Showing posts with label duke. Show all posts
Showing posts with label duke. Show all posts
12.31.2009
McKillop on Duke
Here: “This is an entire team that plays like they live on Park Avenue but they refuse to give up the court on West Fourth Street. West Fourth Street’s a pretty darn competitive park, and it’s asphalt, and these guys aren’t afraid of getting their knees bloody and their fingers stuck in the chain rims.”
10.18.2009
Seth on the Stephen comparisons
On GoDuke.com: “People think it bothers me, but it doesn’t. He’s been such a great player in college the last few years. If I’m going to be compared, I’d like to be compared to great players.”
8.21.2009
The other Curry
Seth: “I wouldn’t have minded playing with my brother, but I kind of wanted to separate myself, make my own name.”
3.30.2009
A real school?
Will Bryan:
Because of transfer rules, Seth will have to sit out a season and wouldn’t be able to face Stephen even if the Davidson guard decides to return for his senior year.
However, in 2010, the entire country will set their eyes on Duke to provide a misguided answer to an over-asked question: How would Stephen have fared at a real school?
1.10.2009
Last look back at Duke
Barry Jacobs: McKillop actively sought to move up the professional ladder several times, as coaches are wont to do, only to be stymied by his relative obscurity and lack of connections. Now, at 58, his ability to weave smart, tough, aggressive squads from the lesser thread of mid-major talent is widely recognized, but overshadowed by fascination with Curry, the superbly subtle guard who plies the court with silent, relentless, efficient grace.
1.08.2009
Perspective
Duke’s Lance Thomas: “That was probably some of the best defense we could play. And the game was still close. That should tell you how dangerous that team is.”
‘The Davidson thing’
Ed Hardin: With the nation’s sports fans taking a night off from football, the Duke-Davidson game was largely a live event made for ESPN and the 9,314 people squeezed into Cameron Indoor Zoo. The kids packed the place to see their classmates play Stephen Curry, the marquee player from Charlotte and the cherubic face of college basketball.
Paying attention
Luke DeCock:
Most -- if not all -- of the hype surrounding Davidson this season has focused on Curry, whose profile continues to rise with his scoring average.But there’s more to Davidson than Curry -- maybe not as much as there was last March, but enough to put a scare into a team like Duke on Wednesday. There’s Lovedale, the French connection of Quebec-born Max Paulhus Gosselin and Will Archambault, the coach’s son Brendan, a backup guard, and another big forward, Steve Rossiter.
The mix isn’t as polished as it was last season, but it might be starting to come together at the right time.
1.07.2009
Tonight
The guys on Davidson’s basketball don’t come to Duke to lose. But they do come here to get exposed. They come here to see how or if they respond to that. They come here to see who they are and also who they might be able to be.
Sometimes, McKillop has said plenty in the past, you learn more from losing than you do from winning.
This time of the year typically is where a Davidson basketball season starts to get interesting. There are enough games -- there’s enough data -- for McKillop and Matheny and the rest of them to start tinkering. What works? What doesn’t? Where to now? How to be the best possible team come late February and heading into March?
Those of us who watch can start to see a team emerge.
Going into tonight, though, I didn’t have a real good sense for this group. Was this Stephen Curry and The Others? Or was this a Davidson basketball team with a first-team All-American?
Well.
Now we know.
This is a team that can go down 57-31, with 14:33 to go, at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
This is a team that can then outscore Duke 30-12 over the next 10 or so minutes.
This is a team that got rebounds from Andrew and Steve, threes from Stephen and Brendan, a layup from Max, a DUNK from Stephen, and stretches of stops against the nation’s No. 2 team.
With about three and a half minutes to go tonight, the score was 69-61, and it was loud as shit in here.
This wasn’t a game.
Then it was.
The guys from Duke had to earn this fucker tonight.
And the guys from Davidson left knowing that.
Sometimes, McKillop has said plenty in the past, you learn more from losing than you do from winning.
This time of the year typically is where a Davidson basketball season starts to get interesting. There are enough games -- there’s enough data -- for McKillop and Matheny and the rest of them to start tinkering. What works? What doesn’t? Where to now? How to be the best possible team come late February and heading into March?
Those of us who watch can start to see a team emerge.
Going into tonight, though, I didn’t have a real good sense for this group. Was this Stephen Curry and The Others? Or was this a Davidson basketball team with a first-team All-American?
Well.
Now we know.
This is a team that can go down 57-31, with 14:33 to go, at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
This is a team that can then outscore Duke 30-12 over the next 10 or so minutes.
This is a team that got rebounds from Andrew and Steve, threes from Stephen and Brendan, a layup from Max, a DUNK from Stephen, and stretches of stops against the nation’s No. 2 team.
With about three and a half minutes to go tonight, the score was 69-61, and it was loud as shit in here.
This wasn’t a game.
Then it was.
The guys from Duke had to earn this fucker tonight.
And the guys from Davidson left knowing that.
Tonight in Cameron
Bryan Strickland in Durham: The last time Davidson guard Stephen Curry took the court at Cameron Indoor Stadium, just six games into his collegiate career, Curry was best known as the son of former NBA sharpshooter Dell Curry.
These days, Dell Curry is known as the father of Stephen Curry.
“I love the kid, his family and Davidson’s program. There’s not a thing that I’m not totally impressed with,” Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “Davidson is one of the best teams in the country, and I think Curry is the best guard, maybe even the best player.”
These days, Dell Curry is known as the father of Stephen Curry.
“I love the kid, his family and Davidson’s program. There’s not a thing that I’m not totally impressed with,” Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “Davidson is one of the best teams in the country, and I think Curry is the best guard, maybe even the best player.”
Making adjustments
Tommy Bowman in Winston: Davidson has gone from “mid-major” to “well-recognized” after last season’s run to the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament and this season’s Top 25 rankings, but one thing hasn’t changed.
Coach Bob McKillop said that his team isn’t out to prove that it’s capable of competing with the likes of Duke but is instead focused on continuing to improve.
Coach Bob McKillop said that his team isn’t out to prove that it’s capable of competing with the likes of Duke but is instead focused on continuing to improve.
1.06.2009
Some early advances
Tomorrow at Cameron: CBS Sports. Rivals. The Devils Den. Davidson. CHN. ESPN. Shelby. AP. Bleacher Report. Duke.
Tomorrow at Duke
After last year’s game in Charlotte (via The Vault at 16point8.com):
I stood in the back of K’s presser Saturday afternoon and listened to him say what he said and thought to myself: I’ve heard this before.
“They’re really good.”
Heard it.
“They’re an NCAA team.”
Heard it.
“They’re a very, very good basketball team, coached by one of the best coaches in the country, no doubt about it.”
Heard it.
But something I HADN’T heard post-Duke, not working for the Davidsonian, not working for the ACC Basketball Handbook or ACCToday.com or Basketball America, not watching or reading from afar as nothing more than an interested alum, not EVER:
“Davidson could’ve won.”
1.05.2009
K on Stephen
Teel two days out:
“We already talked to our guys about it,” Krzyzewski said after Duke’s 69-44 rout Sunday of Virginia Tech. “Davidson is one of the best teams in the country. I think Curry’s the best guard. He may be the best player in the country.”
1.01.2009
46 years ago
From the dusty old manuscript:
How good was that Duke team? The 1962-63 Blue Devils featured a pair of All-Americans in senior big man Art Heyman and junior guard Jeff Mullins, won 27 of 30 games, including all fourteen of their ACC games, and advanced to the school’s first-ever Final Four.
Heyman and Mullins initiated Duke’s position as a nationally big-time basketball school. Under the leadership of coach Vic Bubas, Duke in the early to mid-‘60s began to nudge its way into elite company -- alongside Kentucky, North Carolina and Kansas, the titans of the sport. And the ’62-’63 team was the program’s first legitimate national title candidate. Duke that year was practically unstoppable -- but not unbeatable.
In the season opener for both teams, December 1 at Cameron Indoor Stadium in Durham, Duke won 76-69. Even more surprisingly, Fred Hetzel and Don Davidson each only played a little more than half the game due to foul trouble. Hetzel still finished with 22 points. But the seven-point outcome came with a lesson for both teams.
“You know,” Heyman told the Observer, “they’re plenty good.”
Heyman was convinced.
So were the Wildcats.
“Duke sweated,” said Dave Johnson, a student manager sitting on the end of the bench that night in Durham. “Our kids discovered something: ‘Hey, we’re as good as those guys -- if not better.’”
The rematch was 17 days later in Charlotte.
The Blue Devils, ranked second in the nation, entered the game on December 18, 1962, as a 23-point favorite. They sure didn’t look like it in the first half. Getting 18 points from Hetzel in the opening 20 minutes, Davidson outrebounded Duke 26-15 as the Wildcats built a 39-28 advantage at half. The Blue Devils crept closer throughout the second half, cutting the Wildcat lead to 70-67 within the final minute of regulation.
But Barry Teague, Davidson’s “Little General,” stripped Heyman of the ball and as fouled on the other end. In one of the signature images of the last generation of Davidson basketball, Teague sank a pair of free throws to push the margin to five points. Blue Devil post player Hack Tison made a meaningless layup at the buzzer to account for the final score of 72-69.
The statement had been made.
“At that point, we were there,” said Steve Clark, the sports editor of the Davidsonian that year who went on to be a columnist for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “We could play with anybody in the country.”
Teague agreed.
“That was certainly a turning point,” he said in an interview in his Charlotte office in 1998. “It made believers out of a lot of people -- including us.”
Immediately after the horn sounded, Hetzel ran up to the concourse, found a pay phone and called his dad. Standing against a wall, still in full uniform, with the crowd winding out of the Coliseum, he told his dad the good news. His dad knew already. He had been listening to the game in Washington, D.C., with the radio shoved up against his ear so he could make out the raspy broadcast.
The box score in the Observer was headed simply: “Wow!” Heyman and Mullins each finished with 21 points and 10 rebounds. But the big man managed only five points in the second half. Hetzel dominated throughout, with 27 points and 17 rebounds, while Bill Jarman -- a senior who as a freshman had been on a team that lost to Catawba -- ended up with 21. Duke dropped to 6-1, Davidson was 5-1, and the press erupted.
“Davidson’s basketballers,” Tom Camp wrote in the Observer, “considered by some a pea-shooter in a turkey shoot, had just clipped the wings of the Duke basketball team that has soared into the national spotlight.”
Added Phil Grose of the Observer: “The Wildcats blew the snow off Mount Olympus, settled themselves comfortably on its crest, and struck down the nation’s second-ranked basketball team.”
“Davidson can give anybody we’ve faced a hard time,” Bubas said after the game. “They simply outfight you, outshoot you, outrebound you, and beat you if you’re not ready for them.”
But the win over Duke, and what it meant for Lefty’s Davidson program -- its status within college basketball, its position in Charlotte, in Mecklenburg County, and beyond -- transcended any numbers in a box score.
Davidson was now a player on the national scene. The Coliseum was a rocking and rolling home away from home. And the Davidson Wildcats were the Dixie Darlings.
Charlotte’s team.
How good was that Duke team? The 1962-63 Blue Devils featured a pair of All-Americans in senior big man Art Heyman and junior guard Jeff Mullins, won 27 of 30 games, including all fourteen of their ACC games, and advanced to the school’s first-ever Final Four.
Heyman and Mullins initiated Duke’s position as a nationally big-time basketball school. Under the leadership of coach Vic Bubas, Duke in the early to mid-‘60s began to nudge its way into elite company -- alongside Kentucky, North Carolina and Kansas, the titans of the sport. And the ’62-’63 team was the program’s first legitimate national title candidate. Duke that year was practically unstoppable -- but not unbeatable.
In the season opener for both teams, December 1 at Cameron Indoor Stadium in Durham, Duke won 76-69. Even more surprisingly, Fred Hetzel and Don Davidson each only played a little more than half the game due to foul trouble. Hetzel still finished with 22 points. But the seven-point outcome came with a lesson for both teams.
“You know,” Heyman told the Observer, “they’re plenty good.”
Heyman was convinced.
So were the Wildcats.
“Duke sweated,” said Dave Johnson, a student manager sitting on the end of the bench that night in Durham. “Our kids discovered something: ‘Hey, we’re as good as those guys -- if not better.’”
The rematch was 17 days later in Charlotte.
The Blue Devils, ranked second in the nation, entered the game on December 18, 1962, as a 23-point favorite. They sure didn’t look like it in the first half. Getting 18 points from Hetzel in the opening 20 minutes, Davidson outrebounded Duke 26-15 as the Wildcats built a 39-28 advantage at half. The Blue Devils crept closer throughout the second half, cutting the Wildcat lead to 70-67 within the final minute of regulation.
But Barry Teague, Davidson’s “Little General,” stripped Heyman of the ball and as fouled on the other end. In one of the signature images of the last generation of Davidson basketball, Teague sank a pair of free throws to push the margin to five points. Blue Devil post player Hack Tison made a meaningless layup at the buzzer to account for the final score of 72-69.
The statement had been made.
“At that point, we were there,” said Steve Clark, the sports editor of the Davidsonian that year who went on to be a columnist for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “We could play with anybody in the country.”
Teague agreed.
“That was certainly a turning point,” he said in an interview in his Charlotte office in 1998. “It made believers out of a lot of people -- including us.”
Immediately after the horn sounded, Hetzel ran up to the concourse, found a pay phone and called his dad. Standing against a wall, still in full uniform, with the crowd winding out of the Coliseum, he told his dad the good news. His dad knew already. He had been listening to the game in Washington, D.C., with the radio shoved up against his ear so he could make out the raspy broadcast.
The box score in the Observer was headed simply: “Wow!” Heyman and Mullins each finished with 21 points and 10 rebounds. But the big man managed only five points in the second half. Hetzel dominated throughout, with 27 points and 17 rebounds, while Bill Jarman -- a senior who as a freshman had been on a team that lost to Catawba -- ended up with 21. Duke dropped to 6-1, Davidson was 5-1, and the press erupted.
“Davidson’s basketballers,” Tom Camp wrote in the Observer, “considered by some a pea-shooter in a turkey shoot, had just clipped the wings of the Duke basketball team that has soared into the national spotlight.”
Added Phil Grose of the Observer: “The Wildcats blew the snow off Mount Olympus, settled themselves comfortably on its crest, and struck down the nation’s second-ranked basketball team.”
“Davidson can give anybody we’ve faced a hard time,” Bubas said after the game. “They simply outfight you, outshoot you, outrebound you, and beat you if you’re not ready for them.”
But the win over Duke, and what it meant for Lefty’s Davidson program -- its status within college basketball, its position in Charlotte, in Mecklenburg County, and beyond -- transcended any numbers in a box score.
Davidson was now a player on the national scene. The Coliseum was a rocking and rolling home away from home. And the Davidson Wildcats were the Dixie Darlings.
Charlotte’s team.
12.03.2008
From Forde
In his column off last night’s Duke game: “This week Duke rose to No. 4 in the rankings -- but on the buzz meter, Duke might as well have been Davidson. Except no Blue Devil was getting anywhere near the pub accorded to Stephen Curry. Which tells you how weird things had gotten.”
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