(More) March 17, 2009

Michael:

This was a difficult game. Quick turn. On the road. The NIT and not the NCAA. It was made more difficult by the officials’ apparent decision to call a foul on what seemed like just about every touch in the first part of the second half. Max and Steve with four fouls before the first media timeout? Seriously not ideal.

Davidson has a reputation for being very very physical. I don’t think I’m revealing any great secret by saying that. They have that reputation because they’ve earned it. There’s a difference between being big and being physical. Duggar Baucom told me that last summer in my reporting for the book. The guys who play for Davidson, he said, almost every one of them, almost every year, are the latter. They play physical because they have to. Refs who for whatever reason decide to call an abnormally tight game typically mean not good things for Davidson.

And yet: 70-63.

A win like tonight’s is the kind of thing that makes a team like Davidson that plays on Davidson’s level a program. It’s not as important as beating Gonzaga, Georgetown and Wisconsin on CBS – obviously – but it’s still really important. It is.

To be a program like Davidson wants to be, and is, and to do that from where Davidson sits within the structure of the sport, you win your league in the regular season. You do that more often than not. In Davidson’s case, of course, at least over the better part of the last decade and a half, you do that far more often than not. You don’t beat teams from power conferences every time you play them but you do beat them some of the times you play them. You win, like, 18 games in down years. You don’t go to the NCAAs every year but you are in the running. You have a real chance every year.

And in the years where it doesn’t happen and you don’t get to the NCAAs?

You get invited to the NIT.

And you win there.

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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.

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Dec. 7, 2008: Stories

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.

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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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Nov. 24, 2008

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.

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Nov. 21, 2008

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?”

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Watching in North Charleston

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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