Andy Katz to Pat Forde

On Twitter just a minute ago: Are you on the Gael bandwagon yet? This could be a Davidson like run to the Elite Eight if they win here. How people talk.

Best case?

Austin Bell sent me an e-mail tonight on tournament eve reminding me what Pat Forde wrote about Davidson in his annual best case/worst case piece heading into the first round two years back.

Best Case: Stephen Curry goes thermonuclear shooting the ball, averages 30 ppg and leads the Wildcats to the regional finals, running their winning streak to 26 on the way. Davidson shoots Gonzaga out of the gym, somehow figures out how to guard Roy Hibbert in the second round, grinds past Wisconsin in the Sweet 16 and finally succumbs to Kansas in the Elite Eight. Nation appreciates the work of point guard Jason Richards, who leads the country in assists, and the Wildcats’ brute refusal to beat themselves. Bob McKillop’s hair is perfect.

I e-mailed Austin: Scary, right?

Austin e-mailed me: Extremely. I think it’s interesting to think about the fact that this is the “best case” like the shot couldn’t have gone down, you know?

I e-mailed Austin: That is interesting. Because if that shot had been -- what? -- a foot and a half to the right, March 2008 for Davidson would’ve become April 2008, and better than the best-case scenario.

What it is

Forde:

Sports are a here-today, gone-tomorrow proposition, and perhaps none of them is more ephemeral than college basketball. Florida (12) goes from giant of the sport to NIT pip-squeak overnight. UCLA (13) makes three straight Final Fours under Ben Howland, but now is 7-10 and cannot come within 27 points of Portland. Davidson (14) is just another academic school with a sub-.500 basketball team.

Better that than the opposite. But you know. Cycles and whatnot.

Favorite memory of the decade

Forde:

Watching Stephen Curry shoot the ball in the 2008 NCAA tournament is on the top of my list. There’s nothing prettier than a great shooter at the peak of his game during the heat of March, and Curry willed a very laudable Davidson team to go farther than its talent had any right to justify. What a show he put on.

Watch.

Forde

On ESPN.com: “The Man Who Wasn’t There.” It feels wrong to hold the NCAA tournament without Stephen Curry ...

Stephen: Labor Secretary?

Pat Forde:

No single player is working harder on a nightly basis to help his team succeed than Davidson’s Stephen Curry. He’s averaging 29 of the Wildcats’ 81 points per game and assisting on another 13 points per game. More than 50 percent of Davidson’s point production passes through Curry’s hands on its way to the basket.

‘Exposure’

Forde: Can you blame McKillop? If you were the coach at Davidson and you recruited the best player in school history, wouldn’t you ask him to do everything short of healing the sick and giving sight to the blind? If you had a basketball savior who kept rising to meet ever-increasing demands, wouldn’t you keep expecting miracles? Would loaves and fishes for the pregame meal be too much to ask, Steph?

Sure you would keep pushing -- until one day the guy gets his uniform wet while walking on water.

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.”