Taking the Shot

The book makes its second appearance on the NYT’s Quad Blog. Old Chapel Hill friend and Carolina man Mike Ogle gives a mention in today’s tourney live blog:

I was talking with a Davidson friend recently, Michael Kruse, who wrote a book about last year’s Stephen Curry-fueled run called Taking The Shot. I was asking him how cocky Davidson fans are getting about where their program is headed (aside from the N.I.T.). He said a lot of them think they could be the next Gonzaga. But there are probably too many things working against such a tiny bookish school in the heart of A.C.C. and Southeastern Conference country.

Either way, Curry is missed in this tourney.

Lowcountry mention

Taking the Shot in the Post & Courier. (Scroll down.)

Similarities

In the Indy Star:

Before the game, I read “Taking The Shot: The Davidson Basketball Moment,” by Michael Kruse, who chronicled the Wildcats’ 2008 run to the Elite Eight. I was continually struck by how much Butler and Davidson resemble each other. Both are small colleges that stick to a system and play big-time basketball. Wish I had more time to tour the beautiful campus here. It looks like what we would all imagine a college campus to be. Davidson’s enrollment is 1,700, or less than half of Butler’s.

College Hoops Journal

The latest book Q&A:

These are my thoughts.

That’s all they are.

I think last year’s team had two guards who could play with anybody. I think this year’s team has one. I think this year’s team asks Stephen to do a TON. I don’t think there’s any way around that. I think Stephen does more for his team than any other player in America. And I thought that before this week’s Stephen-less Citadel loss. I think he’s carried an enormous burden this year. I think it’s remarkable that he’s performed the way he’s performed and that he hasn’t gotten more worn down than he has. I think last year’s team had a post player in Thomas Sander who did all kinds of things that were invisible to most folks watching but made all of his teammates so much better. I think that kind of player is as rare as a player like Stephen is rare. I think last year’s team was backed by a fan base that was filled with such genuine hope but not necessarily debilitating expectation. I think it created an authentic experience. I think it’s an experience Davidson people will be talking about for a long, long time.

Better than Hoosiers

From a Q&A about the book that I did for Sidebar, the in-house newsletter down here at the St. Pete Times, with deputy managing editor Rob Hooker, Davidson ’69:

I continue to think about those 16.8 seconds, and that message board post, and what they might mean. Bob McKillop, the Davidson coach, has been at Davidson for 20 years, and Jason was a senior who hadn’t played much his first two years in college, and Stephen was a sophomore who hadn’t been recruited by any big schools, and so there was something very, very anti-get-rich-quick about the team’s tournament run last March. That last moment, watched by so many, was created by so many people at Davidson doing so many things well for so many years, while being watched by so few -- and here was the reward.

In the end, though, the reward wasn’t Hoosiers.

It was more interesting than that.

If that shot had gone in, I probably wouldn’t have written a book -- you’ve read that book before, you’ve watched that movie -- and I definitely wouldn’t have written this book.

A book Q&A

In this week’s Davidsonian.

(Note: Uptick in book sales this week. The story on Davidson.edu? The excerpt in Basketball Times?)

Davidson Journal

In the current issue:

Like many Davidson graduates, Michael Kruse ‘00 watched the Wildcats’ Elite Eight run last March, much of it from the stands at Detroit’s Ford Field. In the days that followed, he thought about what he had seen, talked about it with others, and read an Internet post by the Rev. William Robertson ’75 about that final shot in the Kansas game, and about Trust, with a capital T.

Kruse decided to take a risk -- and a three-month leave from his job with the St. Petersburg Times. Many miles and 300 interviews later, he wrote a book about that game, those players, that coach, that season, Davidson College, and Trust -- Taking the Shot: The Davidson Basketball Moment.

What does Bob McKillop have to say about Taking the Shot? “Michael gets it,” said the coach.

Taking the Shot

Emily Matras ’12 on davidson.edu.

Barnes & Noble

Butler Books tells me Taking the Shot is now available at the following locations:

Barnes & Noble 2317
4020 Sharon Road
Charlotte

Barnes & Noble 2812
3327 Pineville Matthews Rd.
Charlotte

Barnes & Noble 2795
3102 Northline Ave.
Greensboro

Barnes & Noble 2761
1925 Hampton Inn Court
Winston-Salem

Barnes & Noble 2947
2405 Highway 70 SE
Hickory

Barnes & Noble 2254
11025 Carolina Place Pkwy
Pineville

Barnes & Noble 2558
735 Haywood Road
Greenville, S.C.

Barnes & Noble 2221
1125 Woodruff Road
Greenville, S.C.

Barnes & Noble 2758
1489 W.O. Ezell Blvd.
Spartanburg, S.C.

The latest review

Scout.com: I would compare the book somewhat to A Sense of Where You Are, the John McPhee book about Bill Bradley at Princeton which began as a magazine piece and was expanded into a relatively short book. Taking The Shot is a very satisfying read and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys basketball or simply wants to relive the Davidson experience from last spring.

Book excerpt

An excerpt of Taking the Shot, John Akers said last night at the game, is in the current issue of Basketball Times.

4 of 5

The CHN review on HoopsWorld.

Charlotte mag

Rick Thurmond:

Seems like an appropriate time to mention that Michael Kruse’s book “Taking the Shot: The Davidson Basketball Moment” is out, and it’s a helluva read.

Kruse, you might recall, wrote a story for us in December 2007 which essentially predicted the monster season that Davidson basketball was undertaking. And for our November 2008 issue, he wrote the definitive profile of Stephen Curry. Seriously, you won’t read a better profile of Curry anywhere. (And I’m not just saying that because he manages to work Britney Spears into the piece, or because he “broke” the news about Curry’s sole tattoo.)

Another review

Jeff Fox at CHN: Taking The Shot, writer Michael Kruse’s account of Davidson’s magical NCAA run, takes on the characteristics of the team it documents. Davidson’s charge into the Elite Eight last season was an exhilarating -- even life affirming -- experience that most didn’t want to end. The same can be said about this book.

‘Like Pete’

Ken Tysiac in the Observer: Bucky Waters hasn’t watched a college basketball player this eagerly in almost 40 years.

More about the book

Jameson Fleming on the Bleacher Report: Kruse says several things inspired him to write his book ...

(And here’s the full Q&A.)

Book review

Storming the Floor on Taking the Shot: Kruse gets at the heart of why so many fans enjoy college sports so much -- that sense that the team takes on the character of the school and the town, and vice-versa. Mid-major basketball, specifically, is rooted firmly in places, usually places that don’t get a lot of attention from the nation at large. Davidson is a town and a school that prides itself on faith, intelligence, and commitment to individual and collective well-being, and that connection is obvious in the stories the book has to tell. McKillop’s transformation from ladder-climbing tough guy into a trusting, caring Davidson lifer is the perfect centerpiece in that respect.

FoxSports.com

Jerardi’s piece on Fox Sports. Scroll down.

Lake Norman Times

Story by Dru Willis: “Now I feel like I have this home there in a way that I didn’t before this project started.”

Philly

Dick Jerardi in the Daily News: Check out “Taking The Shot” by Michael Kruse. It is the story of Davidson’s run to within a made three of the 2008 Final Four. Don’t, however, go looking for play-by-play or statistics.

This book is about why those March moments meant so much to so many. And it is eloquent in the explaining.

There is a history to Davidson basketball and to the institution itself that few know still. Read this book and you will know.

There are the players, the coaches, the fans, the faculty, the alumni and just people who got caught up in the moment.

A Davidson alum and talented writer with just the right amount of passion and perspective, Kruse puts the readers in the gyms, in the huddles and in the minds of everybody, from star Stephen Curry to coach Bob McKillop.

McKillop went to Davidson 20 years ago for the wrong reasons and stayed for the right reasons. Like so many other young coaches, he looked at Davidson as his steppingstone to the big time. Countless losses later, the coach got some perspective that so many in his profession never get. It wasn’t, McKillop found out, about him. It was about them. It wasn’t about the wins. It was about the journey.

When the coach finally understood that, his team started to win. It was not a coincidence.

Getting Curry to come to the small school outside Charlotte certainly helped, but Davidson was already a winning program by then. Curry just took them places they had never been, places you will share while reading this book.