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?
Kruse:Bro Krift, Class of '99, who has season tickets even though he lives in Pittsburgh, e-mailed me a question last week.
"In all of your reporting on the team for the book, which player impressed you, and how? I have a feeling it's one of the guys that hasn't made headlines."
It's true.
One of the very few shames of having Stephen in these last eight or so months go from star to superstar to phenomenon is that some of the other guys on the roster who have great, great stories aren't really having those stories told.
Andrew Lovedale is a kid from Nigeria who sings gospel songs and brings old sneakers and basketballs back to his country when he goes home in the summers for goodness sake.
Bryant Barr is a double major in math and economics who speaks to church youth groups and to celebrate his math major last year got together with his fellow math majors and made pies with Pi logos on them. Just a nerd with a jumpshot, Bryant is, and proudly, and admittedly, and unabashedly.
Steve Rossiter? The kid was offered a scholarship in part because of the way he cheered for his backup at the ends of games in high school in Staten Island.
Certainly, though, at or near the top of this list, at least for me, is Max.
Today, given yesterday, it seems maybe particularly apropos to say as much.
It was a bad foul.
It was.
It looked even worse.
And I haven't talked to Max since, haven't even seen him, not down in Charlotte after the game, not up here in Davidson, but I can say that he absolutely didn't go toward that kid with intent to harm. It's just not Max.
The first time McKillop ever saw Max was at an all-star camp in Atchison, Kansas, and Max was running and jumping and diving in a game being played in a gym that was so stuffy and so hot that other players started calling it "the oven."
McKillop went to visit Max in the suburbs of Montreal and told his parents their son was the rare sort who could have, he thought, an enormous influence on the outcome of a game without scoring a point.
Fine Davidson fan Meg Clark told me last spring that Max was working the fall of his freshman year at the carnival at Belk Arena to kick off the season and that he came over to a game where young kids were trying to throw rubber rings onto bottle necks. He got down on his knees and talked to the kids and helped them with their throws and called them all "buddy."
Max, Meg thought then, and thinks still now, has a gift that is hard to explain but plain to see:
He makes the people around him feel good.
Max:
He spoke no English three years before he got to Davidson.
He didn't understand why some of the coaches from some of the schools that were recruiting him were telling him about how hot the girls were or how good the weather was on their campuses.
He picked Davidson, he told me in April, because he is so close to his own family.
"Human relationships," he said.
"I didn't want to just be a teammate."
He has a habit of touching guys on their shoulders in huddles.
"I think physical contact conveys a lot of meaning," he said in that meeting in April. "I think of the team as family. Are you going to tell your mother every five minutes that you love her? No. But you can touch her shoulder, lean against her, and feel close."
He doesn't watch TV.
He doesn't watch sports on TV.
The only basketball games he watches are the ones he plays in.
He majors in sociology because he is fascinated by how people who are different try to get along.
He is one of the best students on the team.
I have found Max, always, to be bright and open, and interesting and interested, and the best kind of curious.
"In life," he has written on his Facebook page, "everything is a first time."
In June, in Chambly, Quebec, I met on a sunny Saturday morning for a long breakfast with Max and his parents.
Max's father's father was a pig farmer and a beet farmer and did that from early in the morning to 2 in the afternoon and then went to work his shift treading tires at a local factory. He did that for 27 years.
Max's is father is one of Canada's most successful importers of cheese. It's a family business.
"We work not in the spirit of we have to," Jean-Philippe Gosselin said. "We work because we like what we do and the feeling of accomplishment."
The motivation in his work, he explained, sometimes in English to me, sometimes in French to Max, who then translated, is not motivated by fear or money, but by the belief that the pursuit and the competition are intrinsically worthwhile.
At this point in the notebook I had with me that morning, written in scribbles, is a note to myself -- I'm looking at it right now -- and it says:
The goal was never to make it to the Elite Eight or the Final Four. The goal was to play so hard, and so well, and so together, that such a thing became a possibility.
Comments?
Lauren Biggers on The View From Press Row:
If you were there, you're gonna wanna remember this one. "Put it in your memory bank" along with Gonzaga, Greensboro and Elon, but for the most opposite of reasons.
0-3, three fouls.
The rest of the band:
Lovedale: 8-for-14, 20 points, 10 boards.
The WL: 6-for-12 (all treys!), 18 points.
Bond, Aaron Bond: 4-for-5, 11 points, nine minutes.
Will Archambault: 5-for-9, 13 points, four assists.
SteVe: six points, six boards, six assists.
And afterwards, I turned over most of my post-game duties to assistant SID Matt Harris to attend press conferences. Standing in the classroom listening to the Band Leader, there's a tap on the window, and there's the Cheese, making faces while waiting his turn.
I'm sure there's some disappointment -- scorers like to score after all -- but you wouldn't know. In the press conference there is laughter and joking, as he concedes to "not knowing what position" he was playing and having "the best view in Belk Arena tonight."
And so it went, and in the greatest of dramatic twists, the one seeking the spotlight was upstaged by the one who can't avoid it.
Without scoring a point.
Comments?
Lauren Biggers on DavidsonWildcats.com:
When it was all said and done, five ‘Cats were in double-figures, led by 30 points and 13 assists from America’s Sweetheart.
Converted forevermore, SteVe Rossiter put up 13 – including a perfect 3-of-3 from the line (sigh, free throws), and Bryant Barr, known forevermore as “the white lobster” finished with 11. I’m not sure where this nickname originated, but I know that (a) I like it, (b) it’s complete with a hand signal, and (c) that kid in the student section in the white lobster costume tonight = awesome.
“That’s probably the most awesome costume ever,” director of basketball operations “TI” said afterwards. Or something very similar, I’m sure.
“Did you see my mascot?” the actual white lobster asked. With a smile.
In her first night on press row, SID assistant Alex was enjoying her new view. “You can hear everything,” she tells me, amazed(ish), before observing the students. “What is that flag … and why is that guy dressed like a … shrimp?”
Comments?
