Davidson 92 Georgia Southern 67

Tonight the Davidson Wildcats will plunge into the long dark of the conference schedule. Between now and March, Davidson will play at least two conference foes every week, and every team will have its minds set on knocking off the two-time defending champions.

I will be set up courtside with a live blog going tonight. You can catch John Kilgo's radio feed by going here and clicking on Live Audio. I will post some pre-game thoughts tonight followed by live comments and reactions at every media timeout. Feel free to send questions or comments here.
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The big news tonight is that Andrew Lovedale is projected to start in place of Boris Meno. I will update that when we do the starting lineups. But plan on the Big Cat seeing early minutes tonight.

The color of the night seems to be orange. An insane number of staff and coaches are wearing orange dress clothes tonight. Odds on the color of McKillop's tie tonight? I've got 10-1 odds on orange.
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We are confirmed that Lovedale will be starting in place of Meno tonight. He will be jumping the tip.

Davidson comes out with some new long sleeve black warmups. They look pretty good. Combine the new unis with some new facial hair on the part of the forwards and this team looks ready for business. If only they could start wearing the black unis again.
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17:12 D 11 GS 0
Curry opens things with a three and a jumper to give D a quick 7-0 lead. Lovedale's a better defender away from the basket, which helps against Graham. Graham has already shot and missed several outside shots. And a back door to Max, steal from Jason followed by a Max dunk and this is an early blowout.
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15:30 D 13 GS 3
Boris is quickly in and he makes a great pass to Thomas inside. It looks like sitting for the first three minutes really focused his efforts. This team has the intensity and skill of that 29-5 squad from last year. MPG playing well, Sander with inside scoring, J-rich on defense. An Archambault turnover brought me back down to earth. But we are still playing really well.
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12:49 D 19 GS 3
Steph with another charge. But the offense is clicking on the interior. And the defense has been great. Sander now has 8 points and Price has take another timeout. All Davidson at this point. One quick look at stats shows Davidson with an 11-3 rebounding advantage. The Eagles are not getting second chances and are not shooting the ball well at all (FG 1/10). Curry gets an early break and we'll see what Barr can do.
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11:51 D 19 GS 3
The Wildcat defense is outstanding right now. While no one with a 16-point lead should be complaining, I will say that they need to finish a little better around the rim. Curry should make one more move before barreling into contact. The refs aren't calling much defensively and it's going to take a little more finesse to get these close shots to go down.
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9:30 D 26 GS 8
Foreman and Graham out of the game for GSU and the Eagles move into a zone. Rossiter with a nice jumper in space. MPG has shown up to play. He is beating the Eagles down the court and Jason has found him. Max now has seven points. And Curry with a sweet move under the basket. This one is fun.
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8:00 D 31 GS 12
Curry has only been given one steal in the Live Stats. I know that he has more than that. And Lovedale with another sick pick kill at halfcourt...Powers went down. Sander continues his poor foul shooting but he's killing the offensive boards. Will is still off his game, but Coach is giving him time to work through it.
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6:50 D 33 GS 16
Graham and Foreman are still scoreless. I hate to admit it but the Eagles have been on the wrong end of some questionable calls. Lovedale has tipped several balls out but Davidson has retained possession. The officials are letting both teams play pretty physically which means more loose balls and Davidson (namely Stephen Curry) has been there to pick them up. Things got a little chippy in the last scramble at midcourt. Now things are getting ugly on both ends. GSU is really frustrated and the Wildcats need to be careful not to get hurt. Thomas Sander almost always finds himself in the middle of these things and we don't need him getting hurt.
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4:54 D 41 GS 20
In a quick SoCon score update, Charleston leads App 25-24 in a big conference game in Charleston. Richards shows his maturity again by pulling up at 15 feet and hitting an easy jumper instead of driving into the mess for a contested layup. Jason and Thomas have now scored in double digits. And the chippiness escalates...Tech on Price after some questionable calls on both teams. The Eagles interfered in the cylinder but were then awarded a makeup call which Price didn't like.
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3:20 D 43 GS 22
Davidson has not shot well from 3 point land, but they are owning the paint. Lovedale and Sander have fought for every loose ball and are seeing plenty of looks for shots. Price has not even talked to his team during the last media timeout...he was arguing that Davidson's "traffic," where Sander walks up the court with Richards behind him, is a moving screen. Price won't win that battle. With Davidson in the bonus, they are going to need to up their FT percentage. Lovedale just went 1-2.
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Halftime D 45 GS 31
Coach McKillop is not proud of his team's play there at the end. The Eagles ended the half on a 9-2 run thanks to some sloppy play. The Wildcats are shooting an atrocious 16% from three but they have the lead due to some hustle plays on the defensive perimeter and the offensive paint. If Davidson could convert their second-chance opportunities and hit the open jumpers, this would be completely over...as it stands, Georgia Southern is still barely breathing. Curry only has seven points and conventional wisdom suggests that he will get at least 13 more points. The huge story of the first half was Sander. He went 6-8 from the field with three offensive rebounds. But his biggest number was 0. The number of fouls that he has picked up. Let's hope that trend continues.
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18:00 D 51 GS 35
There it is. Curry for three. MPG picks up his third foul which is frustrating. He has played well tonight. I've also noticed that Davidson hasn't left their feet as much on the interior leading to less fouls on the forwards. MPG with four fouls on a ticky-tacker. That sucks.
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15:35 D 53 GS 39
Curry is hunting shots now. He has 15 points and at least six shot attempts in the second half. Unfortunately, Meno continues to struggle with another missed layup. He went 0-2 in the first half.
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13:13 D 60 GS 39
This game has lost a lot of luster right now. Bad FG shooting...half-court grinds...missed layups on both sides. As I type that, Barr hits a nice three and then Curry gets an o-rebound and hits an off-balance layup AND1. Nice. Very nice. And Davidson on a 7-0 run.
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11:50 D 63 GS 39
The run continues with a nice feed to Meno underneath. Davidson has been a beast on the boards...Curry with 9 right now (his career high is 10 which he got last year at Chattanooga). Richards has nine assists. And Curry has big no. 20 on the points tally.
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9:00 D 72 GS 50
Davidson is in the bonus now on another rebounding foul. Rossiter gets some easy points from the line. I'm really not impressed with Louis Graham at all. He's very undersized for a 6'8" guy and he's only scored seven points tonight (and now has four fouls). And Archer gets a nice three after a 2. That was good.
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7:55 D 75 GS 52
MPG back in the game and he got a chance to bring the ball up with Jason being double-teamed. I wouldn't be surprised if he some touches at point next year. Sander with a new season high 16 points, and he's still in the ballgame.
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6:20 D 79 GS 53
Yikes. Meno is having a really tough time tonight. Two points. Several bad turnovers away from the basket. I wonder how much him not starting tonight will help or hurt him. We hope that it will motivate, but it might have the opposite effect.
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4:48 D 81 GS 54
Fields fouls out and Curry hits a nice jumper. The older fans behind me are not happy with the officials tonight. Oh well. You can't please everyone. In other SoCon action: Furman knocks off Western Carolina for their first win of the year. Chattanooga and Wofford playing it close in Spartanburg, while App has a small lead over Charleston in Charleston.
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3:42 D 86 GS 54
Lil McKillop into the ballgame and he gets a rebound off of a missed free throw, much to the delight of the crowd. Things getting chippier as Curry is thrown to the ground. Coach needs to get him out of there before he gets hurt. He has a game-high 24 which is slightly higher than his season average.
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1:00 D 91 GS 65
Nelms, Civi and Bond into the game after the Eagles hit several threes to pull the margin closer. And McKillop with a big three to put Davidson over 90.
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Final D
Big statement win for Davidson tonight. They dominated from the opening tip and sent a message to the Southern Conference. Steph Curry now has 1,000 points for his career.