Two years ago today

Claire in Detroit:

Our victory bellows take over, melding us into one hot sweaty bonetired (up for seventeen hours straight come from down South twenty-four hours ago I didn’t even think I’d be here wasn’t I in a Wendy’s in Ohio eight hours ago is it really the same freaking day of the week?) euphoric disbelieving jumble of jubilant kids, screaming into the depths of these thousands for our hometown boys, our friends, our classmates. Bob McKillop’s face appears on the big screen, stoneset like we’re not going to win by seventeen points, not going to go to the Elite Eight, not going to be the story of the year -- just a normal game. And yet the clock slides easily down, no pressurecooker countdown no heartstopping miracle -- bliss pressing from all sides all people all mouths.

Soltys on Cats.com: 1. We won. 2. I was there.

The posters for the Project

By Alan Hyder ’99: Gonzaga, Georgetown, Wisconsin, Kansas.

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.

Plug in Davidson

Here.

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.

The Davidson Project

One of the very cool photos that just arrived from John Bryant ’08. Deadline is Friday.

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.

David vs. Goliath

This:

“And it happened as the Philistine arose and was drawing near David that David hastened and ran out from the lines toward the Philistine,” the Bible says. “And he reached his hand into the pouch and took from there a stone and slung it and struck the Philistine in his forehead.” The second sentence -- the slingshot part -- is what made David famous. But the first sentence matters just as much. David broke the rhythm of the encounter. He speeded it up. “The sudden astonishment when David sprints forward must have frozen Goliath, making him a better target,” the poet and critic Robert Pinsky writes in “The Life of David.” Pinsky calls David a “point guard ready to flick the basketball here or there.” David pressed. That’s what Davids do when they want to beat Goliaths.

Made me think of this:

“Again, we’ve got a genius on the bench next to me, the architect, Matt Matheny, who again doctored up our pressure just a little bit. We actually almost got a 10-second violation once. But he had Andrew bang back and forth between the two guards rather than just initially trap the first guard. And by trapping that second guard, it forced Landry to bring the ball up the court. Now Landry is starting to swing offense. Landry maybe gets tempted to drive it all the way to the basket. All of a sudden the rhythm of their offense is broken.”

Friday night in Detroit

Mike Lopresti:

Can this be happening? Really?

This is no longer reality. This is the Wizard of Oz in short pants. The Lord of the Rings in sneakers.

Davidson 73, Wisconsin 56. Nobody saw this coming from the little school that could. Absolutely nobody.

Davidson has not run out of karma, or nerve, or Stephen Curry feats that make witnesses go wow in the night. By Friday, the Wildcats were supposed to have come back to Earth.

Instead, they’re going to Jupiter. Or somewhere out there. Maybe the Final Four, too.

Remember George Mason? Sure. George Mason eked out a lot of tough victories in its historical run two years ago. But it never put a beat-down on a big-name favorite like this.

“We got a lead on them,” guard Jason Richards would say afterward, “and never looked back.”

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?”

A year ago today