Feb. 28, 2009: Will

Will Bryan on pavingthemiddle.blogspot.com:

Davidson’s last two home games against UNC Greensboro and Georgia Southern weren’t supposed to be close. Both opponents are having off-years and are vastly undermanned.

But the two games represented important moments in the 2009 Wildcat basketball season. Davidson needed to bounce back. They needed to win in front of their home crowd. They needed something that everyone agreed that they seemed to have lost.

They won consecutive homes 70-49 and 99-56. Fans scoured stat sheets to find signs of life … Frank Ben Eze’s big scoring and rebounding numbers. Rossiter getting double figures today. Curry with 11-19 shooting today.

People seem hopeful. The basketball seems to be going in the net more now.

I’m excited again for other reasons.

On Wednesday, Davidson’s ticket director asked me where I thought everyone was. Attendance was lower than it had been and Belk Arena was quieter.

“I don’t know, and I don’t care,” I answered. “The people that want to be here are here.”

Davidson is in a good place now because the fans that are in the stands want to be there … not because they are scared of missing a Curry moment if they don’t come. These are fans that stay to the end because that’s what you came for, not individual acrobatics.

Davidson’s players want to be on the court as well. There isn’t fear of messing up and breaking a streak and falling out of at-large contention. It is just an intense desire to go steal that ball and dunk it home (Davidson made 15 steals today, and four of them came before Georgia Southern scored a basket, 5.5 minutes into the game).

Davidson is back to cheering for Can Civi and the celebration of his “35th birthday” and recognition for a career in which he averaged tenths of a point, and yet still drew the highest praise from the All-American for being the “hardest working player on the team” and “one of the main reasons that everyone is pushed to get better every day.”

That’s why I have hope. I hope now because this team isn’t innocent. They know what big-time expectations look and feel like. They know they could be bigger than “Davidson.” But after struggling with that for months, they turn around at the last moment and finally embrace everything that Davidson has given them.

They have been in the wilderness, but now are home. And that’s good, because March is just a few hours away.

Comments?

Feb. 28, 2009: Claire

From my journal:

The game was good — we’re finally back on track! David said, “All right boys, I want 100!” Nope, but still so nice to get a win at home. Lord, we badly needed that. And the whole time I was just very aware that it was my last game in Belk until SENIOR YEAR. WHAT? The comfort and contentedness I feel in that place — that back row of the endzone — is indescribable. Every time I’m there I know it is exactly where I am supposed to be.

It’s neat because the same ticket-checking guy has been there the last several games and so we’ve started talking to him more and he’s started reacting more to the game and it’s been cool to see that take place. And the pep band is wonderful — all of the songs they play are so evocative for me and it just puts me in the moment.

Towards the end of the game CIVI! came in — a guy in the bleachers had been holding up a sign that said “HAPPY BIRTHDAY CIVI” so someone in the row in front us passed along the message — “Guys, when Civi goes in we’re gonna sing happy birthday!” So we giggled and whispered and waited for our cue – probably from D Block? — and suddenly the entire arena burst our singing — as the boys were playing —

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR CIVI!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!

It was so wonderful and completely epitomizes what this place is about, hype and ESPN be damned — we care about them. Who sings “Happy birthday” to their beloved bench warmer during a game? Seriously.

And then as soon as the game ended and they shook hands, McKillop grabbed the microphone — “Tonight is the last time that three of our players will be in front of their peers at Belk Arena …” and Andrew, Max, and Civi unclumped themselves from the clump in the middle of the court and grinned and waved while we screamed and McKillop introduced them. Those three, I realize now thinking back, have always been so happy. They are always smiling, and they play so hard all the time.

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Feb. 26, 2009

Lauren on The View From Press Row:

No one on the corner has swagger like us. Again.

Collective exhale.

This is how Wildcat nation is feeling after the Davidson men’s team’s 70-49 win over UNC Greensboro Wednesday night at Belk Arena.

Around here, things have been just a little off lately. After the loss to the College of Charleston Feb. 7, we weren’t even sure how to run the post-game. You see, the winning team goes first. And well, suddenly, that was not the Wildcats.

I put down my thoughts after that loss, and then suddenly, it’s been four games since. Some of that is due to the fact, sure, that’s it’s easier for me not to write when it isn’t all roses and kittens around Belk Arena, but mostly it’s due to the fact that it’s officially baseball season at Wilson Field. (Four games this weekend if you need to get your fix.)

I really meant to write and share my thoughts after the four games in between Charleston and last night, but life happened.

I made the trip to Furman, but ended up writing the game story. And then there was that thing with the ankle heard round the world. Though I will tell you that my Valentine’s Day dinner at Chick-fil-A with SID Marc Gignac, Davidson play-by-play extraordinaire John Kilgo, and color guy Kenny Loggins was pretty special. (Complete with a cappella singers in tuxedos, free cheesecake and carnations.)

And what can I say about The Citadel game? If you are looking to read negative reviews, sorry, you just won’t find them here. That’s just not what I do. The players and coaches are friends and colleagues, and for all, I have deep respect. Except when I lose in darts. And anyways, that’s what the Internet is for.

And as I was glancing over the stats and making the post-game books Saturday after the Butler game, I was thinking about six losses. And how many teams in the country would love to have six losses. And how I could easily name the six, but not more than a handful of the 23 wins.

And last night … Last night just felt right. Felt familiar. Didn’t it?

The Joker ended up with 20 points, 10 rebounds and five assists in 26 minutes.

There were highlight-reel worthy dunks from Frank Ben-EASY (the people love some Frank Ben-EASY, eh?) and the Big Cat, fan favorites Can Civi (happy birthday from the D-Block … A-maz-ing.) and Will Reigel making steals and layups.

And that NASTY four-point play.

But mostly, there was a win.

And there was Swagger. Again.

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.”

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