That was Davidson basketball

I’m not talking about production, although go look at the box, and go look at the balance. I’m not even so much talking about execution, although anybody who’s watched this program for any amount of time saw plays, cuts and reads they’ve seen before.

I’m talking more about … disposition. Demeanor. What did they look like?

From where I sat in Hinkle, they didn’t look lost, they didn’t look scared, they didn’t look overmatched, and they didn’t look like they were looking for the guy who’s no longer there. They looked right.

This might sound funny or strange, and hopefully I can think this through a little more over the coming weeks and months, but I’ll give it a shot after Game 1:

Last year was entertaining. Saturday afternoon was interesting. What was most interesting last year, at least to me, often was more the stuff going on around the court, and less the stuff going on actually on the court.

It’s kind of a difficult distinction to draw, because wider, outside attention isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it struck me at Hinkle on Saturday that nobody was there to ogle or gawk. The people who were there, 6,713 of them, were there to watch two good teams play good basketball. There wasn’t any see-to-be-seen.

I’m mixing senses here, but it makes me think about what Scott Fowler wrote the other day, the thing about “the new era at Davidson,” after Stephen, and how it’s going to be “a much quieter one.”

That depends on what you’re listening to, and what you’re listening for.

McKillop didn’t look quiet on Saturday. Not to me he didn’t. That bench didn’t look quiet. The five guys in red out there on the court didn’t look quiet either. And I don’t just mean sound. I mean energy. And it was an energy that was familiar. And it was familiar in a way that sometimes last year’s energy was not.

After the game, standing against a wall in a hallway at Hinkle, McKillop talked about the closed scrimmage last month at Texas and how his guys went down 15-4, quick, and then fought back, and how he saw that same thing in the second half on Saturday.

“I saw great fight,” he said.

A little later I talked to Rossiter outside the locker room.

“We saw what we could do,” he said.

And a little after that I talked to Fox on his way to the bus to the airport.

“We’re going to be who we are,” he said.