The Road to the Final Four - Davidson College Athletics

By Preston Davis

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*Related Links* Wildcats' Roar The View From Press Row From Up Front Will In Turn	The Last of the Davidson Basketball Diaries March 30, 2008 “What if?” We talk of ‘what ifs’ like they could still actually happen: What if Steph would have hit that three while we were singing “Sweet Caroline?” What if Jason would have hit that final three pointer that would have sent us to the Final Four? What if we would have won and our group could be on our way to San Antonio in an RV? “Stop,” says a broken-hearted Matt Hanson, who lives despite our earlier bets. “This isn’t doing us any good.” Everyone goes quiet. Five minutes later Matt says, “What if…” We were so close. As close as one comes. Little ol’ Davidson College playing with the big boys. Stephen Curry brought the ball up court with 16 seconds left and all of us on our feet, hands in the air—momentarily removed from our absorbed faces. Seconds ago the entire Davidson section chanted, “We-Be-Lieve”—I’m pretty sure the rest of Ford Field heard us chanting “We-Be-We,” but we knew what we said and what we meant, and I like to think the boys on the floor knew too. 10 seconds left. Score 59-57, Kansas leads. Steph goes left. We hold our breath. His defender falls. A glimmer of hope burst forth from all of us. Another defender steps up to guard him. Thomas tries to set a screen. Five seconds left. Jason Richards gets partially open—he’s been struggling for most of the game; and we think this could be his moment (our moment) to leave all of that in the past, grab hold of a regional final for the first time in school history and blaze a trail to San Antonio, shaking of the cold of Detroit as we smile on into the sun of the south. Three seconds left. Steph finds Jason. He shoots. We watch. The ball bounces helplessly off the backboard. The arena goes soft for us. We don’t hear the Kansas fans. In fact, it seems most of us don’t believe it’s over. You can see it in everyone’s unwillingness to move. Like statues we go unemotional for a brief second with a collective exhale. We just gaze silently out on the scape of the court. Kansas fans and players gleefully celebrate. Don’t they know it’s not over. This can’t be over. There must be something: a call the refs are about to make, more time on the clock, something—but not this. Realization ends up overtaking disbelief. The Davidson band plays “Sweet Caroline” one last time for this season, and we all make a half-hearted attempt to sing it with our warn out voices sounding as depressed as the moment. Steph Curry is the last player from Davidson off the court. Hundreds of amazing shots from this season go through my mind. We try to find our way out of Detroit to make the 10-hour trip back home. With the detours, we get lost twice. To us, it seems like a glimpse of what hell is like. At 2:30 in the morning we stop at a gas station in Richmond, Ky., to fill up. Rain soaks into our Davidson hoodies as we make our way inside. They sag off of us like rags from three days of tortuous, fervent wear. They match our exhausted faces, empty of enthusiasm. We make our way to the Red Bulls. The clerk looks up. “Davidson!” he yells. We freeze, caught off guard. “Man! Ya’ll sure do have a great team.” he keeps on enthusiastically. “I was rooting for you to the end. That Curry player sure is something.” We all stand up a little straighter. We thank him and move to the door. We climb back in Ol’ Glory and back-seat Rob makes a joke. We all laugh, and things feel almost all right. I-75 gets back under our tires, and we watch the temperature climb slightly as the time toward daylight draws nearer. I begin to nod off in the middle of the van when I hear Matt Dellinger say with his first smile since the loss, “Man, Davidson played great this weekend.” It rattles around in my brain as my body relaxes and I dream of more ‘what ifs.’ “Man, Davidson played great this weekend.” “Davidson played great this weekend.”
	Elite Eight March 29, 2008 It never felt in doubt, and my hands still haven’t left my head from all of the amazement. The entire second half my fingers either covered my mouth or grabbed my red hair from the pure madness of the whole scene. Eight teams remain in America: eight schools, eight fan clubs, eight communities. Davidson is an Elite Eight team. Read it again: Davidson is an ELITE EIGHT TEAM. Simply, we were loose. We knew we belonged on America’s biggest stage. A loose ball fell to McKillop’s feet he picked it up, dribbled through his legs twice, flashed his million-dollar smile, and sent a chest pass back to the refs. We began the verbal procession: BOB Mah-Kill-Up-ClapClapClapClapClap… Our group sat behind Chris Alpert and Brandon “Ozone” Williams, two of Davidson’s best players since Bob McKillop took the reigns. During the dismantling of Wisconsin—especially the second half when Steph outscored the Badgers all on his lonesome—all these legends could do was shake their heads and smile. Ford Field is monstrous. It has its own zip code. Our chants that usually rattle Belk Arena felt like they could barely even be heard near the court. 60,000 people at a basketball game. Are you kidding me? 60,000 people at a Davidson basketball game. Are you kidding me x2? Even with all those numbers the place felt cavernous. That was until eight minutes left in the game when we started our anthem. Andrew Lovedale stepped to the foul line for an “and one.” We led by 15 at the time. We screamed “Sweet Caroline” at the top of our lungs. Andrew missed his free throw, but it didn’t faze us, or even the team. We were up by 15 then, and I don’t think anything could have brought us down. Probably the biggest moment in the game: Steph slowly jogs down the left side of the court. He perfected his change of pace, blitzes by Michael Flowers—touted by some as the best defender in the nation—receives a bounce pass from Jason Richards (1 of his 13 assists), gets hit as he goes to the basket, spins in the air, flouts behind the backboard, throws up the ball with english, whistle blows, basket counts, and LeBron James—sitting behind the Davidson bench—goes ‘wow.’ LeBron James likes Steph. LeBron James is a Davidson College supporter. I go ‘wow.’ Dell and Sonya Curry leave the arena while many of the Davidson fans watch the Kansas/Villanova game. Everyone stands to applaud which simply says, “thank you for your son.” During the Kansas pummeling of Villanova a Detroit high school teacher sitting in front of me keeps turning around to give me tips on what to write about, “You should talk about them being a Cinderella story.” I thank him for his astute observation. As he explains to me that Detroit is the city without consequences, he says, “We don’t even have this many people for a Lions’ game.” A new cat has taken over Detroit. Leaving the arena in the Detroit night, we, the fans, become the focus of all Detroit. We are celebrated by everyone we pass by for no more than wearing Davidson paraphernalia. The once ghost town Detroit lives, and lives to support Davidson. A Wisconsin fan asks “Hey, can you take pictures with me and pretend to kick the s**t out of me?” Another Wisconsin fan offers me $60 for my Davidson Soccer raincoat. Yet, in all this hoopla, our group of 4 answered this question on Friday 21 times: “Where is Davidson?” Instead of being annoyed with it, now, as ever, it’s a point of pride. Come Sunday night, if you don’t know where Davidson is, just ask us. We’ll hopefully tell you: “On its way to San Antonio.” Day of rest today, but there will be tons of press on Davidson. Davidson has never made it to a final four, but has gone to the elite eight twice before. I’ll tell you tomorrow how all of Davidson Nation is responding to the melee.
	On The Road March 28, 2008 “…the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"" Players: Preston Davis ’06 Dorsett Clark ’05 Matt Hanson ’05 Matt Dellinger ’04 Rob Hawk ’00 (Our chaperone) March has almost ended, but the madness remains; madness comes naturally for us now. It’s a sickness, a gift, and a pleasure. I’m no Sal Paradise and no one in our minivan ‘Ol Glory closely resembles Dean Moriarty, but we are here, a modern-day beat generation of sorts, mad for something so wonderful right here and now, racing toward Detroit—a motor to it’s brethren in Motor city. Thursday 5 pm –I’m making sure I have all the essentials: iPod with playlists including variances of “Sweet Caroline,” Davidson Sweet-16 shirts for donors (about as hard to find as snipes in the dark…the shirts that is), every Google map direction found from Davidson to Detroit, and an unbreakable spirit to ride against the night, all the way to Detroit. All of this for Davidson has been a journey; now many of us just put the foot to pedal to take a journey within a larger, more wondrous one. 6 pm – Matt Hanson and his shopping bag of cold medicine climb into my car. He coughs. “This is going to be awesome!” I agree. A 25-minute drive up I-77, a left onto I-40 East, we stare down the setting sun and then put the mile markers of NC behind us in favor of the plateau of TN. 10 pm – We ease into Knoxville to hear from Dorsett that Chapel Hill put a hurting on Washington State. Dorsett meets us at the downtown Hampton Inn adorned totally in Carolina blue. Something must be done about this. We pile into our free hotel room for at best four hours of sleep. Big Thanks to Terry Hummel ’77 for the accommodations. Friday Midnight – In Bed. 1:30 am – Wide awake. Sickly Matt maintains a persistent cough during the few hours we have available to sleep. No one sleeps, we just pretend to. I dream, gleefully, of putting a pillow over his face. You notice when you can’t sleep you only think of negative things? Goes for everyone. I watch the green indiglo of the clock tick away like gold slipping from my fingers. I don’t think of the good things: Andrew Lovedale’s offensive rebounds, Steph Curry going 8 for 10 beyond the ark, Thomas “The General” Sander—bad thumb and all—tirelessly forging ahead no matter the circumstances. I could use these wonderful thoughts. But only nagging question pop up in my mind: did I set my out-of-office message? Could Matt have taken more Tussin? 2 am – I give up on sleep and begin reading DavidsonCats.com 4 am – Out of the hotel, we consolidated in ‘Ol Glory! with the other half of our party that just arrived from Columbia: Matt Dellinger and Rob Hawk—a tandem of Davidson grads, now South Carolina law students, who have just driven four hours to get here. Despite it all, they are giddy. It’s infectious. Dellinger’s first words, “I kind of feel like I’m stalking Steph. Everything makes me think of him.” Typically I would think that weird. But at 4 am on the day of the Sweet-16, it kind of makes me excited. 6 am – Just south of Lexington, KY, the capital of the state of “unbridled spirit.” Lightening and rain pound around us. My only comfort for such a foreboding scene is the hope that Wisconsin fans are subject to something similar. My body has begun to take on that vitriolic feeling of travel without sleep. Everyone else begins to show the same tell-tale signs. 8:20 am – Arrival to Cincinnati, home of Thomas Sander. The city possesses that lunch pail, hardhat mentality, and I can see Thomas Sander’s toughness in its rugged attributes. Besides Dellinger and I, the crew sleeps in the back. We tear up I-75, through Ohio and the spine of America, where the eye can span out over flooded farmland and manufacturing America. 9:15 am – Dayton, OH. A city that looks like architects and engineers found as many beige Legos as possible, stacked them together, and proclaimed Dayton a city. 10:08 am – First signs for Detriot. 132 miles! Dellinger says, “you know if we take a right up here we can go toward Akron…Steph was born there.” I look at him but don’t respond. 10:30 am – Hanson begins to cough again. It’s official, he’s on his last leg. Rob Hawk has yet to say one word. 11:20 am – We hit mile marker 190 and everything goes snow white and stays that way for the rest of the trip. I think, “Isn’t March almost over?” 11:30 am – We circumvent the edges of Toledo. In unison we proclaim: “HOLY TOLEDO!” 50 miles to Detroit. I could even hear Rob Hawk. With everyone involved it feels like a road trip again. Noon:30 – We pull into downtown Detroit. Everyone goes hush. Looking at the cityscape, the word barren comes to mind. It’s been 19 hours since Matt and I left Davidson. We look like zombies, but we fit right in. Detroit looks like a ghost town with vandals. But there’s life here yet. You can sense it beneath its ice-covered surface. We find the Detroit Beer Company where all of Davidson’s alumni have convened. We watch our team on Sports Center, catch up with people we haven’t seen in years and Davidson College Athletic Director Jim Murphy promises us over 60,000 people in attendance at Ford Field tonight—the largest crowd in NCAA history. Somewhere in middle America 7 buses carrying 400 Davidson students rush our way. We can’t be bothered with badgers now. Davidson red and black brought this nation to life last weekend. And we plan on doing it again, even if we have to bring life from a ghost town. Game time 7:10
	Come one, Come All March 27, 2008 The CBS Early Show made it to town, and with them a blurred understanding of who or what is actually causing all the raucous: outside media attention or our boys on the hardwood? It’s obvious the ‘Cats are the catalyst, but all the recognition makes for quite the hullaballoo. For Davidsonians, it’s like the circus just wheeled in—no elephants, just cameras and CBS Weather Anchor Dave Price with his production entourage. They fawn over us. We fawn right back. I suppose when good news is in the air, we all become sycophants to a degree. Staring at 6:30 this morning the Alvarez College Union became the place to be. Between the Early Show’s main story on the evolution of wedding cakes, the CBS studio shot to us to provide the nation’s weather report. “Where’d all these people come from?” one soccer mom says to another soccer mom. Doesn’t she know? When the circus comes to town, everyone comes to town. Scan the crowd. The parents and kids are back. The pep band plays the chorus of Sweet Caroline over and over; We scream it back at them, “SO GOOD! SO GOOD!” There’s a portly 20-something, shirtless, painted red, wearing a whiskered cat nose, tail dangling and some sort of domestic animal floppy ears—he looks like he escaped off the Island of Dr. Moreau. Suits and slobs intermingle to get a glimpse of Dave Price, everyone’s new best friend. We all politely jostle for better position to see and be seen on national television. Isn’t it funny that when a camera of consequence enters a room all bets are off and most all faculties of reason leave the mind? With our sheer numbers (400+) and our fervent screaming, Davidson, a gem of higher education in the south with its 23 Rhode Scholars, probably looked like a gaggle of maniacs on TV this morning. Ain’t it grand? But really, most of the time we grinned at the spectacle, made small talk and ate our Krispy Kreme. We watched Dave shoot basketball (he missed a lot); We watched him try to talk about Davidson basketball (he mispronounced Stephen’s name); We watched him play a pep band horn (children covered their ears). Despite all of that, we loved him every minute, and once the red light flickered on: SHOWTIME! Dave led the chant and we fell right in. LET’S GO CATS!!!... and on and on. The TV cameras are nice, and we’re excited about them. But I don’t think focus has been lost. It’s still about our boys. And they in turn helped bring everything under the Davidson bar and diamond into the nation’s view. We know that all of this is a finite thing whether we go to finals or lose tomorrow. We know come middle of next week CBS could easily be in someone else’s student union while we shake our heads, saying, “would you look at these maniacs.” But for now we’ll take it all in. It’s all icing on the cake, wedding or not. It’s sweet and so good, so good. Most likely I’m on the road now, somewhere between Davidson to Knoxville or Knoxville to Detroit with my 4 compatriots. When the sun wakes up tomorrow, I hope I will have beaten it to 8 mile. I’ll let you know how it goes.
	Here and Now March 26, 2008 I was 9 years old and the Davidson College soccer team was tied with San Diego in the final four of the NCAA tournament. 21 Educated Feet the NY Times proclaimed of Davidson’s team. The final four, played right here in Davidson, brought the town and area to a level of excitement that even a 9 year old could recognize as special. Last year, when I graduated from Davidson after playing soccer for four years, I wondered if I would ever see Davidson get to the same sporting success, in any sport. I was hopeful yet dubious. Call it a mark of the human condition. Davidson Basketball Coach Bob McKillop says when you walk on the Davidson campus you are transformed into a dreamer. I walk this campus everyday. Yep, still here. Took a job raising money for athletics here in the town that time forgot. I suppose now is a good time to tell you that I grew up in Mooresville. I’ve moved a total of 5 baby steps in my life. Some might call it debilitating, I call it a path toward conquest. But that’s neither here, nor there. I tell you though, McKillop’s right. I’m still here, but I’m a dreamer too. And Davidosn dreamers have never been more alive than right now. Davidson Fans around Charlotte and the nation, I wish you could see the campus right now with it’s romantics and it’s “head-in-the-clouders” everywhere, because they can and are justified in doing so. You can watch the campus and its community on TV or read about it in almost any publication in North America, but nothing substitutes the actual walking on this campus right here and right now. The school store can’t stop selling red and black or anything that barley resembles Davidson Basketball—I have no doubt that America’s economy will see a bump do to the sell of Wildcat Sweet 16 t-shirts alone (I’m holding out for the Final Four ones…); satellite vans line half the curbs around campus, and reporters hang around the College Union to get a peak at “quirky” Davidson and what makes it tick; people already smile a lot in Davidson, but now it’s ridiculous—it’s like walking through Pleasantville before Toby McGuire showed up. But it’s not the glitz, glamour, and publicity of Davidson College that you need to see—though that doesn’t hurt. I have to admit it is damn cool to see the nation enveloped in Davidson fever. I’m getting calls from people I haven’t talked to since camp at age 12. And, no, I cannot get you tickets for the game. Of the glitz, at the moment my favorite comes from Kyle Whellingston (ESPN analyst), who has changed his personal news page from “Mid-Majority” to “Cat-Majority”—the caricatures of J-Rich and STEFF-in are priceless. Cat-Majority… What do you think? Too presumptuous to call the ‘Cats: America’s Team. Yeah, maybe a bit cavalier. Here’s really what needs to be seen: the sharing of a great story. A story of hope—a Cinderella story at it’s best. I know I am biased, but if you were going to have a Cinderella, wouldn’t you want it to be Davidson College—a 1700 student body where the basketball players have the same academic requirements as every other Joe on campus, a place where the college and community are almost inseparable, a place where the Board of Trustees made the decision to pay the expenses of every student who can make it to the Sweet 16. No, really. I’m serious. The Davidson College Trustees will foot the bill for any student who wants to go to Detroit. What do you say to something like that? Really. I’m speechless. All this is what you would have seen on campus today as the team rolled out of Baker Sports Complex at 6 pm on their way to Charlotte Douglas as they set out to the Motor City. A mix of everything and everyone was there to see ‘em off: faculty, staff, cameras, cheerleaders, the Football team with helmets in hands, Davidson College sports clothing that had not seen daylight sense the early 80’s, McKillop’s toilet papered house 100 yards off, parents, and 9 year olds with smiles on their faces because they know they are a part of something special. We waved them off, just thinking of joining them on Friday. Each day during the rest of Davidson’s run, I’ll post a blog. Tomorrow I’ll be gearing up for the all-night pilgrimage from Davidson to Detroit via a minivan filled with 5 alumni. Please, may I have your prayers.