On last night

Thoughts from Charleston:

*** Been to three games over this last week -- Samford in Davidson, Duke in Durham, The Citadel in Charleston -- and you’re reminded in Southern Conference games that no one in the league can guard Stephen. With the ball in his hands, at this level of play, he can create space for a jumper if he wants to -- whenever he needs to -- and he can get into the lane at will and at worst get to line. He shot 18 free throws last month against Chattanooga. He shot 14 last night.

*** BLOCK by BEN-EZE, Frank.

That’s what the stat book’s play-by-play says happened with 3:11 left in the first half.

No.

That’s not what happened at all.

What happened was Citadel guard Zach Urbanus drove right baseline and put up a shot and Frank volleyball-spiked that shot to the floor.

And that’s not all that happened with Frank last night. He had a dunk. He had a tap dunk after a whistle. He played 13 minutes, he had another block, he had three boards, he altered a Citadel shot in the lane with a hand that was so high above the floor it was almost startling, and certainly not something Davidson folks are accustomed to, and there was this one time when he guarded an inbounds pass in a way that looked like Max, only if Max had oars for arms.

*** Cremins is always calling Davidson the Duke of the Southern Conference, and here we were in Charleston, and I thought about that when Davidson did to The Citadel in the first five minutes of the second half what Duke did to Davidson the other night in Durham.

*** Had a good spot on press row to hear poor official Roger Parramore get ragged on by both coaches.

Here was The Citadel’s Ed Conroy early in the second half yelling at him when a call went against his team early in the second half. The “he” is McKillop.

“Roger!”

“He yells at you and you give him the next three!”

“Roger!”

“You afraid of him?”

Then a little later:

“Roger!”

“You’re scared!”

“Roger!”

“You guys are scared!”

Could’ve been.

Awesome, right?

*** 5,336. At The Citadel. Over break. With no cadets. Last year’s Davidson game here drew 1,204.

*** The contingent of ‘Cat fans, including Meg, Sink, Cobb, Jim and Jip, the Nicholson brothers, the Archambaults, David Rorie, Randy Lawrence, others -- they sang a little piece of Sweet Caroline coming out of the 8-minute media timeout. Nice touch on the road.

*** Nine Davidson players with double-digit minutes.

*** No Observer staffer down here. This will help.

*** From The Citadel game notes: “The Citadel looks to slay the dragon Saturday night in McAlister Field House …”