Interview with Jason Richards

The Davidsonian recently sat down with Wildcat point guard Jason Richards. Richards talked about this year's expectations, the team's media attention and leading the nation in assists.

The Davidsonian: This team has had more media coverage this year than at any time in the last several decades. Do you have any particular approach to handling all of these interviews and press conferences?

Jason Richards: We actually had a media specialist come in at the beginning of the year to help us handle the pressure and give us tips on how to address them. I think it was really helpful for a lot of our guys who had never experienced that. Going in, Coach McKillop knew that we would have a lot of coverage this year. It’s been great for the program and the school as a whole.

D: Has there been any type of question that has gotten on your nerves the most this year?

JR: They always ask me why I did this or that. And it’s kind of hard to answer those questions sometimes. They also try to get me to only talk about myself and my own performance, but we all want to put it back on the team and talk about our group as a whole. That’s what Davidson is about.

D: I remember some times when they would ask you and Thomas Sander to specifically talk about Stephen Curry. Did that ever get on your nerves?

JR: No. None of us care who gets the media attention as long as we’re winning. Steph is a great player so of course he’ll get some attention. But we love him and we always give him a hard time in the locker room about it.

D: What do you think about these TV announcers who call you “deceptively quick?”

JR: Well, that’s their interpretation of it. I’m not going to tell them how to call the game. I guess it’s kind of a bonus. I’m obviously not the quickest guy out there when we’re playing these teams with really quick guards. But I really don’t care what they say because I’m only worried about how I’m playing.

D: You guys went to Coach before the year and said you wanted to take on this tough schedule. Do you feel like it’s backfired at all? Do you feel comfortable where you sit now?

JR: I mean we’re not comfortable per se because you go into every game wanting to win. But as you say, we went to Coach and we told him that if we were going to be the best, we had to play against the best. We went up against UNC, Duke and UCLA and we played them all tough. We showed the nation what we’re capable of. But we also got exposed in some places. That’s something that Coach always talks about: learning from your weaknesses. So that’s great. We’re heading into conference now and I think this experience will really help us down the road. Ultimately, it’s all about who’s playing the best basketball in March.

D: Two years ago, you guys lost some really tough out-of-conference games over the break and then you stumbled a bit when you reentered conference play and finished 10-5. How do you avoid that trap this year?

JR: Well it’s hard to say what that trap really is. We know that every game in the SoCon is going to be tough. We can’t look past anyone. The Citadel game on Thursday is a big game for us because we really want to snap this three-game losing streak. But Christmas is a time where we don’t have class, we can focus on basketball and I think we’ll come out of it ready to go.

D: A lot of people talked about how crazy the students were at the Bobcats Arena this year to the point that it was almost a home away from home. Although they are very different, how would you compare playing in Belk Arena and Bobcats Arena?

JR: It’s really different. Belk is a special place. It holds, what, 6,000? It’s small and it’s really loud in there with the fans and that really helps us. Playing at Bobcats Arena was an unbelievable experience. Obviously our fan turnout really helped us. But there were still a lot of Duke and UNC people there, so we’re looking forward to playing at Belk where it’s all Davidson red. We are really excited about some great home conference games in Belk and I think that the students are excited too.

D: I notice that after a whistle or a foul, you will crack a smile and have a nice little conversation with the referee. What kind of things are you telling him?

JR: I never really say anything in particular, but you need to talk to the refs throughout the game. You get a sense of how they’re going to ref the game. It’s fun to joke around every once in a while, but you do have to be careful about what you say.

D: What’s the craziest thing that you’ve ever heard a fan yell at you or the team?

JR: You try to block it all out but you do hear a lot of stuff on the court. We hear all the stuff about Steph: “go back to high school,” “it’s past your bedtime.” When I was a junior, I heard some stuff about my sister being better than me, since she was a McDonalds All-American. But I’d say that my favorite was when people chanted “daddy’s boy” to Matt McKillop.

D: Is there any road venue that you particularly like playing in around the Southern Conference?

JR: Well they’re all really great and exciting places to play. But I think that the College of Charleston has one of the best atmospheres. They pack that gym and the students are right on top of you. So I always get pumped about playing there.

D: You went from being a backup with little playing time during your freshman year to now being the nation’s leader in assists. You’ve been called one of the best point guards in the country. Talk about that journey.

JR: I’ve shocked myself. Two years ago, I wouldn’t have thought that it would have turned out like this. But Kenny Grant taught me a lot. He really taught me the system and helped me through my ups and downs. As far as what I’ve accomplished this year, I have to put it all on my teammates and our coaching staff. They have confidence in me and have helped me out through the tough times. But it’s unbelievable. I’m just going keep doing what I’m doing. I’m having fun with this, and that’s really the point.

It's been a great four years to be a Wildcat

This article was published in the 10/12 edition of the Davidsonian. That issue was my last as editor. I had been writing for the Davidsonian since January of my freshman year.

I have been dreading this article ever since I was selected to be a sports editor two years ago. I knew that eventually I would have to write my last column for The Davidsonian, but somehow the actual assignment just snuck up on me like Exit 30 flying up on I-77.

In the past, sports editors’ last columns have included lists of things that Davidson needs to change, lists of people to thank or even apologies to all of the teams and people whom they didn’t cover adequately.

In that light, I will quickly say thank you to every coach and every player who has taken time out of his or her busy schedules to give us a quotation or two for an article. Thank you to all of the people at Sports Information who have given us pictures on the fly and kept us updated on late Tuesday night games. Thank you to all of the writers who have put up with me over the years. Thank you to all of the editors here at The Davidsonian, especially Suzie and Patrick. You guys have had to hear me talk about the immense importance of sports for too long now. Finally, I’d like to thank everyone who has ever enjoyed reading the articles in the sports section over the years. Your encouragement and feedback has been invaluable to me.

So here’s to the last four years of sports at Davidson. When our senior class walks across the stage in May 2008, it may be one of the most successful athletic classes in decades. The trio of seniors from the women’s soccer team finished as the all-time winningest class in the program’s history. The football team put together consecutive winning seasons for just the second time this decade. Athletes from the cross country, track and swimming teams have etched their names in the record books for years to come. If the men’s and women’s basketball teams continue their winning ways in the Southern Conference this year, both groups of seniors could smash through records both for individual and team performances.

But when all of us are long gone, and the players, coaches, uniforms and facilities morph into something that we hardly recognize, and the records are broken by Davidson athletes with more talent than we’d ever thought possible, we will still have our memories. We will still have those stories of what it was like from the fall of 2004 until the spring of 2008. Here are a few of the stories that I will always remember from my time here.

During my four years here, I have never won an intramural game. During my freshman year, our flickerball team was the only one to go winless. Later that year, I broke my ankle in just the second game of the intramural volleyball season. The team went on to win every game without me. During my sophomore and junior years, I coached women’s flickerball teams that struggled when I showed up to coach (once again, they were a collective 4-0 when I couldn’t make it).

Last winter, my B-league intramural basketball team did not win when I showed to play. In the first round of the playoffs, we trailed 20-1 at halftime, but went on a 20-2 run while I sat on the sideline. I came back into the game in the final minute, and we missed the game-winning shot. The only thing that I could barely claim as victory came this year in open-league flickerball when our opponent didn’t have enough people to field a team.

In the last four years, I have traveled with the men’s basketball team around the eastern seaboard. I have watched the team win close games, lose close games and evolve into the high-powered program that we all know and love today.

However, the best part about these trips wasn’t just the games; it was the experience and the stories. After Davidson lost in the semifinals of the Southern Conference tournament in 2005, I joined six random Davidson students in a barbeque spot in downtown Chattanooga and drowned my sorrow with soda. (We were all underage at the time.)

The next year, I drove Jackie Pitzer and Joseph B. Adams through the farms of Ohio en route to the site of Davidson’s NCAA tournament game. I still don’t really know how Davidson’s mail lady, the head of the College Republicans and the sports editor all ended up in the same car.

Immediately after crossing the state’s border, a cop appeared and flagged us down for speeding. Right when it seemed that we would get off with a warning, I mentioned that we were going to cheer for Davidson in the NCAA tournament. He looked up and tersely said, “Ohio State is going to kill you guys. Here’s a ticket.”

I have watched Davidson football tie an NCAA record with three safeties in a game. I have watched the men’s soccer team force a tie with under five seconds remaining in a game. I have watched the women’s soccer team knock off the SEC in one weekend. I have watched the women’s basketball team advance to the postseason for the first time ever, and I’ve seen more game-winning shots from the men’s basketball team than I can count on my hands. I have sat next to Michael Wilbon at the NCAA Tournament and told him where Davidson is. I have asked Tyler Hansbrough whether Davidson students had anything to do with him not scoring a field goal in the second half of the Nov. 14 game.

Most importantly, I have been able to spend the last four years with some great friends getting to do what I love.

Thank you.

'Cats emerged as national power in 1960's

When Davidson College first started playing basketball, the games were nothing more than friendly matches between classes of Davidson men…a glorified B-league, one might say. That all changed forever in 1907 when a student named James Wendell Rhea decided to put Davidson's name on the line and form a traveling basketball team that would compete against other schools. In the school's first season, a team of six won its first ever game against Guilford College before losing to Wake Forest and Duke. Davidson basketball was born.

For many years, Davidson basketball competed outside of what we now understand to be the general structures of college basketball. The NCAA had only been formed in 1906, and there was no tournament until 1939. Davidson didn't join the Southern Conference until 1936 when the College was invited to join the likes of Clemson, North Carolina, Duke, Maryland and South Carolina. Those teams would not split off to form the ACC until 1953.

Until the late 1930's, Davidson basketball was relatively unheralded. The team mostly played against regional YMCA squads. On the other hand, Davidson football seemed to have been getting all sorts of attention, with stadium improvements and scholarship fundraising to compete with the larger schools in the Southeast. In fact, the "Wildcat" nickname came after a 1917 football game against Georgia Tech.

In 1949, George "Buddy" Cheek put Davidson on the national map when he became the first Wildcat basketball All-American. In his three years at Davidson, Cheek led the Wildcats to a record of 54-25. Three years later, in 1952, Hobby Cobb arrived on Davidson's campus. During four years, he scored 1,424 points and grabbed 836 rebounds. Cobb has since been inducted into the Davidson Hall of Fame and his retired #21 jersey hangs from the rafters. Cobb is still a season ticket holder and tries to attend every Davidson basketball game, home or away.

Although Davidson experienced some team success in the days of Cheek and Cobb, the sport of basketball was still just an athletic exercise meant to stimulate the bodies and minds of the College's student-athletes and supporters. Davidson basketball was not a brand; it was not a reason to know about a small liberal arts school in North Carolina. In 1960, that changed forever.

In the spring of that year, the Davidson administration hired a former Duke basketball player who had never been the head coach of a college basketball program. His name was Charles "Lefty" Driesell. Over the course of his career, Driesell tallied 786 wins. He was inducted into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame in 2007.

When Driesell came to Davidson, he didn't see the restrictions of a small student body. He refused to believe in an attitude of small-time athletics. During his nine-year tenure with the Wildcats, Driesell went to the NCAA Tournament three times and recruited three All-Americans and a number-one NBA draft pick.

Fred Hetzel and Dick Snyder were the first two Davidson stars of the Driesell era. Hetzel ranked eighth in the country in scoring during his senior year and Snyder ranked 14th nationally the next year. Between 1963 and 1966, Hetzel and Snyder helped lead Davidson to national rankings in the AP and UPI polls, as Davidson finished sixth in the nation in 1965. Both Hetzel and Snyder went on to prestigious NBA careers and were inducted into the Davidson Hall of Fame.

The real story of Lefty Driesell was not necessarily what he accomplished as a coach, but how he accomplished it. Although he had a very limited recruiting budget, Driesell knew that he had to travel outside of the Southeast to find some of the nation's best basketball players. He also knew that image was everything. Snyder remembered that Driesell would drive to regional airports around the country and get the parents of his recruits to pick him up, making the families believe that he had the budget to fly around the country. Driesell's recruiting creativity was unmatched even in his own time.

Back in Davidson, Driesell was able to schedule more and more home games at the Charlotte Coliseum for maximum exposure. Driesell apparently would sneak into the coliseum and put up Davidson signs around the concourse entrances to make the Coliseum look like Davidson's home arena. Driesell even opened a pizza parlor on Main St. and encouraged students and fans to mingle with him after games.

Driesell wanted to make Davidson a national powerhouse in college basketball. The 1964-65 Sports Illustrated College Basketball preview issue recognized his merit by selecting Davidson as their preseason number 1 pick. By the middle of the 1960's, Davidson basketball was a national brand, and its stock had nowhere to go but up.

***This is the second piece in a four-part Davidsonian series on the 100th anniversary of Davidson basketball.

2007 Men's Basketball: The Culmination of a 100-Year Story

As a sports writer, I have to find and write stories every week. It is a task that I mostly love and always find challenging. I have found that good stories can come in all shapes and forms, but the great ones can sometimes be hard to find until they land in your lap.

I have spent the last four years covering Davidson basketball and writing stories about winning streaks, the sons of NBA greats, coaching philosophies and the Davidson fan experience. I have had the privilege of watching the Wildcats win conference titles on national television, interviewing the players and coaches in press conferences and seeing how Davidson men's basketball has become a national story.

But this column isn't supposed to be about my story. It's supposed to be about you. What role does Davidson basketball play in your college story? Did you sing and help make "Sweet Caroline" the college anthem last year? Where were you when Davidson demolished Big 12 power Missouri in Belk Arena?

Many in the national basketball media are pointing to Davidson as having the potential to be this year's best college basketball story. They look at our academic values, on-the-court accomplishments and small size and label Davidson men's basketball as a great success story. They will use mediums like Sports Illustrated and ESPN.com to spread their interpretations of Davidson's story to the rest of the nation.

Davidson's players will play their own role in this story. Preseason expectations are high, and the players have to make their paper attributes take life on the basketball court. This story could feel very different if the Wildcats struggle in out-of-conference games and get upset in the Southern Conference tournament in March. It could also exceed our wildest dreams if Davidson lands a high seed in the NCAA Tournament and knocks off a team from a power conference.

But again, this story still reside with you. You don't have to wait on us media types to give expression to the plots taking place on the court and in the stands. Add your own layers to this larger narrative. Take a road trip with your friends to a road game when you have a huge test the next day. It really is true that you will remember the experience more than the material from your test. Hold a listening party in your room and take in the eccentricities of Davidson's venerable radio announcer John Kilgo. Show up early to games...be that fanatic.

But like all good stories, the story of the 2007-2008 men's basketball season is not complete without a little background exposition. This year marks the 100th anniversary of Davidson basketball, and the athletic department plans to hold a reunion event to welcome back some from the legends of the program's storied history. With the presence of players like Stephen Curry and Jason Richards and a community's aspirations for NCAA Tournament glory, it seems like a great year to do some reflecting on how Davidson basketball became such a big deal.

Names like Snyder, Hetzel, Gerdy, Cobb and Rucker might look familiar to frequent visitors of Belk Arena. Those are the names on the retired jerseys hanging from the rafters. But most of us look at those dates under the names and realize that we don't know the first thing about Davidson basketball in the 1940's or 1960's or even 1980's and 1990's.

I have decided to devote the next four issues of The Davidsonian sports section, leading up to the D-I opener against North Carolina, to enriching our collective understanding of the story of Davidson basketball. From the days of intramural competition through the glory years of national prominence and the subsequent years of relative insignificance, Davidson basketball has come a long way.

I urge you to expose yourself to a brief piece of our rich history by engaging the larger story of Davidson basketball. But don't forget to take the opportunity to write your own story this year. There's a chance that it could just as glorious as we all imagine.

This is the first piece of a four-part Davidsonian series on the 100th anniversary of Davidson basketball.

The Davidsonian is back

The Davidsonian Online is finally back in full swing. Head over to the student newspaper website for sports articles about the weekend's sports events, the new SID, the current state of men's basketball, and the precedent of Appalachian State.

Under a Week and Counting!

We have less than one week before one of the biggest games left in this conference season: Wildcats-Cougars II. Be sure to follow all of the pre-game smack talk on the message boards (ours, theirs), blogs (Davidson, CofC), and of course, The Davidsonian.

To find all of my unique content for the Davidsonian, simply click here.

Finally, a reminder about those CofC videos that make Davidson look so incredible. You can find them here.

I Can Be Me

I apologize for the recent lapse in posting, I really do. Citing the old excuses about how much work Davidson students have really gets old after a while when you realize that everyone has a ton of work to do, and I'm pretty darn lucky that a lot of my work revolves around sports. A lot of people in this world have to suffer through endless meetings about efficiency and productivity while trying to juggle the text messages about broken pipes, kids needing rides from day care, and food that needs to be acquired for the night's dinner.

As of right now, all that I have to worry about is sports. That is, excepting the fact that I have four classes, but even one of them is about sports and the other one is a speech class, so everything is looking good.

In posts that precede and will follow this entry, you will see all kinds of analysis about Davidson basketball and the wider range of SoCon and maybe ACC hoops. You will get your insider look at some of my thoughts on the Davidson Athletic program and be kept up-to-date during games in the future. For a brief second, however, I would like for you to take a quick step back and ponder the role that sports have in your life.

I think that most people that read this blog would share my sympathies that sometimes we feel dirty about our love for sports. We devote a lot of time and energy to following games and reading box scores, and every once in a while, something happens that makes us feel guilty. We experience a significant emotional event outside of the sports realm, and we are left feeling guilty. Sports feel superficial and fake entertainment. We usually rationalize our way out of these thoughts and return to our previous states, but sometimes the thoughts linger nonetheless.

As you might have guessed, I recently experienced a situation that made me take a hard look at all of the time that I devote to sports writing. A Davidson tennis player, Jay Chitty, died in a plane crash at the end of last December. Most Davidson students did not know Jay and felt sad in the same way that you feel sad when a friend tells you that their grandparent died. You feel bad for the friend, but don't really feel bad that the person died.

I found that Jay's passing left a lot of questions in my mind. He was a college student, who like every other college student, had his vices and his virtues. Jay had a great heart and he always challenged everyone to look outside of the little box that they had created around themselves. But Jay also lost sight of things sometimes. He sometimes spent just too much time watching TV and not doing homework. Above all else, he was radically committed to sports and the UNC Tar Heels.

During his memorial service, his roommate, Wilson McCrory, said that you can't talk about Jay Chitty without talking about sports. As soon as he said that, I wondered whether that was a good thing. I wondered if a love for sports was a legitimate summation of someone's relationship with someone else. Ultimately, I wondered if people would have thought the same thing about myself.

After wrestling with these questions for a long time, I realized that I would never be able to prove a right or wrong answer to myself. These sorts of things don't have final answers. I did, however, contemplate a particular love for sports. I realized that you can outwardly spend a lot of time in and around sports and have it be a bad thing. It can blur your interactions with your friends and family; it can cause you to become a talking head that is a PTI-wannabe; it can boil everything down to a box score; it is a force, like so many others, that can make us so cynical that we don't enjoy anything anymore.

I realized that I don't have to be that way. I can be myself and still write a blog. This doesn't have to be Deadspin or Tony Kornheiser or (fill-in-the-blank). Jay Chitty really loved sports. More than that, he really loved sharing sports with the people around him. I hope that one day, I might be remembered as someone who tried to approximate that.

To read Wilson's article in this week's Davidsonian, navigate to the new Davidsonian website.