Thank you

Jim Utter in the Observer’s year in review: One of the most impressive performances by Davidson basketball star Stephen Curry came in a game in which he didn’t score a single point.

Loyola (Md.) coach Jimmy Patsos elected to put two men on Curry during all 40 minutes of the Greyhounds' game with the Wildcats on Nov. 25, even when Curry wasn't looking to shoot or pass.

It didn’t take long for Curry to realize what was going on and he did exactly what Patsos wanted -- he didn’t look to shoot or pass. Instead, during Davidson's offensive possessions, Curry wandered over to a corner dragging his two defenders with him while his teammates basically played a game of 4-on-3.

The result was predictable: Davidson earned a lopsided 78-48 victory. Despite the 30-point loss, Patsos appeared to take satisfaction in shutting down Curry, which irked Davidson coach Bob McKillop.

It was another chapter in an already storied basketball career for Curry and a valuable learning experience for himself and his team.

“I meant to say after that game that I wanted to send a ‘thank you’ note to their coach,” McKillop said. “I think what came out of that game was Steph became a better player and we became a better team.”

Not quite the outcome Patsos had in mind.

Man

Sidney Lowe pledges to not pull a Jimmy Patsos: “I don’t think you change your defense. You just have to be more aware. You have to be solid. Mentally you can’t have a breakdown, because he can burn you.”

More on zero

For two decades Bob McKillop worked to build Davidson basketball into a program that matters and is respected and is part of college basketball’s national conversation. He did that. He did it, always, with a team-first philosophy, every player playing his role, one five beats five ones, BALANCE.

The irony heading into this year, then, was that it ultimately took the emergence of one brilliant kid.

It doesn’t play that way in McKillop’s head, and not in Stephen’s head, either, and not anywhere in that little locker room in Belk, and it shouldn’t.

But being a part of the national conversation means you lose a good deal of control over who tells your story and how.

And it felt, sort of, at least to me, like some kind of line had been crossed, or was starting to be crossed, with Stephen’s 44-point game in the loss at Oklahoma. The one-man-team talk was getting louder.

Stephen is the show.

He is.

He’s a good show even on a bad night. On most nights he’s a great show. And on transcendent nights? Davidson wins tournament games.

The hope, though, is that it never turns into show for the sake of show, at the expense of sport. That it doesn’t go sideshow or freak show.

It’s the difference between a concert and the circus.

So.

The zero game.

What it did, in retrospect, was offer a clear answer to anybody who had started to wonder:

Points or wins?

Show or sport?

Concert or circus?

Answer.

Answer.

Answer.

Here’s what Jimmy Patsos ended up doing: He helped shift the national narrative back to where McKillop and Stephen and the team and the program and really the college as a whole had wanted it to stay all along.

The zero game

Loyola of Maryland wasn’t going to beat Davidson Tuesday night, probably not, almost certainly not, so why not try something really, REALLY different? What was there to lose?

Some might say a lot.

Pride.

Dignity.

Reputation.

Respect from the players on your team.

Folks are talking about this all over the place today. Most all of them are using words like “dumb” and “ridiculous” and phrases like “an embarrassment to his profession” and “continues to lose his mind.”

For now, from here, two thoughts:

1. It’s a coach’s Hippocratic Oath of sorts to prepare his players, and to give those players a chance, the very best possible chance, to compete and to win. That is not what happened here. Jimmy Patsos did not do that. Maybe he thought at some point, the day before the game, the morning of the game, at the start of the game, that this was in fact his team’s best chance to win -- that’s totally possible -- but he HAD to realize by at least halftime that it wasn’t working. Davidson finished the half on a 35-8 run. Not working.

2. Seasons and the games that add up to seasons are all about adjustments. One team does this, the other team does that, the one team does something different, the other team tries to counter, and so on and so on. It never stops. To do one thing, and only one thing, for a full 40 minutes -- no matter what that thing is -- is a pretty good way to lose. I once was having beers with an attorney whose cases I used to write a good bit about and I asked him what made somebody good in his line of work. A malleable mind, he said. A good thinker is a flexible thinker. Loyola was losing 39-17 at the break. It got worse from there: 46-22, 52-24, 60-31, 71-38. And STILL: two men face-guarding Stephen standing in the corner. Rigidity is stupidity.