A note on JP

This year in the two games against Georgia Southern he scored 42 points on 16 shots.

Davidson 84, Ga. Southern 74

AP:

DAVIDSON -- JP Kuhlman scored a career-high 24 points to lead Davidson to an 84-74 victory over Georgia Southern on Saturday night.

Kuhlman was 10-for-14 from the free throw line and Jake Cohen added 18 points as the Wildcats (12-11, 7-4 Southern Conference) won their fourth straight game.

DavidsonWildcats.com: Will Archambault collected 12 points and five rebounds, while Brendan McKillop scored 15 points. Freshman Nik Cochran added nine points off the bench. ... Archambault fouled out in the contest, leaving the senior one point shy of 1,000 for his career. ... Davidson is now 6-2 against SoCon South Division opponents. JP: “We knew coming into this season, that we would have an equal opportunity. That is the way we want to play, and we were able to do it again tonight.” McKillop: “We attacked the pressure. If you let the pressure put the brakes on you, then you’re going to be in trouble, because then you play right into the hands of the press. We will always try to attack the press and take advantage of the floor space that opens up as a result of the pressure.” Highlights.

Tonight at Belk

Game notes: It’s Paint It Red Day, and all fans are encouraged to wear a special red T-shirt. Proceeds from T-shirt sales will go towards Kicks from ‘Cats -- The Lagos Project, an effort to build a school in Lagos, Nigeria. ... The Eagles are 0-13 on the road and 0-5 on the road in SoCon games. ... The Eagles like to press and force 18.2 turnovers a contest. Last time. McKellar.

A thought

It’s the beginning of February. The record is 11-11, which is like 0-0, and now there’s this week with no games. Saturday feels like the start of a new season.

Davidson 91, Georgia Southern 87

AP:

STATESBORO, Ga. -- JP Kuhlman scored 18 points as all five Davidson starters scored in double figures in a 91-87 win over Georgia Southern on Saturday.

Steve Rossiter and Brendan McKillop each added 15 points for the Wildcats (9-11, 4-4 Southern Conference). Will Archambault had a double-double with 13 points and 10 rebounds, Jake Cohen added 11 points and Ben Allison came off the bench to score 12 for the Wildcats.

Davidson led by nine points at halftime and built a 21-point lead at 82-61 on a 3-pointer by Archambault with 6:46 remaining.

The guys shot 59 percent from the floor and 58 percent from three, which is great, and 55 percent from the free throw line, which is not. First double-double for Will in his career. Brendan was really good today. JP had 18 points on seven shots. Observer. Savannah: “We knew going into the game that 45 percent of their shots are from 3-point range.” DavidsonWildcats.com: Rossiter became the 30th player in school history to record over 500 career points and rebounds.

What Bob McKellar saw

Two years ago here in Statesboro, the Davidson man came to his first Wildcat basketball game in 40 years; on Saturday afternoon here in Statesboro, he sat in the front row, right behind the team bench. He came to say hello. I asked him what he thought of the view. They weren’t just numbers on jerseys anymore, he said. He could see their faces, he said. “They turned into real human beings,” he said.

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.

My view

Saturday in Statesboro

Savannah Morning News: Georgia Southern has lost its last five games to Davidson, but the Wildcats no longer have Stephen Curry, a 2009 first-round pick of the Golden State Warriors. The Eagles get a shot at payback in Hanner Fieldhouse at 2 p.m. Saturday in a game that will be televised on SportSouth. Game notes: Georgia Southern is coming off a 68-65 home league win over Appalachian State. Last year. The year before that.

Sink on Cats.com

Here: Some perspective -- today was our first conference road loss since 2/21/2006. That’s right, GSU lost twice as many conference road games this weekend as Davidson has lost in nearly 1400 days. That’s crazy.

Saturday

Left west central Florida. Drove. Saw on I-95 in South Georgia a silver Infiniti with Florida plates and inside was a man and a son and they were wearing matching red WITNESS caps and the boy had on a 30 jersey. Saw Hanner sell out and stay silent. Saw all those folks cram in there to see Stephen and instead just sit there and have to watch a team that doesn’t lose in its league. Saw Davidson in the first half miss 22 shots and six free throws and two-thirds of its threes. Saw Stephen miss eight threes. Saw Davidson still have 51 points at half. Saw Davidson get 52 rebounds. Saw Will Archambault. Saw Dan Nelms. Saw Davidson play defense. Saw Georgia Southern go long stretches, chunks of minutes, here, there, everywhere, and not have even a remotely, reasonably decent look. Saw Bryant make shots he can make. Saw Andrew go for 16 and 15. Saw people leaving with NINE minutes to go. Saw Will Reigel and A.J. Atkinson get into the game. Saw Lee Sargent. Saw Doodle Wally. Saw Bob McKellar. Signed his book. Sat with Meg Clark. Drove. Drove more. Got back.

Tip today at 3

Savannah: “It’s almost like he has a cult following.” Also: Charlotte. Davidson. Georgia Southern.

Tomorrow in Statesboro

After last year’s game at Georgia Southern (via The Vault at 16point8.com): I’m not totally certain, but no way anybody else has done this, ever, in the history of Division I college basketball, right? A 20-GAME league schedule is practically unheard of. To WIN all of those games?

The temptation is to call it absurd. But I won’t. I’ll just call it what it is.

Amazing.

Really it is.

It’s just an incredibly fine thing.

To have 10 other teams in your conference, and to beat every one of them TWICE, your gym, their gym, on nights, off nights, good refs, bad refs, and to finish it off by beating a 20-win team, at its place, on its senior night, and to BEAT THEM DOWN?

“I told them in the locker room,” Coach McKillop said after the game here. “In 35 years of coaching I have never been a part of such an accomplishment.”