The Wisconsin poster

The others: Gonzaga, Georgetown, Kansas.

The Gonzaga poster

Art by Alan Hyder.

(Also) Jan. 18, 2009

Claire:

Happiest moment? It isn’t possible to name just one. It never is, but this year seems especially … deep and full. Davidson vs. UNCG/all home games/winning SoCon/beating Gonzaga/beating Georgetown (this might be the top. Watching it happen, “Davidson back from the dead” – screaming my head off with Elizabeth on the phone, and the unparalleled frenzy of BLISS because it was the impossible come true.)/beating Wisconsin (but this, this was so EASY and joyful and triumphant and uh, I WAS THERE)/the Kansas game (because really? REALLY?).

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Dec. 18, 2008

More from Kruse:

Andrew is the eighth of 10 children. He lost his father when he was 13. He didn’t start playing basketball seriously until he moved to England when he was 17. He sings gospel songs, every day, often alone. He says it uplifts his spirit. He says it keeps him in touch with the source. He says his favorite is God Will Make A Way. “A roadway in the wilderness,” that song says. In the locker room after the win over Gonzaga, he told me last spring, he saw peace.

Before he started playing basketball in England, he said, when he was maybe 15 and still living in Benin City, Nigeria, he barely knew the rules of the sport. He was curious enough, though, to go to the playground near his home to watch the “big boys,” he said, bolt barefoot up and down the concrete court with wooden backboards and rims with no nets. They were older, bigger and stronger, but the way they played, he thought, was wild and unstructured.

“I felt,” he told me, “they were running without purpose.”

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Oct. 18, 2008

Will Bryan on Somewhere in the Middle:

In watching ESPNU’s coverage this morning, I noticed that they said that Gonzaga will be the Davidson of this season. Considering all of the ways in which Davidson has aimed to follow the Gonzaga basketball formula of having extended conference success, playing high-profile non-conference schedules, and trying to splash in March, it is so ironic that it was Gonzaga that Davidson beat to spark their run this year, and now Gonzaga is being compared to Davidson.

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March 31, 2008

Lauren Biggers on DavidsonWildcats.com:

As we sit on the bus and wait for a plane to take us home, assistant director of ticketing and roommate on this crazy ride, April Albritton has a song stuck in her head. You know the one.

Good times never seemed so good.

It is the song that has come to define a season. A season so good that we will always remember this crazy ride.

And yet, without the good times, there is no reference point for this moment. These feelings.

They make the good times feel so good.

This loss will hurt for a while, to be sure. But when it’s all said and done, it’s the good times that we will remember. The winning, the records, the championships, the banners.

Beyond that every story is personalized. Remember where you were when the Wildcats knocked off Gonzaga? Georgetown? Wisconsin? Remember how you felt? Remember that.

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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.

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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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