Wildcats still locked out, fall to NCSU 66-65

Closer. Bob McKillop's Wildcats are closer. Their 1-point loss to preseason Top 25 N.C. State did not completely transpire until the final 3.9 seconds when Gavin Grant gave the Pack a 66-65 victory with two free throws. Yet Davidson heads into the long, cold run of 18 brutal conference games with very little consolation. They now have six losses on the season and only one OOC win against a D-I opponent. The Wildcats have fallen a long way from their highly publicized romp on the outskirts of the Top 25. No one is competing with Kevin Cary and myself to get interviews anymore.

In their most recent loss to the Wolfpack, Davidson was once again led by their fantastic backcourt of Stephen Curry and Jason Richards. The two combined for 43 of Davidson's 65 points. Curry still ranks eighth in the country with 24.6 points per game, while Richards leads the nation with 8.7 assists per game.

Davidson recovered from a slow first half by shooting over 50% from three-point land in the second. Bryant Barr finished with three big trifectas, while Curry had seven, including the go-ahead shot with 43 seconds remaining in the game.

The image of this season continues to be one of an elusive puzzle piece. Although no team ever plays a perfect game, Davidson has always seemed one puzzle piece short of pulling off the big upset. Against North Carolina, they couldn't hit layups. Against WMU, Stephen Curry was taken out of the game with foul trouble. Against Duke, the team could not hit their normal percentage of free throws. Against Charlotte, Davidson could not play effective perimeter defense. Against UCLA, Davidson gave up dumb turnovers and allowed too many transition points. And against N.C. State, the entire Wildcat frontcourt was held to 11 points and 11 rebounds.

Yet, despite recognizable lapses from Davidson throughout each of these games, one can point to a specific play in each one where the opponent beat Davidson. UNC, WMU, Duke, Charlotte, UCLA and N.C. State all rose to the challenge at the end of the game and punched the Wildcats in the mouth with a gutsy play. Gavin Grant was shooting 65% from the line going into Friday. Yet, he went 8-8 and hit the game-winners with everything on the line and 3.9 seconds on the clock.

Over the last four years, Davidson has benefitted from a rising tide of college basketball where smaller schools have significantly caught up to larger programs in terms of player quality and the ability to make every game interesting. Davidson is one of several case studies of mid-majors who don't let national powerhouses push them around.

And yet, within these big games we have also seen examples of how hesitant the powers that be (major college AD's, NCAA, ESPN...) are of letting everyone feast at the table. Davidson is a great story, but they aren't supposed to really beat all those teams. Davidson is a few layups, bad fouls, and nagging injuries away from being the number 1 team in the country. A school with a gym that seats less than 6,000, a student body that worries more about homework than Stephen's autograph, and a lineup that doesn't exceed 6'8" should never be #1 in the country. So we aren't. The doors remain locked, and the ACC Store still sells its product and won't have to worry about competing with t-shirts featuring a "hopelessly outdated charcoal drawing of a cat head."

I Hate February

I hate this time of year. For the past three years, the entire month of February is nothing but easy academic assignments, preparation for spring break, warming NC weather and NCAA tournament projections that say that Davidson has a chance to make some big-time noise.

You might think that I'm being ironic, but I'm serious: I really hate this time of year. In the next two weeks, Davidson will face four teams who have a combined conference record of 22-35. Since 2000, Davidson has a record of 33-11 against The Citadel, Wofford, Western Carolina and Furman. That's pretty good, right? Well, the sad part is that seven out of those eleven losses have come in the months of February and March when Davidson sorely needed to be collecting victories.

Since the 1993-1994 season, Davidson has a conference record of 157-59, and yet they have only won 3 conference championships. The Wildcats always seem to underachieve in the conference tournament. So while some Davidson fans are thinking about Stephen Curry's player of the year honors or hotel reservations for the NCAA regional in Spokane, Washington, I'm being pulled into the "coach-speak" for once. Let's take this one game at a time.

The Wildcats travel to Cullowhee, NC tomorrow to take on the Western Carolina Catamounts. WCU is 7-8 in the conference, and is one of the few middle teams. They are not flat-out horrible, nor are they dangerously good. They are not a team that inspires incredible anticipation as ASU, CofC and UNC-G do. Yet they aren't a team that is so inept that they can't even find who they are guarding, like Chattanooga is. Western Carolina is a beatable team that has enough weapons to make these last few weeks interesting.

Although they have a two-game lead in the race for first place in the conference, Davidson cannot afford to lose more than one game or else Appalachian State will hold the tie-breaker and wrest the conference championship away from the Wildcats. Once Davidson gets to the conference tournament, they will need all they can get (including the top seed) in order to come away with the conference's automatic bid. All of the top three teams in the conference certainly has the firepower to upset Davidson, and as we have seen from season's past, anything can happen on any given day. Although this team is younger and had fewer expectations coming into the season, a Davidson rejection from the NCAA tournament this year will strike even harder than losses in past seasons.

Back in the summer of '06, I told several of my friends that this would be one of the most important seasons in recent Davidson basketball history. The Wildcats had just emerged as a familiar blip on the sport's world radar after holding tough with Ohio State, one season after making news for going undefeated in the conference season. Davidson was beginning to be as similar as Southern Illinois or Creighton to the public eye, they were on the verge of the mid-major Tipping Point.

The Tipping Point happens when a team puts together consecutive strong seasons with an effective system, incredible coaching and a new respectability along the recruiting trail. The Tipping Point is accelerated through ESPN's expert analysis, bracket mania, and distinctive characters. George Mason has Jimmy Larranaga, Gonzaga has the 'stache boy, SIU has those interesting dogs for mascots. All of these schools have been to sustain success within their conference, challenge for higher NCAA tournament seeds and attract the all-important attention of talented recruits who are looking for a place where they can be successful.

I wanted Davidson to be at the edge of the basketball kettle when it tipped this year and all of the mid-majors started to flow out. The media exposure has been enormous as players like Stephen Curry are heralded all throughout the internet and fans are now calling in asking for his autograph. Davidson has gotten votes in the Top 25 polls as more writers around the nation are willing to put faith in the small school. And Davidson is distinctive: it has a very respected coach, a great history, and incredible academics. The formula was set up to become a mid-major power; what we needed was the repetition.

Davidson could not afford to slip back into the oblivion of the underachieving Southern Conference after putting their name on the public consciousness over the past two year. The Wildcats needed to stay on the scene this year, and that they did, in a big way. The Wildcats could very well set a new record for most victories in a season. Stephen Curry is in the process of ripping open record books and making fans remember the exploits of Mike Maloy, Fred Hetzel and Dick Snyder. The community fanbase has shown up in record numbers as they are seemingly addicted to basketball again in Mecklenburg county.

All of that brings me back to why I hate this time of year. Davidson shouldn't have to sweat out Western Carolina; or Furman, Wofford, or The Citadel for that matter. The Wildcats shouldn't have to play near perfect basketball for 120 minutes over the course of three days. But that is the challenge set before them. The prize is the potential to be one of the few. The reward for overcoming these hurdles is a place in basketball history and a prominent place in the new landscape of college basketball. However, that journey has to go through Cullowhee first. So let's get this journey started. It's a great day to be a Wildcat!

BSU is Living the Dream

Throughout the past month, prognosticators have been trying to figure out the best combination of bowl outcomes to continue to put pressure on the powers that be to create a playoff system for college football. These scenarios often involved some sort of crazy blowout in the Rose or BCS title games, convincing everyone that Florida, Michigan, Ohio State and USC should have had the chance to decide it on the field. USC didn't have too much of an argument after losing to UCLA and Oregon State, while Michigan had already lost to Ohio State once and is now twice beaten on the season. Ohio State is assuredly the best team in the country and Florida gets their shot at them. Right?

Well, Boise State had a little bit to say about that last night. At the end of a remarkable OT triumph over the venerable OU Sooners who were playing with the one-time Heisman candidate Adrian Peterson, the Broncos made us question the BCS system in a whole new way. If you don't lose to anybody, how can you end the season without being the champion?

Two years ago, the similarly situated Davidson Wildcats went undefeated in their conference schedule, but did not receive a bid to the NCAA tournament after losing to UNC-Greensboro in the conference tourney. Meanwhile, many BCS schools got the opportunity to keep on playing despite losing 5 or 6 conference games and bowing out of their respective conference tournaments. The same argument made for Davidson's inclusion in the tourney could seemingly be applied to Boise State's inclusion in national title talk: undefeated teams should get to keep playing. Except for one thing: playoffs.

When Davidson entered the Southern Conference tournament two years ago, there was no question that they were the best team in the conference. They had beaten everyone in the conference. Surely they deserved the championship crown. But they entered the tourney knowing the rules of engagement: lose and go home with nothing.

For Boise State, there are no rules of engagement. Stuck in the WAC conference, they can only play the teams that schedule them. They can only beat them by so much. At the end of last night, they had beaten every team that was thrust at them, and they had done it in style, no less. But for the Broncos, the season is over and a bowl trophy and a final ranking in the Top 5 is all they get. That would be the equivalent of telling George Mason that they wouldn't get a chance to play Florida in the Final Four because everyone knows they are going to lose. The beauty of the playoff system is that, at the end of the day, only one team is left unbeaten. There is one undisputed champion.

The college football playoff argument cannot get caught up in whether or not a team is good enough to have been a national champion. Boise State wasn't good enough to beat Oklahoma. Even now, they have little calculable evidence to prove that they are better than Ohio State. The playoffs system is a matter of process more than anything else. The process of the playoffs gives the champion its legitimacy. It is not about the way it plays, or the caliber of its players, or its strength of schedule. Those might determine seeds, but at least teams have to defend their own seeding. And ultimately, you can't be undefeated and not be the champion.

At the end of the day, money might produce a champion from the SEC or Big 10, even within a playoff system. Elitism might keep the best players at the richest schools. But, money and power should be a little less insecure. They should give up their precious bowl rights and TV contracts. This country knows who to pull for, and they know how to make their voices heard. Live on Boise States and George Masons! They can't keep ignoring you for long.