Jan. 13, 2009

Kruse:

Didn’t watch last night’s game, didn’t even listen to it, just checked the score and the stats periodically while I was at a get-together down here in Tampa and then read the coverage early this morning.

Thoughts:

Some games on the schedule, every year, scream potential loss, and this was one of them. These guys were in Charleston on Saturday night and then had to be in Boone on Monday. That meant the Southern Conference was asking them to bus back to Davidson and arrive in the wee hours of Sunday morning, practice at Belk Sunday afternoon, get back on a bus, drive up into the mountains, spend another night in a hotel, and then play a game against a team that was angry coming off a home loss and was so torqued up to play Davidson the Appalachian game ops people passed out black T-shirts that said BEAT DAVIDSON.

And then Stephen got into foul trouble and played all of 18 minutes.

Still won.

By 18.

It says some things about this group, Davidson basketball in general, where the program is right now, but also about this team in particular.

It says it’s a team that can win games 100-95.

It says it’s a team that can win games 70-52.

It says it’s a team that can win when Stephen scores in the 40s.

It says it’s a team that can win when Stephen scores in the teens.

It says McKillop and Matheny and Fox have been doing this for a long time now, and together, and that they know what they’re doing, and in a way that is very unusual.

It’s the kind of win that makes the 20-0 talk at least understandable if still more than a tad premature.

Again, I wasn’t there, and I didn’t watch the Web feed, so I don’t know what it looked like, and felt like, and stats are only stats, but …

22.2 percent from three for Appalachian.

3-for-4 from three for Max.

1 turnover in 22 minutes for Brendan.

Eight guys in double figures in minutes and four guys in double figures in points.

Davidson: 17 assists, 9 turnovers; Appalachian: 8 assists, 17 turnovers.

And absolutely the craziest number on that box score? 8,350 – the biggest crowd ever to watch a game at the Holmes Center up there, bigger even than the facility’s very first game, against Carolina.

What this is right now, what this has become, it’s stunning, it’s still stunning, and I don’t know that it will ever be anything other than stunning.

Comments?