The (YouTube) legacy

SI’s Stewart Mandel on Missouri’s Kim English:

On Friday, however, English drained 4 of 7 three-pointers and scored 20 points, his highest total since Feb. 6. Prior to the tourney, English watched a YouTube mashup of former Davidson star Stephen Curry’s 2008 NCAA run.

“He was just always so poised on the court, he never showed emotion, and that led to straight up, straight down [shots],” said English. “It’s like he’s in a phone booth.”

A phone booth. Interesting.

‘This hook that he’s become’

Claire on why we watch:

This room -- okay, this cavern -- is brimming with people that I love. They gave my Davidson meaning, they’ve shared good days and bad days, unbelievable games and shitty games. So many together, uncommonly wonderfully so. The ’08 boys, Joe Pierce Nathan JB Chris, haven’t seen them all at once since their graduation, haven’t watched a game with them since 3/30/08, and tons before that. Pete, who, when I saw him, all I could think of was sitting in the Dearborn Doubletree cackling gleefully over countless newspaper articles. Morgan, Logan, Calucchia, dear faces a couple rows up, waving towels that the Currys gave out: TCC #30. Rachel, Grace, Laura, Sue. The Dails, connecting me to Davidson and Richmond, two families of mine. My professors. The Davidson athletics department. Wildcats. Michael and I had lunch when I got back this afternoon, and now I spot him right behind my section (and introduce him to Morgan -- WL -- at halftime, which is fun), I wave to David, Kate, and the Bakers in the upper bowl, I text Rob and Jessie over and over, I find Grace at the half. Michael Jordan has nothing on this family of mine, and our scattered cheers spill over into shared -- remembrance? sacredness? support? thanksgiving?

"Daaaaaav-iddddd-son!"

It drifts down from the nosebleeds, makes me laugh, another moment in another chapter in a good long story. Part of me wants to start it louder, hit the rafters, wants it to echo all through and knock the big million dollar franchises off their feet. But another part of me is content with keeping it soft, one voice speaking volumes. We know it. This is where we come from.

Read the whole thing. Claire references my question, that night at the Brickhouse, and of course kind of always: Why do we watch? And more than that: Why do we watch him, especially now, when he’s not wearing the name of our school on his chest anymore. He was a face of us. For many outsiders -- which is to say most people -- he was the face of us. For them, those outsiders, those most people, that hasn’t changed, and maybe it never will. Stephen Curry. Davidson. And I guess that’s fine. I mean I went to the game in Orlando earlier in the week before the game in Charlotte. Why did I go? Well I went to see him and talk to him because I figured I might have something to say to the people who might be interested in that. But also I was curious. I hadn’t seen him, or seen him play, live, with my own eyes, without a screen in between, for months and months. Why did I go that Saturday in Charlotte? Well I was in town and a lot of people were going. But I had the thought in my head in Orlando: What am I doing here? That thought was much, much louder in Charlotte: What am I doing here? Same thing when I heard that hundreds of alums in Atlanta came out the night before when he was down there: What had they gone to see, and why, and did they get it? Saturday, to me, for whatever it’s worth, probably nothing -- it felt a little uncomfortable. It felt a little ... disconnected. The space between us and him due to no fault of his own but the machinery that moves around the people who do what he now does where he now does it. It felt a little ... hero-worshippery. Clearly I overthink things, sometimes, this being a great case in point. I grant that. Claire’s answer, that night in Davidson, and in what she’s written about it here, is helpful and I think accurate: We’re there to see him, fine, I suppose, but more than that we’re there to see all the other people who are there to do the same.

The Stephen show: in town after all

Scott:

There is one tinge of irony to the weekend. Southern Conference organizers hoped that Curry would stay at Davidson for his senior year and become the star attraction at this weekend's tournament.

Instead, Curry went pro a year early. Yet he's going to end up being in Charlotte anyway.

“I found out this was going to be a possibility in the fall,” Curry said, “when the schedules all came out. My one trip to Charlotte all season comes at tournament time. It's pretty funny. It's going to be great for me, of course, but it's going to be great for a lot of people besides me, too. A weekend like this just shows how big basketball really is in Charlotte, and how well the city can showcase such a great sport so many of us love.”

Cremins: “Is it inconvenient? In a lot of ways, yes it is.” Iamarino: “I would have preferred if the Warriors to come to Charlotte on a different weekend. Guess I didn't have David Stern's ear on that one.” Stephen: “I'm putting the pressure on my Davidson boys. They better win Friday so I can see them in person Saturday.”

Again

All this, and also this, from Sherwood Strauss, on WarriorsWorld.net:

The transformation feels special.

Today’s Curry is a terror, an impossible question for defenses to answer. Pinpoint passes fly from all angles off the pick-and-roll. He can score from anywhere and can do so off-balance. Steph’s lack of speed should keep him from the rim but he’s developed a herky-jerk high dribble that confounds opponents.

Please hose me down if this is hyperbole: At this moment, No. 30 looks like an eventual combination of Reggie Miller and Steve Nash.

“What will he do next?”

From he’s pretty good to he’s better than we thought to oh my what have we here? -- it’s interesting watching people far away from Exit 30 who know nothing about Exit 30 having this conversation about No. 30.

(More) how people talk

Tommy Amaker on Cornell: “That’s a team capable of making a Davidson kind of run like two years ago. You could see them in the Sweet 16, and from there, anything is possible. They are very talented and have a lot of seniors. They’ve been in the tournament. They’re legit. They pounded us. I voted for them in the Top 25 well before we played them.”

The Observer asks ...

This question:

Curry’s absence good for the Southern Conference?

Says Cremins: “Our conference is more balanced now.”

Says McKillop: “With Stephen last year, we had ESPN and Dick Vitale doing the game. That quite clearly was something that was good for college basketball, the Davidson community and our conference as a whole. There are two sides of that coin. You can have balance and parity, but also a team that’s the king of the hill. There’s an argument for both sides.”

Little look at Jake

Ron Green Jr.:

In some ways, the long-term effects of Davidson’s storybook run in the 2008 NCAA men’s basketball tournament are difficult to measure.

In other ways, it’s simple.

Jake Cohen stands 6-foot-10 and weighs 220 pounds. A freshman center from Berwyn, Pa., he leads the Wildcats (7-8, 2-1 in Southern) in scoring, averaging 13.4 points.

Jake: “It hasn’t been anything like what I expected. I wasn’t expecting much.”

How people talk

Andy Katz: This Cornell team is Davidson-like and could go on a run come March.

Wow

Rusty Simmons: Oklahoma City marked the 11th consecutive road venue that included at least one fan wearing a replica of Curry’s No. 30 Davidson jersey.

No. 10 upset of the decade

Over Georgetown: Stephen Curry wasn’t yet a household name when he led Davidson to a wild, 74-70 win over a Hoyas team that was expected to contend for a second straight Final Four appearance. The Wildcats were down by as many as 17 points in the second half before Curry took over. He scored 25 of his 30 points after the break.

Interesting little piece

McKillop on Stephen on NCAA.com: “He put Davidson on the national map and how many players can do that for a mid major program. Larry Bird did that for Indiana State back in the 70s. A host of players did that for Gonzaga. A number of players did that for Southern Illinois and Butler. Even when George Mason had that magnificent run, they didn’t have one guy that put them on the map. But here, it was Davidson and one player -- with and a group of teammates. But it was his face that was the face of the program.”

McKillop after last night’s game

Here: “There was such a sense of tightness, about 'We’ve got to win, we’ve got to uphold the tradition, we’ve got to show people that we’re not looking over our shoulder for Steph to come ...’”

Gary Parrish

On CBSSports.com:

I wrote a column last April explaining how I was less concerned about Stephen Curry’s future than Davidson's because history suggests programs typically return to their rightful place when a transcendent player departs. I cited what happened when Hank Gathers and Bo Kimble left Loyola-Marymount, what happened when Doug Christie left Pepperdine, what happened when Keith “Mister” Jennings left East Tennessee State, etc. The point was that though North Carolina, Kansas and other power-league programs can endure losses and simply reload, it’s much more difficult to maintain success outside of the BCS for pretty much everybody except Gonzaga, Memphis and Xavier.

Which is why I’m not surprised Davidson is 0-4.

I mean, I’m a little surprised, I guess.

But the moment Curry announced he was turning pro is the moment Bob McKillop’s rebuilding job began, and rebuilding jobs at places like Davidson take time, way longer than just one offseason. Remember, before Curry enrolled, Davidson was the type of program that made the NCAA tournament once every four or five years, and when the Wildcats did it, they did it with little-to-no national recognition. So even though McKillop is tremendous and one of the gems of college basketball, it’ll be tough for him to get Davidson back to where it spent the past three seasons, i.e., as a borderline Top 25 team serving as the darling of college hoops.

I look forward to following the effort.

I hope it happens.

But right now, Davidson just needs a win.

The adoration of strangers

More over at The Davidson Project.

How people talk

From the Gonzaga student paper: After returning, six of the team’s next eight games are against big name schools: Washington State, Wake Forest, Davidson, Duke, Oklahoma and Illinois. More: here and here.

More of this

Uch in Chattanooga: Southern Conference basketball begins a new era this year. Call it 1 A.C. -- After Curry.

The latest in ‘Life After Stephen’

Mike Cranston:

Davidson coach Bob McKillop, upset with his team’s defense, halted practice and brought his players together. He then reeled off the names of the three starters from last season no longer on the roster -- mentioning Stephen Curry last.

“We’ve got to be perfect,” McKillop yelled, “We’ve got to be a team.”

Above him was the banner proclaiming “NCAA Tournament Elite 8 2008,” the dominant symbol of a storybook three-year run that ended steps away in a conference room in April when the dynamic Curry announced he was leaving for the
NBA.

Stephen on The Stephen Effect: “In the future when coach goes out recruiting he doesn’t have to go through, ‘Oh, we’re a small school outside of Charlotte, we’re pretty competitive,’ and all that.”

How people talk about Davidson basketball

Now it’s like this:

Heard of any of these teams? Kansas? Alabama? Syracuse? UMass? Davidson?

And like this:

Wozniak is being recruited by several schools, most notably ...

Used to be pretty much the opposite, of course -- the program was pretty darn good, and yet nobody knew, or only the avid, educated few. The power of March. The power of CBS. The power of a star in sports-info-tainment in a celebrity culture.

Getting a lot of traffic from California

This is why. The Stephen effect.

Marcus Jordan

The former Davidson recruit on his NBA2K10 habits: “I play with the Lakers. So I always have to give Kobe the ball, [or] Ron Artest. I actually traded Derek Fisher and some other players for Stephen Curry. So, Stephen Curry runs my point guard. Stephen Curry gets a couple shots here and there, too.”