I realized that most of the guys didn’t have any family to check with and had likely headed straight for the bus from the locker room.

We hustled out through the tunnel and found the bus almost full. Coach McKillop was still standing outside it. We approached him and I asked if he would autograph William’s shirt. He did and asked if William had Steph’s. No? He asked one of the managers to check and see if Steph was already on the bus. He was. Why don’t you go in the bus and get Steph’s? William was a little nervous, but big brother encouraged him and said he’d go with him. The boys spent a few minutes in the back of the bus talking with the players and getting some autographs on William's shirt (I was bending poor Matt Matheny’s ear up front).

When we got in the car, it was a series of “Andrew Lovedale is really nice.” “Is Ben Allison a good player? I talked with him, where is he from? He’s nice. He sounds different.” “Steph Curry is nice.” And on and on.

As we were driving home, Madison asked why we haven’t taken a road trip to a game at Davidson. So we did the Furman game. Afterward, we saw Aaron Bond near the cafeteria and had a nice chat. We stopped by the Brick House. Some of the players were there, including Sander. We spoke to him briefly. I bent poor Matt’s ear some more and we left for home.

And based on that limited experience, my elder son was sure that Thomas would remember him (and that he was my son).

I tried to explain to him that an NCAA tourney game might be a little different from a SoCon game. With press interviews and another game following, we wouldn't be hanging out around the court waiting for the players to come out from the locker room. And even if we were able to see him and as nice as Thomas was to him, we really shouldn't expect him to remember all the kids who ask him for autographs or shake his hand.

Madison just shrugged. Thomas was a great person and very nice. He’d remember the tall 14-year-old with the UT hat. He was sure of it.

William and I didn’t see any of the players on our Raleigh excursion Friday. But I was struck by the fact that our players in general, and Thomas specifically, had made such an impression on my boys that they felt like the Davidson players were their friends.

The guys in red and black are special people.

Comments?

March 24, 2008

My journal:

I just cannot believe that one week ago we were all sitting in the Union, listening to McKillop, waiting for the show to start. None of us—not even those tall boys who sat in the front row wearing polo shirts and clutching pizza boxes as their jerseys hung from the rafters—had any clue what the next seven days would bring. We all had dreams.

They’re not dreams anymore.

Comments?

March 21, 2008: Stories

Lauren Biggers on DavidsonWildcats.com, post-Gonzaga:

For Bob McKillop, this story goes back 19 years.

"He eats, sleeps, breathes, lives Davidson basketball," Steph tells the press room, much to the delight of Richards, who is looking very comfortable at the podium tonight.

Tens of questions later, leaving the press conference to rejoin his team's locker room celebration, the winning coach smiles, free of all monkeys, and offers, "I've never done that before."

Indeed, this year's NCAA CD will be full of smiling press conference photos.

For Davidson College, the story goes back much, much farther. We've all heard that story.

And today, we got our own.

Comments?

March 21, 2008

From Raleigh, on Cats.com, after Gonzaga:

Dear America,

It was, up until now, a hopeful but hypothetical conversation. We’ve had it over beers in bars. We’ve had it on cell phones from Boston to San Francisco, from New York to Atlanta, from Charlotte to Tampa. We’ve had it in the fall and in the winter, and in the spring and summer, too. We’ve had it for years.

What if?

What if we won in the tournament?

It’s SUCH a good story, we said to each other -- little school, big dreams, cute town, smart kids. People, we kept saying, WANT to tell this story. They just needed a reason. They needed us to win.

This tournament is a series of finite 40-minute windows of opportunity. Seize one and you earn another. Win and you get another two days of news cycle. Win and you get to tell your story.

You have to understand something about us and our school. I don’t know if it’s Southern gentility or Presbyterian humility, but we’ve always been institutionally reluctant to say, Hey, look, look at us. It’s just not what we’ve done and so it’s not what we do.

But we want so badly for people to know.

So we’ve looked to Bob McKillop and his basketball team.

He went 4-24 in his first season at Davidson. That was 19 years ago. He has taken us from the Southern Conference tournament to the NIT to the NCAAs and now to a win in the NCAAs. He built this. He didn’t leave us when he could have. He has raised his family in a house across the street from campus. His oldest son played for him. His youngest son plays for him now. His daughter went to Davidson and is engaged to a Davidson man. He tears up when he talks about this.

His team went to the NIT in ’94.

His team lost in the conference finals in ’96 after going undefeated in league play. Another NIT. In ’98, a conference tournament title, a trip to the NCAAs. It seems so, so long ago, but not really, and we were giddy. That felt like this feels. Really it did.

Finally.

There were trips back, in ’02, in ’06, in ’07.

Close, close, close. But never that win.

Now THIS.

Make no mistake: We beat a good team today. This was not about the bounces or the breaks. No. We beat a really good team that played really well because WE played really well.

Because we got a ballsy gutsy late three from Max.

Because we got 13 rebounds from Andrew.

Because we got two huge buckets late from Rossiter.

Because we got nine assists and 15 points from Jason.

And also, of course, because we got 40 from Steph. Not just any 40. An 8-for-10-from-three 40. A 14-for-22 40. A five-steals 40. A first-round-record-setting-40. A forever 40.

But this whole thing is less about how it happened and more about what it means. After the game, Joey Beeler, the men’s basketball media relations guy, was looking frazzled. His life just got crazy. He said his phone started going off right as the buzzer sounded. Let it be told. We are one of the smallest schools in Division I.

We are 1,700 students in Davidson, N.C., just north of Charlotte, that’s it, all undergrad.

We are NOT Davidson University.

We are ranked ninth in the U.S. News and World Report and 23rd in the AP poll.

We keep in touch with our professors after we graduate.

We watch basketball games on grainy Web video from wherever we live.

A couple weeks ago, at the Southern Conference tournament championship game, there was a man with a sign, and the sign said:

YOU

MAKE

US

PROUD

And they do, and in a way that’s much, much more intimate than most other Division I program, and certainly most other programs that are playing this weekend for a spot in the Sweet 16. This program, our program, is now big enough to matter but still small enough to touch.

After the game on Friday, in the locker room, there were the lights, the mics, the pens and the pads, the bigness, and there was Steph, surrounded by a scrum three- and four-deep, saying what he said, tired, happy, the faintest of facial hair, as always, on his chin and his upper lip.

We saw in the peach-fuzzed face of this pretty kid from Charlotte the potential of what happened today.

The hypothetical is no longer hypothetical.

He helped make our conversation real.

Sincerely,

Michael Kruse

Davidson College

Class of 2000

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March 1, 2008

Me in Statesboro on DavidsonCats.com:

Before we shift our full focus to Charleston, before we start talking about possible rankings and whatever, let’s just pause, just for a moment, maybe even till Monday, to acknowledge 20-0.

I’m not totally certain, but no way anybody else has done this, ever, in the history of Division I college basketball, right? A 20-GAME league schedule is practically unheard of. To WIN all of those games?

The temptation is to call it absurd. But I won’t. I’ll just call it what it is.

Amazing.

Really it is.

It’s just an incredibly fine thing.

To have 10 other teams in your conference, and to beat every one of them TWICE, your gym, their gym, on nights, off nights, good refs, bad refs, and to finish it off by beating a 20-win team, at its place, on its senior night, and to BEAT THEM DOWN?

“I told them in the locker room,” Coach McKillop said after the game here. “In 35 years of coaching I have never been a part of such an accomplishment.”

Heck of a statement.

And Steph. Not a half-bad way to wrap up Southern Conference Player of the Year, huh? Oh, and so much for that “only”-29-points-in-two-games “slump.” He took 17 shots and 13 of them went in. He took nine threes and seven of them went in. That was good for 35 points, and in just 26 minutes, which is about as efficient as it gets. There was one three, real early on, like five minutes in, when Steph got it in transition, on the left wing, and was just silly open. Cue Steph Curry, and again, and again, and again, and again …

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Jan. 26, 2008

Another win in the Lowcountry:

Kevin Cary, the Observer’s conscientious tracker of the ‘Cats, pointed out on press row that Davidson has trailed in the second half of just one conference game so far this year -- that, of course, being the scrape up at Elon.

To which Steph said after this latest win: “We haven’t really done anything yet.

McKillop said he was happy with the post play. He said he wasn’t so happy with the so-so second half. Still, though, the boys got back on the bus and went home, a job well done down here.

A win is a win is a win, and in the league now that’s 11 and 0, 21 in a row, 35 of 36, etc., etc., etc.

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Bro and Tripp

CSTV.com:

Head coach Bob McKillop’s basketball team is what got them together. It’s what brings them together. It’s what keeps them together.

“Davidson basketball,” Tripp said, “is the reason I see Bro, when he lives however many hundreds of miles away, three or four times a year.”

They like the intimacy.

“We can talk to Coach McKillop,” Bro said. “Not because we give millions of dollars. Because we care.”

They like the continuity. The college has had three presidents since ‘95 but just one basketball coach.

They like the underdog story.

Davidson is unique in Division I basketball -- a tiny school, 1,700 students, a No. 9 national academic ranking in the U.S. News & World Report and a location that puts it in the middle of all the attention-getting ACC schools.

It also has a history uncommon for a mid-major program: In the late ‘60s, Lefty Driesell took the Wildcats into the national spotlight: big crowds, the cover of Sports Illustrated and to back-to-back regional finals. That it has happened before gives the program’s fans the hope that it can happen again.

The Davidson basketball story is that chance.

And the chance never ends.

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From the pages of Charlotte magazine

Here:

Now it’s almost forty years post-Lefty. Bob McKillop has been Davidson’s coach for almost half of those. His team won a school-record 29 games last year, is returning every player of any consequence, is in line for a third straight NCAA tournament appearance, and has on this season’s schedule games at Charlotte Bobcats Arena against North Carolina and Duke.

This year could be the year the Wildcats win back Charlotte.

All it took was the legacy of a coach who did his thing and left, the development of a coach who’s done his thing and stayed, burgeoning suburbs, and finally a skinny, unafraid 19-year-old kid who could end up being the most important player in the history of Davidson basketball.

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Just before tip

The NCAAs, March 2007, Buffalo, N.Y.