Taking another shot

DeCourcy:

It’s amazing how quiet it is now that Davidson is Davidson again.

With Stephen Curry gone to the NBA, the Wildcats finished 16-14, 11-7 in the Southern Conference. So maybe they’re not really Davidson; even before Curry, this wouldn’t have been a vintage finish under Bob McKillop.

His teams have won the Southern’s automatic bid five times. The Wildcats begin their trek toward another NCAA appearance Friday against the Elon Phoenix, whom they defeated on the road in overtime in their final league game.

There’s no more Steph Curry, but Davidson still is one of college basketball’s best programs. The 2010 Southern Conference tournament is another chance to prove it.

Katz on the SCT: Nobody from the Southern Conference has a player like former Davidson guard Stephen Curry. But at least some of these teams have had the experience of beating a high-level opponent and will go into this tournament with confidence. If the semifinals in Charlotte are Western Carolina-Wofford and Charleston-Appalachian State, the league should have a highly competitive final two days. The Observer points out: Brendan McKillop’s assist-to-turnover ratio of 2.7 is the best in conference.

On DeCourcy picking Davidson

It was pointed out over at Cats.com that the Sporting News preview mag has Davidson playing in the 2010 NCAA tournament even thought it also has Davidson finishing third in the South Division of the Southern Conference.

The league run-down was written by freelancer Michael Bradley. The tourney projections came from SN senior writer Mike DeCourcy. Mike, I know, is an admirer of Davidson basketball and more specifically of Bob McKillop.

Here’s some of what he told me almost a year and a half ago, on April 30, 2008, when we talked for the book -- and maybe a part of an explanation for his pick:

“I see a commitment to system. I see a belief in what they do. I see that even when they’re out-manned.”

“A lot of guys get to that level by selling themselves as coaches and selling the program. But there are very few coaches out there who teach the game as well as Bob.”

“His guys know how to play the game. And they get better.”

The other Curry

Seth: “I wouldn’t have minded playing with my brother, but I kind of wanted to separate myself, make my own name.”

Says DeCourcy

He did his time.

More from Dell

To Mike DeCourcy: “He knows what the NBA is all about from his experience with being around me in childhood. He knows you have to be 100 percent committed because it’s a big boys’ game, and it’s good that he understands that. Who can fault a guy if he wants to go back to school and finish his degree and play another year and live another year of college life? College was the best four years of my life, and I told him that, as well. But who can fault a guy if his kid-long dream was to play in the NBA and he has the opportunity? There is no wrong decision.”

Davidson’s biggest advocate?

It might be Mike DeCourcy.

Midseason All-American

Stephen’s on Mike DeCourcy’s team:

He has disappeared back into the anonymity of the Southern Conference. When the folks at ESPN run Davidson’s scores on their crawl, they don’t even show how many points Curry has scored -- even though it’s almost always a newsworthy total, and even though we all are at least as interested in his numbers as whether Davidson wins. He leads the nation in scoring and is 10th in assists. Yep, he’s a point guard.

Math

DeCourcy: Davidson graduate Michael Kruse, author of the new book, Taking The Shot: The Davidson Basketball Moment, has done some calculating and determined Wildcats All-American Stephen Curry could become the NCAA’s all-time scoring champ if he completes four seasons. After Davidson’s game against Purdue, Curry has 1,961 career points and at least 22 games left this year (including a minimum of one Southern Conference tournament game and one postseason game). Kruse points out that if Curry could play 60 more games for the Wildcats and average 30 points, he would blow past Pete Maravich’s career total of 3,667 points. Following a tough day Saturday against the Boilermakers, Curry is averaging exactly 30 -- and that’s including that gimmicky zero-point night against Loyola (Md.).

Stephen vs. J.J.

The kids at the Chronicle at Duke want to know.

“Who’s better: J.J. Redick or Stephen Curry?”

This comparison came up in one of my conversations last summer with Mike DeCourcy.

Mike’s take on Stephen: “He has qualities of J.J. Redick. He runs through the offense and never stops basically. That’s an unusual thing. But what really separates him is the release. His lack of need for space. The thing that he has now that J.J. didn’t have until his senior year, maybe, is his invention -- his ability to make up a shot in the moment.”

Like?

“The play against Georgetown that tied it. The scoop layup. He went basically through three guys, and that was not at a point when Georgetown was not paying attention. A lot of people knew him just as a shooter, but that was the most impressive play I saw anybody make in the NCAA tournament. Because he defeated three high-level defenders, all of them bigger than he was, and at a critical moment.”

The people’s choice

DeCourcy: What makes Davidson guard Stephen Curry different than just about any college player this decade is simply this: Every time he has the ball in his hands, he brings you forward in your seat. What might happen now? What shot might he invent? Will he create room for himself with some kind of step-back maneuver? Will he drive it and complete the play with some ridiculously creative finish? Will he throw a pass only he believes will squeeze between defenders and it does?

Curry isn’t just the most exciting college player this season. He is the most exciting since, at least, Allen Iverson left Georgetown in 1996.

Acclaim

Mike DeCourcy: Stephen Curry has done just about everything a college player can do in less than two-and-a-half seasons, but this will be his first chance to play at Madison Square Garden. Davidson and West Virginia are the opening act for this year’s Jimmy V, which means defensive ace Bob Huggins will have to devise some way to stop Curry that doesn’t, say, lead to his team being defeated by 30.

It’s possible he’s not getting enough acclaim for what he has accomplished so far this season. Curry is averaging 31.3 points in spite of the scoreless night he endured against Loyola’s constant double-team. In both games this year against major-conference opponents, he scored 44.

Oh, and by the way, he also is averaging 6.4 assists and shooting better than 50 percent from the field. He deserves this stage.

Back in Indiana

Sorry. Been busy. But this came over yesterday on a Google alert.

Good guy, Henney.

He told me in May in my reporting that his first exposure to Davidson basketball was in 2004. Henney’s from Indiana, Fort Wayne native, IU grad, but in 2004 he was a civics teacher and the head tennis coach and the assistant basketball coach at Fred T. Foard High School in Newton, N.C., and that summer he worked McKillop’s camp.

What struck him the most, he said, was that (1) McKillop was always there -- at many camps the head coach is there only when the parents drop their kids off and then again when they pick them back up -- and that (2) McKillop in about two days knew like 80 percent of the kids’ names.

He worked camp again in the summer of ’05, Henney did, and then in the winter of ’05-’06 he drove to Davidson three, four evenings a week, he said, to watch the Wildcats practice. Hour each way. After teaching school. After coaching HIS practice.

Totally worth it, he said.

Basketball people talk about Bob McKillop-run practices, and how physical they are, and how precise they are.

Len Kosmalski, who played in the NBA, and the father, obviously, of Landry and Logan, told me last summer about watching a practice on Landry’s recruiting visit way back when.

“Everything was right down to the minute,” he said. “Not a minute was wasted.”

Here's what the Sporting News’ Mike DeCourcy said in May when we talked about McKillop and his practices: “A lot of guys get to that level by selling themselves as coaches and selling the program. There are very few out there who teach the game as well as Bob.”

Anyway, Henney was hired in '06, and was on staff for two years, and in those two years Davidson won 58 games. Not bad.