Only One Moment That Might Not Shine

By Will Brinson
[img=http://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l126/rwbrinso/Curryshot.jpg]
This is probably closer to what Davidson wanted on that last shot.
Wow.
First of all, it’s worth saying “thank you” to both the rosters of the Davidson Wildcats and the Kansas Jayhawks for a game that made up for an entire weekend of NCAA blowouts.
Secondly, thank you to Davidson and Stephen Curry for being the story of this tournament, especially when you consider that it’s one where we’ve made “history” with four number one seeds; I would counter that the seeding process is always inexact, so who’s really to say that the four best teams haven’t made it before. And yes, that’s just to spite Kellogg.
But the bigger issue that stands out from Kansas’ squeak-by victory that left Bill Self on his knees, obscenely relieved at finally getting to the Final Four, is: What the mess Davidson was doing at the end of that game?
I’m not sure that Bob McKillop made one egregiously horrible error the entire time Davidson was in the tournament ... until there was about 15 seconds left in that game. As your editor pointed out, it was like the Wildcats spent that timeout discussing what to eat for dinner that night, or perhaps where the team would vacation in the offseason instead of drawing up a play. Regardless of who your best player is, you want a play, not an isolation, especially when you’re staring down a double team.
And Stephen Curry is very much a special player who can create his own shot; but his 100 points in the tournament pretty much dictate that the Jayhawks were going to put two guys on him after that timeout. Meaning you either have to have a designed play to run him off of multiple screens and get him away from the double team (and he’s been dealing with two and three defenders every game all season long, trust me) or you have to use him to bait a defender away and let Richards get open instead for the three. Or, hell, let Curry drive and go for overtime. It’s not like Kansas had heavily dominated that game by any stretch of the imagination, even if they did have momentum at the time.
It doesn’t matter, because Curry handed the ball off and Richards missed a tough, albeit pretty good, look from deep. And now Davidson comes back to the Tarheel state without getting another shot at North Carolina. Bill Self gets his shot at Jayhawk lore by beating Kansas’ old coach for a chance to win a championship. Curry and Davidson, without question, will go down as the story of this year’s tournament, and while they certainly won’t feel bitter about the way they took March by storm, it might take a while to wash out the taste of that last possession.↵