Davidson's famous students

We all thought that the spotlight was blinding last week as CBS, ESPN, and Sports Illustrated descended on our campus, at this point we are just closing our eyes and holding on to each other for dear life.

Upon getting to the hotel last night, Davidson students weren't just exclaiming about how they can't wait to read about this team in tomorrow's papers, they were also pumped about getting to read about themselves. Swarms of reporters and camera people have mobbed this now-famous student body because of their free trip to Detroit and their undying devotion to America's basketball team.

"They put my picture in the Detroit paper...I was quoted in the Cleveland paper...I was in the Charlotte Observer..."

Clad in our red "Witness" t-shirts, the hundreds of Davidson students in this Dearborn hotel have a pretty imposing appearance. This morning, students back on campus learned that they would be able to come up for Sunday's Elite 8 game as the Trustees found another five buses for another 250 students to support the Cats.

And while the Davidson Wildcats' men's basketball team continues to transcend the stereotypes of low-seeded, mid-major teams, Davidson's student body has done nothing but uphold many of the stereotypes cultivated about them.

"So I guess you guys will have to study all day tomorrow," joked a reporter after the game.

"Well, yeah, we will."

The hotel lobby is currently filled with Davidson students and their laptops, typing away at papers and reading up for next week's tests. The Wildcats are forty minutes away from the Final Four, and yet the foremost thing on everyone's mind today is next week's academic assignments.

You work hard and have fun in the basketball arena, but academics remain all-important. Davidson students and players will be getting back to campus on Monday morning with very little sleep, but they will be expected back in class. That's just how we do things here.

World, meet Davidson

Davidson is a college, not a university, located in North Carolina right outside of Charlotte. This school is home to 1,700 students with academic profiles comparable to the Ivy League schools of the north. Davidson students earn liberal arts degrees where they study music, history, english, Classics, math and science to cultivate a well-rounded academic experience. There is no such thing as a business, journalism, marketing or accounting major at Davidson. All of the athletes are held to the same academic standards as everyone else at Davidson and the basketball team is not given special tutors or study sessions to give them any edge.

Davidson takes pride in its basketball program. Davidson students own the national mark for highest percentage of a student body that attends basketball games throughout a season. The Davidson community has embraced the basketball program often with memories of the Elite 8 runs of Lefty Driesell when he coached Davidson in the 1960's.

Davidson's "song," Sweet Caroline, was started last year by a marketing assistant who knew how much students like to sing along at campus parties. After playing it during a conference home game, the crowd continued the chorus a cappella during an opponent's free throw and he missed. The song has been a staple of Davidson games ever since.

Davidson's Stephen Curry continues to be one of the best players in the country that people don't know that much about. He is the son of former NBA star Dell Curry and his name is pronounced Steff-in...not Steve-in or Steph-awwnn. He chose Davidson after being passed over from ACC schools for being too small. He has subsequently grown into the nation's leader in three-pointers and a second-team All-American. Curry will not be leaving Davidson this spring for the NBA. And it's not because he wouldn't be that high of a draft pick. If Davidson won the national championship, Curry would still stay.

Davidson point guard Jason Richards was a preseason nominee for the Bob Cousy Award for the best point guard in the country. He did not make it as a finalist in one of the worst errors by an awarding body in college basketball this season. Richards leads the nation in assists this season after finishing second last year, and has been the team leader on and off the court for the Sweet 16-bound Wildcats. Jason is not the son of Richard, so please stop calling him Jason Richardson. He plays for the Bobcats down the road.

Davidson scheduled one of the nation's toughest out-of-conference schedules as they took on UCLA, North Carolina and Duke. After dropping those games by an average of seven points, the Wildcats went on to lose games against WMU, Charlotte and N.C. State. Davidson was written off a small-time program trying to bite off more than they could chew. The national public saw six losses and thought the scheduling move was a failure because Davidson played itself out of the at-large picture. But the Wildcats haven't lost since their 1-point falter at N.C. State. They gained the confidence to play against Kevin Love and Tyler Hansbrough. Against Gonzaga's Heytfelt and Georgetown's Hibbert, they showed no fear. Those games directly link to Davidson's success in the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament.

So that's us. That's Davidson. We've had to tell our story over and over again to the next big-time program that's come in front of us. But we kind of like it when everyone writes us off. We like it when the Southern Conference gets so sick and tired of us winning all the time. We like it when people taunt Stephen Curry by saying he's too young or Jason Richards by saying he's too slow. We like our odds from our 6-7ish frontline against your 7-0 frontline. We like it when you know you are going to beat us. We like that you have no idea what we are made of. We have the types of souls that don't quit when down 17 to a team from last year's Final Four. We always believe. Heck, we are David. Just give us a few more rocks for that slingshot, we have a few more giants to kill.

NCAA Football or NFL Development League?

Recently, there has been an incredible buzz around the Clemson football community surrounding the sub-par recruiting class that they pulled in this year. Most recently, several internet stories leaked out about the workings of the Athletic Department's Academic Review Board which oversees all recruits and informs the coaching staff whether or not the Department will accept and admit them.

Many Clemson coaches have been more than frustrated at the handicaps that his Board puts on their ability to out-recruit their regional ACC and SEC rivals. They have also claimed that several players that the Board has turned away were actually distinctive victims of such things as academically rigorous private high schools, GPA ambiguity about JUCO/prep school incomers, and economically challenging social conditions. The Board has come under great criticism for not allowing the athletic teams, especially football, reach the goals of excellence that the university has insisted on achieving.

More interesting about this recent controversy has been the dialogue and conversation amongst larger fan groups, and how some of these issues relates to the interaction between the Davidson Athletic Department and its admission office.

Throughout the entire week, blogs, radio talk shows, and message boards have less than delicately phrased the question as such: Do we aim for academic mediocrity with the chance of keeping a handful of athletes above a 3.0 GPA, or do we stop being paranoid stuffy pricks and go for a National Championship?

For many fans of the program, they see such academic restraints as being totally irrelevant and ridiculous for a school with the size and national athletic notoriety of Clemson. They don't want to be compared to the "stuffy know-it-alls" from Duke and are insulted that the administration is apparently attempting to do such a thing.

This blog helped to break the story in a way that exhibited more deliberation and precision than most talk shows. He seems to understand the difference between discarding all academic integrity and locking our doors to all that knock. He notes the ways in which the University can still admit particular athletes that can help strengthen the school's top moneymaker, football, while not letting every single recruit into the school's student body.

However, as the article progresses, one can't help but ask the question of this writer and of all the affirmative comments to his page: are college sports really just the minor leagues? If Clemson has fans that are actually envious of Alabama's situation and hateful towards NCAA compliance officers, what is the point of keeping up the charade? The athletic department should just go ahead and pay the 80 players what they are worth and stop taking taxpayers money to be pretending to provide them with a "scholarship."

It is remarkable to me how far gone this entire situation has progressed while no one has stood up to say that perhaps it is a good thing to weed out student-athletes who would not try or succeed in the classroom. Perhaps academics isn't just the hidden treasure of snobby, white kids that go to Duke or Davidson. What would happen if we encouraged the NCAA's crackdown on schools like Alabama or UGA or USC? What if we actually supported Clemson's decision to weed out recruits and force the coaching staff to build their team off of a new form of student-athlete. All of these writers claim that big schools like Clemson will turn into the patsies of the Dukes of the world who just "go through the motions on Saturday." I feel insulted that it is implied that students who work hard in the classroom and are naturally smart can do no more on the athletic field than go through the motions.

I am not ignorant, however, of the fact that schools like Duke, Davidson, Harvard, etc. do not sport football powerhouses. That is because a successful football program requires large recruiting classes, oogles of money, and support. Smart schools cannot find 85 4.0 kids that can also run a 4.5 40. That is not because they aren't out there. It is merely a law of averages and probability. It has nothing to do with smart people being athletically untalented.

Which brings me to Davidson's case. The school is currently more swept up in external pressure on the Admissions office to provide the basketball program with a few breaks. They believe that the basketball program is one of the school's greatest PR assets and that it should use the program to generate interest, success and money. The Admissions department and the wider faculty at Davidson have been very suspectful at loosening boundaries for academic exception, largely because of the happenings at schools like Clemson and Alabama. They refuse to allow basketball recruits to announce their decisions outside of the normal admissions calendar and rarely provide any widespread PR support of Davidson athletics outside of its quaintness ("ooh, smart people try hard in the classroom and on the court").

I think that much can be learned from both of these instances, schools like Clemson should maintain the Academic Review Board while examining character and contextual profiles to find out whether a potential recruits' academic struggles emanate from a source outside of his control. Clemson fans, however, should make more conscious efforts to realize the true beauty of the student-athlete, instead of disregarding the ideal out of cynical spite and ignorance.

Davidson should continue to remember the remarkable nature of its student-athletes and be more receptive to their needs for success while at the school. Admissions should allow the smart, honorable basketball recruits to publicly announce early, and the administration should put its full support behind the institution that attracts more attention to Davidson than anything else: Men's basketball. The school's academic reputation and standards for every one of its students will not be compromised by allowing Coach McKillop and the AD a larger budget and by creating the media support and infrastructure necessary to carry a team continually into the national spotlight and the NCAA tournament.

College athletics do not have to be minor league sports. And even if they have become minor league sports, we don't have to accept that this was a far-gone conclusion. We also don't need to be making high school seniors into prospective businessmen. At least let them enjoy the game itself for just a little bit longer. Don't take away the fun from the kids. Not yet.

UPDATE: Here are several articles written in SC papers that are addressing this issue: Post and Courier and The State.

Good Ol' Davidson

You gotta love the Davidson obsession with work...This was posted outside the only lounge in our dorm building during the Super Bowl. Let's hope that it won't be like this when Davidson makes it to the NCAA tournament.

Davidson at Arizona State

Countdown is under two hours now for the championship game of the Sleep America Classic between the Davidson Wildcats and the Arizona State Sun Devils. ASU is coached by Herb Sendek who instituted a Princeton-style offense while at N.C. State. In the past few seasons, some of Davidson's toughest games have been against teams that have slowed down the offensive flow of the game and limited the Wildcats to fewer shot attempts. Davidson will either have to go crazy on the offensive boards, create transition points off of turnovers, or raise their shooting percentage. They won't be scoring anywhere near 80 points in this game if they shoot under 40% from the field.

The Wildcats showed some fatigue during last night's game as there were stretches in the first and second halves when they allowed Ohio to work their way back into the game through turnovers and missed rebounding opportunities. Davidson can't afford to be sloppy against a team that slows the game down and limits opportunities to score. It will be interesting to see how fatigue affects this one.

Look for increased minutes from Steve Rossiter, Bryant Barr, Andrew Lovedale and Will Archambault as the Wildcats try to use their depth to counteract fatigue and (if we get the same whistle-happy refs as yesterday) foul trouble. While Coach McKillop might try some pressure defense to create turnovers in the passing lanes, don't be surprised to see the Wildcats briefly come out in zone looks after timeouts. They have been very effective in messing with set plays and keeping the offenses off guard.

Final Prediction: Davidson 70 Arizona State 62