Columbia, S.C.

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One five

Watching him

TCC

Taking it

Kyle:

This boldness is also an attitude we all share on this side, because the only other options are mediocrity and failure. I recall something that Davidson head coach Bob McKillop mentioned during the throes of the Wildcats’ February losing streak that ultimately cost the team its chance to follow up its amazing run to the Elite 8.

After the BracketBusters loss to Butler, McKillop said, “Last year we got to the Elite Eight because there was no sense of entitlement. We went after it, we grabbed it, we took it. At this point, in the last 10 days or two weeks, we’ve kind of let it come to us, rather than take it.”

Davidson took again last night -- beating South Carolina on the Gamecocks’ own floor in the NIT. And with superior game plans, coaching ingenuity, heroic performances, solid systems (and yes, ball control), they’ll take more in the future. Those teams that will excel and win over the next several days will do so because they, like the Wildcats in 2008, take what wasn’t readily offered, and wasn’t for sale anyway.

Assist from Kenny

Ron Green Jr.:

A day before the South Carolina game, McKillop received an e-mail from Kenny Grant, who played on Davidson’s 2004-05 team that endured a similar disappointment when it failed to make the NCAA field.

In the message, Grant told McKillop that aside from his NCAA experience, playing in the NIT was the most fun he had at Davidson. McKillop read the message to his team.

“The guys saw this could be fun and fun had escaped them,” McKillop said.

They felt like dancing again.

One more thought

Wildcats coached by Lefty Driesell won five national postseason games. Tuesday night made six for Wildcats coached by Bob McKillop.

Just saying

A note from the win Tuesday night: No. 30 scored 30 for the 30th time in his career and moved into the top 30 on college basketball’s all-time scoring list.

He’s a freshman

Win in Columbia

This was a difficult game. Quick turn. On the road. The NIT and not the NCAA. It was made more difficult by the officials’ apparent decision to call a foul on what seemed like just about every touch in the first part of the second half. Max and Steve with four fouls before the first media timeout? Seriously not ideal.

Davidson has a reputation for being very very physical. I don’t think I’m revealing any great secret by saying that. They have that reputation because they’ve earned it. There’s a difference between being big and being physical. Duggar Baucom told me that last summer in my reporting for the book. The guys who play for Davidson, he said, almost every one of them, almost every year, are the latter. They play physical because they have to. Refs who for whatever reason decide to call an abnormally tight game typically mean not good things for Davidson.

And yet: 70-63.

A win like tonight’s is the kind of thing that makes a team like Davidson that plays on Davidson’s level a program. It’s not as important as beating Gonzaga, Georgetown and Wisconsin on CBS -- obviously -- but it’s still really important. It is.

To be a program like Davidson wants to be, and is, and to do that from where Davidson sits within the structure of the sport, you win your league in the regular season. You do that more often than not. In Davidson’s case, of course, at least over the better part of the last decade and a half, you do that far more often than not. You don’t beat teams from power conferences every time you play them but you do beat them some of the times you play them. You win, like, 18 games in down years. You don’t go to the NCAAs every year but you are in the running. You have a real chance every year.

And in the years where it doesn’t happen and you don’t get to the NCAAs?

You get invited to the NIT.

And you win there.

Tonight down I-77

At South Carolina. AP. The P&C. The State. More from The State. And more. The Observer. Davidson. QC Sports Blog.