Davidson 74, Georgetown 70

Nothing easy

Media guide of destiny

Via Kyle.

An e-mail this morning

From a fan:

My wife and I drove home from New England this week and were discussing how much more fun this season is. Hoping for a win is a hell of a lot more enjoyable than fearing a loss.

We were at the Hofstra game and I was struck by how Coach McKillop is resculpting some identities. I love Bryant coming off the bench as a sparkplug. I love how economical Steve has become. He is always THERE. Avoids mistakes and is beginning to remind me of Thomas just a little. I loved the bounce pass Nik fed to Cohen to ice the game. He was very cool in a tight spot. I loved how coach stuck with JP during the Hofstra game. I loved how he had Frank in the line-up down the stretch. I love how coach is not relying on Will as our primary scoring threat and how Will is becoming a much more productive all-around player.

It’s a fun year! Big game tonight.

Like this.

On written words and spider graphs

Got for Christmas from my good friend Ben the preposterously cool San Francisco Panorma. Read about it here and here and here. If you have 16 bucks and any interest, any interest at all, in written words on printed paper that tell true stories, you should get it.

Of particular interest in this forum, though, there’s not only a keeper of a Stephen poster inside, but there’s also an interesting little “spider graph” and analysis by Roger Pimentel. The title is ... Stephen Curry vs. Monta Ellis: Can You Spot The Natural Point Guard?

Pimentel writes:

Let’s try to determine who fits which role. The top half of a spider graph is composed of offensive statistics; the bottom is defense. A well-rounded player will have a circular spider graph, while the graph of a player with specific strengths will have sharp points.

Can you guess whose spider graph is more circular?

Pimentel continues:

Right off the bat, it’s Curry who seems to be gravitating toward the role of a traditional point guard. Curry comes across as a creator -- his balance of scoring and assisting on the graph suggests that he creates shots for himself and others equally well. Despite his early misgivings about his teammate, Ellis is thriving in his quasi-two-guard role by doing what he does best -- taking the ball to the hole.

So I’m in Davidson right now. Last night Bill Cobb and I did a very festive and Christmasy thing. We drank beer and watched the Wisconsin game. There’s a play pretty early in the second half where Davidson starts to pull away. Thomas runs the floor and scores a layup while getting fouled. What’s Stephen do on that play? He gets the rebound. He throws a laser to Thomas. TV likes he shoots he scores, so it makes sense that that’s what most fans think of when they think of Stephen, but it’s neat to see that some seem to be starting to understand what I’d like to think we here have known for a good long while.

Life after Stephen (and Andrew, and Max, and ...)

Jeff Hartsell in Charleston:

But as Davidson comes to McAlister Field House tonight, Citadel coach Ed Conroy expects a team that’s much better adjusted to life without Curry, now playing for pay with the NBA’s Golden State Warriors.

“From what I’ve seen on tape so far, they are a typical Bob McKillop-coached team,” Conroy said. “They have a lot of talented players. Maybe they haven’t found their perfect chemistry and mix yet, but they will. And they will have a heck of a season, I believe.”

I appreciated this story because it did something a lot of stories so far this year have not. It at least alluded to the reality that the first year of the post-Stephen Curry era for Davidson is also the first year of the post-Andrew Lovedale era and the post-Max Paulhus Gosselin era. I’ll add, too, that this is the second year of the post-Jason Richards era and the post-Thomas Sander era. All these guys for the Davidson College basketball program were historically good.

The North Charleston Sheraton

This just became Thomas’ Facebook profile picture. The General, by the way, is 24 today.

May 6, 2008

Reed Jackson in Cornelius: “The last 10 minutes of the Georgetown game, far and away, it was the most extraordinary thing I’ve ever seen in sports. You could watch sports for your whole life and never be that close to something that extraordinary. With like four or five minutes to go, I said to my son, 'Jordan, watch this, because I’m 46, and you might never see something like this again.’”

Tim Cowie in Davidson: “I remember seeing Thomas shading into the low post out of the corner of my eye. I didn’t know how far Jason was out till I saw it on TV. I thought it was a good look. He took the shot, and I took the camera away from my eye when the ball was in the air, to watch.”

Jay Wade in Davidson: “When the shot missed? I was okay. We were in a position to win. That’s as much as you can ask for. But I was worn out, and I was tired -- and I was in Detroit.”

Duggar Baucom on the phone: “Those KU post players looked different against North Carolina and Memphis. Flesh to flesh. No kid in Bob’s program is ever going to be afraid of flesh to flesh contact. Or they won’t be there.”

Nov. 14, 2007

William in my inbox:

Did you watch the Davidson-UNC game from 2007 on ESPN Classic last night? I was flipping channels and there it was. I was a little surprised it didn’t draw some comment on the board. It was a great game, and we should have won, whatever should means. One thing about that game was that when we were tied with less than five minutes to go, I realized that the maturity of age had not very much inhibited my heart’s response to Wildcat basketball in close games. I have several games from that season recorded, but I haven’t watched any of them for various reasons. So as I watched, I was impressed with how important Thomas and Jason were. That sort of falls into the “duh” category, but maybe not really. When you watch what the team did with those two, it becomes very clear that the expectations for this year’s team were truly unrealistic. It also proves what some resisted saying out loud, that Curry at point was never going to be as conducive to team success as Jason feeding to ball to him. One has to go back and watch to see how smooth and fast those assists were. I know I’m preaching to the choir, but it was an interesting thing to watch while the Sox and Yankees were having a rain delay. Also, just sort of cool that Davidson pops up now and then as a “classic.”

Me in William's inbox:

I think the more time that goes by the more we realize that the 2008 team had three extraordinary players on its roster: There was Stephen, yes, a first-round NBA guard -- but Jason, too, was an NBA-caliber guard, which doesn’t mean he definitely will play in the league, only that he could, and wouldn’t be totally overmatched or outclassed, and then Thomas, of course, who wasn’t an NBA player, to be sure, but might have been an NBA-caliber (i.e. world-class) basketball thinker, setting screens, getting in the proper defensive position, taking charges. I remember watching that game, on TV, at the gym, down here in Florida, and thinking: Man. This is not a "normal" Davidson team. One play in particular: Jason made a hard driving move on the left baseline, stopped and turned and pulled back for a second, then drove hard again toward the basket. He met a Carolina guy at the rim, took the hit, drew the foul, and finished. My eyes literally got wider when that happened. That’s never happened before, I thought to myself. This is something different.

And again:

One other story about that game: That afternoon, in the gym at Elder High School up in Cincinatti, the coach of the team told his boys at practice to watch Thomas, their guy, their alum, play against Carolina later that evening on ESPN. The coach also gave his boys a guarantee: Thomas is going to draw a tech on Tyler Hansbrough. Just watch, the coach told them. The next afternoon at practice? Told you so.

Last night’s banquet

Pearl on Max’s speech: Max said that he has played his last game, and he played it in a Davidson uniform. Maybe I welled up just a little. Max is the kind of guy who makes you proud to be associated with Davidson basketball. I told him later that I think about him the way I think about Thomas Sander -- the embodiment of a Davidson Wildcat.

On the Wisconsin game

Thomas Sander, the first time we talked for the book, in Davidson last April: “None of us even thought about them dominating on the inside. We’re going to hit you, and hit you, and hit you. Every time Butch came down the court, I hit him, at the foul line -- bumped him with my chest, little nudges, an extra foot, an extra second. Then hit him again, with your chest, tag ’im with your arm, as long as you don’t reach and grab. He started going to the refs. He didn’t post up the whole game. He’s whining to the refs. Are you kidding me? The Big 10 champs?”

March 21, 2008

From the book:

Thomas reached for a loose ball near the basket and jammed his right thumb. An X-ray just before halftime showed a break on the side of the tip of his thumb. The team doctor said the decision to play or not was up to Thomas. The decision was easy. Thomas was going to play. In a room off to the side, the doctor shot, with a .22-gauge needle, directly into the part of the bone that was broken, a mixture of numbing, fast-acting pain medications Ethyl Chloride, Marcaine and Lidocaine. Thomas looked away.

He came back into the main part of the locker room where his teammates had gathered for halftime. The coaches were still out in the hall. He had his thumb stuck in a cup of ice.

Jason Richards, his roommate and his best friend, looked up at him.

“Is it broken?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Thomas said.

There was a short anxious silence in the room.

Davidson was down by five.

“Are you still going to play?” Jason said.

“Yeah,” Thomas said.

He sat down. His teammates looked at him. All of them, he thought to himself, would do the same thing for him.

People close to the team knew about the injury, but most people did not, and the hope was that opponents wouldn’t, either.

“I’ll be okay,” Thomas told reporters who asked about it.

Thomas got the painkilling shots before the next three games in the tournament. They made his right hand so numb he sometimes had to look down at the ball to make sure he had gotten a rebound. And yet in the Kansas game, midway through the first half, he somehow had made a three-pointer with a hand he couldn’t even feel.

How you lose

Fan Barry Dailey via e-mail:

I’m a UConn grad and have lived in Davidson for 14 years. It took a lot of Davidson basketball to get me to replace my Huskies Hat for the Wildcat. It was Thomas Sander who finally coaxed me into Wildcat Country. Never saw a player who not only always seemed to be positioned so thoughtfully on the court -- but at the right angle. Not only was his body where it was supposed to be, but his feet too. Textbook feet. Great high school coach + Bob I guess.

Anyway we went to Chattanooga. After Sunday’s game we were at the hospitality event at the Sheraton. Understand we are not insiders to the program. We keep our distance but remain captive to how artfully Bob runs things. So he comes up to our table, leans over and introduces himself to our 7-year-old girl who has a Wildcat tattoo on her cheek and a Wildcat basketball in her hands. “Hi Megan, I’m Bob McKillop.” (The guy was less than 2 hrs from a really tough loss.) His emotion was all over his face. He looked exhausted -- but his class would not be denied. He stays a while and chats with my wife and I. … Strangers mind you.

I asked coach about Frank and he told me straight up what I guess most people now know and won’t say. He told me Frank was going to be DC’s secret weapon in the tournament.

When most coaches would be at the bar or hidden away in their hotel room … not this guy.

After Sunday’s game we again talked with our daughter about how there are lessons to be learned when you win and when you lose. How Steph embraced those C of C guys after the game … not with that half hug kids do … but a real, sincere embrace to kids that just beat Davidson -- again. No pouting and no excuses. Good luck guys … great game. That’s how you lose. That’s how you live.

Yesterday our daughter was awarded the “school bear” for sportsmanship by her gym teacher … coincidence I suspect but who knows?

Other folks? Thoughts? Stories?

March

Almost a year ago by now, with Stephen and Jason and Thomas and the rest of the team, too, there was, I’ve come to think, a very rare convergence of ability and innocence.

The guys on last year’s team were good enough to do what they did. But they were also inexperienced enough and unburdened enough to not quite know what was on the other side.

That was the simple and unspoken and yet somehow tangible bond between the players and the coaches and the people who stopped to watch.

Here we are.

Here. We. Are.

I’m thinking now of those still photos, and maybe you are, too. That’s what everybody saw.

This year, of late in particular, it feels like maybe this team has gotten away from that, and certainly some of the fans have. Maybe it’s human nature. I don’t know.

Earlier this week, I flew though Detroit on the way to Pittsburgh, and when I was walking through the terminal I found myself thinking about a moment from Ford Field that Sunday last March.

During the timeout, with 16.8 seconds left, I was in Row 25 and I turned around and looked a row behind me and saw Tripp Cherry ’99, and he was on the phone, talking to his wife, Carrie ’01, who was back home in Charlotte studying for law school finals.

I couldn’t hear what he was saying, the place was too loud, but I could see the big, wet tears that had pooled in his eyes.

Many months later, over a supper at the Soda Shop, I asked Tripp about that moment. I ended up writing about this in the book.

Tripp said he and Carrie had talked about the play that was about to happen.

He said she told him just before the ball was put in play that she should probably let him go.

And Tripp said into the phone:

“No.

“Stay.”

The point here is this: There’s a game here at Belk in a minute. There’s a game Monday at Elon. There’s a game Saturday in Chattanooga, then maybe Sunday, then maybe Monday.

To ask March 2009 to be March 2008 is to forget what made March 2008 what it was.

The don’t miss this.

The here we are.

The No. Stay.

Whelliston

Makes a good point.

College Hoops Journal

The latest book Q&A:

These are my thoughts.

That’s all they are.

I think last year’s team had two guards who could play with anybody. I think this year’s team has one. I think this year’s team asks Stephen to do a TON. I don’t think there’s any way around that. I think Stephen does more for his team than any other player in America. And I thought that before this week’s Stephen-less Citadel loss. I think he’s carried an enormous burden this year. I think it’s remarkable that he’s performed the way he’s performed and that he hasn’t gotten more worn down than he has. I think last year’s team had a post player in Thomas Sander who did all kinds of things that were invisible to most folks watching but made all of his teammates so much better. I think that kind of player is as rare as a player like Stephen is rare. I think last year’s team was backed by a fan base that was filled with such genuine hope but not necessarily debilitating expectation. I think it created an authentic experience. I think it’s an experience Davidson people will be talking about for a long, long time.

Thomas Sander?

Michael Lewis on Shane Battier:

Battier’s game is a weird combination of obvious weaknesses and nearly invisible strengths. When he is on the court, his teammates get better, often a lot better, and his opponents get worse -- often a lot worse. He may not grab huge numbers of rebounds, but he has an uncanny ability to improve his teammates’ rebounding. He doesn’t shoot much, but when he does, he takes only the most efficient shots. He also has a knack for getting the ball to teammates who are in a position to do the same, and he commits few turnovers. On defense, although he routinely guards the N.B.A.’s most prolific scorers, he significantly ­reduces their shooting percentages. At the same time he somehow improves the defensive efficiency of his teammates -- probably, Morey surmises, by helping them out in all sorts of subtle ways. “I call him Lego,” Morey says. “When he’s on the court, all the pieces start to fit together.”

The General

Thomas on the radio before the game at the Garden: “I don’t really miss playing basketball. I miss playing basketball for Davidson.”