Because I like it

Eddie on Cats.com:

It’s really difficult to tell whether a team such as this one is progressing, and sometimes it’s difficult to agree on how one defines the concept of “progress.”

This team is a collection of players who are one or more of the following: long time role players being asked to do more, guys playing hurt at one time or another, and guys who are green (in the sense of experience as opposed to carbon footprint). Two steps forward and one step back, or (the less happy reverse of that), is just going to happen. And this happens in a relative world in which other teams, some of which might have fewer variables with which to contend, are “progressing” on more of a straight line progression. So slight progression looks an awful lot like regression in the relative world of competing against conference opponents.

Bob McKillop likes to withhold information about lots of things, but when he actually does talk about something, history indicates that he’s being truthful. When he describes the team (paraphrasing the WCU postgame comments) as “far away but not that far away,” he’s probably telling us that the team needs to be a whole lot better, but “getting there" is actually doable and requires execution of all the steps to make a play or a defensive stop successful, and not just most of them. Obviously, he thinks these guys are capable of the offensive and defensive assignments they’ve been given, and that they are not so physically/athletically/mentally overmatched that they have got to go to a zone or some other solution that people are talking about. If he in fact installs such a thing, it will be an objective commentary that I personally won’t be happy to hear. [I know reasonable minds are disagreeing about this.]

02 identified things that are improving; we’ve all seen the types of things that aren’t. It’s tough for us, and even tougher for the players and coaches, to know that this hasn’t “come together” yet, especially when we also know that, absent a collapse by Wofford, we’re nearing a point at which it might come together too late to avoid a play-in game. So anxiety gets added onto the mental and physical slip-ups that have been costing them games. Bob analogized to the home loss to WCU in ’06, which fanatics will recall to be the kind of gut check/crisis of confidence moment from which a team can pivot in either direction. The ’06 team righted the ship, though mixed in there were losses at Ga So and Wofford, and they trailed The Citadel by something like 17 points in the SoCon quarterfinals before blowing through that tournament and putting Ohio State to a severe test in Dayton.

Reading the Sunday NYT

Pete on the Gators:

Meyer identified a fundamental tension of what he was facing when a reporter asked him why the pain from a loss outweighed the joy of a victory.

“That’s a great question,” he said. “That’s one I’ve got to figure out.”

Don’t we all. Expectations.

An e-mail this morning

From a fan:

My wife and I drove home from New England this week and were discussing how much more fun this season is. Hoping for a win is a hell of a lot more enjoyable than fearing a loss.

We were at the Hofstra game and I was struck by how Coach McKillop is resculpting some identities. I love Bryant coming off the bench as a sparkplug. I love how economical Steve has become. He is always THERE. Avoids mistakes and is beginning to remind me of Thomas just a little. I loved the bounce pass Nik fed to Cohen to ice the game. He was very cool in a tight spot. I loved how coach stuck with JP during the Hofstra game. I loved how he had Frank in the line-up down the stretch. I love how coach is not relying on Will as our primary scoring threat and how Will is becoming a much more productive all-around player.

It’s a fun year! Big game tonight.

Like this.

The flip side of expectations

Luke Winn:

They’re at risk of doing what Stephen Curry and Davidson did in 2008-09, beginning the season in the Top 25 and then missing out on the dance. Butler’s overinflated preseason ranking was the fault of us, the pundits, who got too carried away and put them in the top 10, but Gordon Hayward & Co. are still good enough -- in the top 30-35 teams nationally -- to belong in the NCAA tournament field. If they don’t make it, that’s their fault.

I found myself wondering in Indianapolis if those kids from Butler were going to have fun this year. Still wondering.

Roles and wants

Ten a.m. on a Sunday can be a good time to think about who you are and what you might be able to be.

At tip in Charleston against Penn State there maybe were a couple hundred people watching this year’s Wildcats trying to figure that out.

At around 20-4 or so I left my seat and walked up to the concourse at Carolina First and saw a woman up there wearing a Davidson Elite 8 sweatshirt. The calendar says it wasn’t that long ago. It was and it wasn’t.

The legacy of that incredible achievement is many things, and different things to different people, and not yet fixed. The legacy is still very much being determined.

For this year’s team, and particularly for this year’s seniors, the legacy of the Elite 8 is extraordinary expectations. Expectations are good, or can be, but that doesn't mean they’re always fair.

Every player on this team has a new role. That includes Bryant, Will and Steve. Their roles now are as new to them as college ball in general is to JP, Jake and Nik. They’re trying, trying their hardest, maybe trying too hard, to adjust to those new roles.

It remains to be seen whether Bryant, Will and Steve are trying to be things they can’t be. That’s only four real games. But it’s a statement of fact that they're trying to be things they haven’t been.

“I think the biggest part is being expected to be a leader,” Bryant told me after the game outside the locker room. “Right now I’m making mistakes. How can we expect our freshmen to do things the right way if I’m not doing things the right way?”

This could be a long season?

No. This is a long season. They all are.

That’s the point.

My favorite text from this weekend

Came from William: I guess the fairly obvious Big Picture truth behind today and maybe days to come is that exceeding expectations is always more fun than the opposite.

Some quotes of note

From the Slam piece:

Bryant: “Obviously with Steph here the last couple of years there have been a tremendous amount of expectations. When he declared for the draft those expectations for this season went right out the window. We have no pressure on us, we’re not supposed to be any good in conference, we’re supposed to be a lot worse of a team now that he’s gone. In one sense that’s nice to not have any weight on our shoulders, but we feel like we’re going to surprise a lot of people.”

Will: “We knew we were a team and we all had our roles, there was never any resentment of Steph. Whether your job was to be a practice player or anything else, we knew that you helped the team reach where we did. Steph is going to be irreplaceable. He’s a great guy, a great teammate and a great player. But the fact that he brought leadership to the team and he always knew how to act on and off the court benefitted us a lot.”

Here’s Stephen, last March, on expectations.

Friday afternoon at Belk

1. “Toughen up!”

“Knucklehead!”

“Jesus Christmas!”

“You caught it and got soft instead of catching it and busting his face!”

What’s that sound like? Sounds like a Bob McKillop-led individual workout here on campus on a late September afternoon. Friday's group was Bryant, Will, JP, AJ, Ben and Brendan.

2. JP’s turned more man since the last time I saw him. He’s not that much shorter than Will. He doesn’t move cool, he moves effective, and his ball wants to go in. And I heard from the coaches a version of something they always said about Stephen: What JP’s told, JP picks up quick.

3. Ben’s a V with a tan and a British accent.

4. No Bob McKillop team at Davidson, ever, has had a pair of post players who are built the way Ben and Frank are built.

5. Where are all those points going to come from? No one place. But Will is going to score a bunch this year. Bryant on Will right now: “Best I’ve ever seen him play.”

6. McKillop: “Come here. Look at Steve’s body.”

7. After the whole team worked out on the red rack behind Baker, McKillop called his guys together and told them that nobody’s talking about them right now, and nobody’s expecting anything of them, and nobody’s picking them to win anything.

“And that’s fine,” he said.

8. I asked Steve about Stephen.

“Who?” he said, then grinned.

9. Bryant: “The past three years, so much of our offense revolved around Stephen. If something was going wrong, we looked to Stephen.

“It’s just us now.”

It’s just us now.

It’s Just Us Now.

The Year After

From Shelton’s column this morning down here:

It has been a chore to watch the Rays this year. They show flashbacks of their old selves in this game or that, sometimes even in this series or that, and then they backslide again. We are 29 games into the season, and so far the Rays have not managed as much as a three-game winning streak. This time last year, they already had a six-game streak, and they were on the verge of putting together another.

And this from Topkin’s notebook:

The Rays are 13-16 and 6½ games out of first, and Sternberg said, “If the expectations weren’t so high people would think we were playing really well.”

Expectations

Stephen: “We were trying to beat every record possible. And when that didn’t happen, we just got back to having fun. It’s kind of nice that’s all out of the way.”

100-95

Have just a little time here in the union at Davidson before heading back to Florida after a week-plus of the Wildcats and the book and New York and friendship and fellowship and Blue Moon at the Brickhouse.

Some quick thoughts on last night:

*** Something I’ve heard enough to be a pattern: “Stephen had an off night, and he still had … ”

I heard it after the Oklahoma game in which he had 44 points. Could’ve been 60, I heard people say. Shoot, I heard MYSELF say that.

I heard it after State. Also 44 points.

I heard it at Madison Square Garden, where, granted, he wasn’t his sharp self for most of the game but still managed by the end to be THE SHOW in MIDTOWN MANHATTAN.

And I heard it last night.

The kid had 41 points in 36 minutes. He made half of the shots he attempted from the floor. He made five of the 11 threes he shot. He missed four free throws, yes, which is uncharacteristic, almost shocking, but he also made 14 of them. He had six assists and four rebounds and a steal.

I’m not sure what people are wanting from No. 30, or expecting, and I know his shots look so pretty, whether they’re misses or makes, but …

*** Nobody else in the Southern Conference has a Stephen Curry. Games like last night make me think the same might be able to be said about Will Archambault.

*** Andrew: 14 rebounds at half, 18 in all, nine offensive, 38 minutes -- what he is going to be on many, many nights in league play the rest of the way.

*** Chattanooga is good. Players. Athletes. Size. Depth. Shot-makers. Last night could’ve been a preview of a certain Monday night in March in Chattanooga. Wouldn’t surprise me one iota.

*** John Shulman after 41 from Stephen: “I thought we did a pretty good job on him.”

*** My favorite moment from the game:

Chattanooga guy had the ball, was sort of trapped near the sideline, looked like smack between Brendan McKillop on the court facing the bench and Bob McKillop in front of the bench facing the court.

Bob McKillop was standing still, and had his arms crossed, and stayed that way, practically calm-looking, even though he was -- what? -- two, three feet from this play, with Brendan McKillop tense and ready and in defensive position.

Father to son:

“Right here, Brendan!

“Right here!”

*** My favorite moment from the postgame press conference:

Somebody asked Stephen about that drive late in the game down the left side of the lane and the maybe-I-should-dunk-but-no wildly missed layup.

“I’ve done that two games in a row,” he said. He looked embarrassed.

“Gotta work on that,” he said.

Will was sitting next to him. Under the table he used his right knee to nudge Stephen’s left thigh. Sly smile on his face.

“I’ll give you some pointers,” he said.

“Thank you,” Stephen told Will.