Championship Week Potpourri

It's been a long but exciting week in Charleston. I have found that there are so many small stories that didn't make it into the game posts that need to be put on here somewhere, so I figured that I would put together a long post that incorporated all of them.

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All of 2008 has been quite an adventure for me. I have been given the opportunity to travel around the South watching the Wildcats pick apart all comers and come out unscathed. It's been incredible to see how this team has handled the ever-building pressure...but it's even more remarkable to watch the Davidson community embrace and realize how special this year really is. I was most fortunate to have sat among so many members of that "family" on the trip down to Georgia Southern where I was told about Davidson's old trough and the mishmash of food that it provided during exams, about the various "Before they were stars" that came to Davidson and most generally about how this team fits into the context of a basketball program history that Street & Smith named as one of the country's Top 80 ever. I'd like to take this space to thank everyone, young and old, that has approached me about the blog over the course of this season. Your support has been wonderful and I appreciate all of the feedback you have given me.

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In one of those "I will never forget the time and place" sort of moments on Monday, two of my friends and I went to play some basketball at a local gym just hours before heading to the Coliseum for the Championship game. While I love to play the game as much as I love writing about it, I have to confess that my two friends absolutely dwarf me in terms of pure balling skills. While we were just expecting to play 21, we ended up taking on three high school guys trying to stay in shape for their next season. After winning the first game, we found ourselves down 15-5 in game two. We finally got a stop and went on a roll, getting the ball back after every made possession. After a glance at the "Davidson" on my shorts, one guy commented about my friend shooting "like that Steph-on Curry guy" while another said, "it figures that these Davidson guys know how to play together." Through some great shooting, tough defense, and thread-the-needle passes, we found ourselves back in a 20-18 lead (playing by 1's and 2's...that's an impressive 15-3 run). Needing just one shot to win, I caught the ball on an outlet and had the open three. My defender knew he had the block and my pump made him fly right by me. I pulled a Max and stepped in and put it up. Nothing but net and the Davidson guys are flawless.

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Press row really didn't have too much to talk about outside of Davidson for the entire tournament. The Davidson legion of writers, bloggers and SID's held court while everyone else came in for their story, watched their team lose, and wrote about Davidson. Charleston's own Gene Sapakoff and Jeff Hartsell found out that I was a Davidson student and Charleston native and started grilling me about the school. "So is the laundry really as cool as they say?" You guys have been reading too much NY Times. The press conferences were most fun when young, unsuspecting writers and TV guys asked Coach McKillop the bad questions: "have you looked ahead to _____? ... is it hard to keep focus? .... how good is your team?" and then kept trying to beat them into the ground with variations on the theme. Those questions are always sound like car wrecks squealing out of control that crash with Coach's one or two word answers.

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I'm the first to admit that I don't know a dang thing about Bracketology. I'm expecting Davidson to get anywhere from a 6 to a 12. But I do know that despite popular belief, the committee is allowed to match up regular season opponents in the second round, it is just not encouraged. So here is how this whole thing is going to play out. Davidson gets a nine seed playing eighth-seeded Kentucky in Raleigh. Wildcats advance to meet top-seeded North Carolina. Wildcats advance to the Sweet 16 in Charlotte on a overtime three-pointer from Bryant Barr. Davidson faces fourth-seeded Indiana in the round of 16. Max Paulhus Gosselin shuts down Eric Gordon and Davidson advances to the Elite 8 while IU fans cry foul that Davidson ended up having a home-court advantage in Bobcats Arena. Wildcats go on to face 2nd-seeded Georgetown and Stephen Curry goes off for 50 in a double OT "Instant Classic" that sends Davidson to their first ever Final Four. Wildcats fly into San Antonio and beat Duke in their semifinal to earn the right to play UCLA in the National Championship. Davidson once again jumps out to an 18-point early lead and win the tournament running away. President Tom Ross cancels class and Disney comes calling for the rights to the movie. Michael Kruse and I see our opportunity to do a little screenwriting and the story of the Cinderella Team that beat every giant in the history of college basketball (Kentucky, UNC, Indiana, Georgetown, Duke and UCLA) is told across the land for decades to come.