More To Davidson Than Just Curry
Other Wildcats concern Kansas Jayhawks, as they meet today in regional final.
DETROIT — OK, so the entire country now knows every last little detail about Stephen Curry, the sweet-shooting guard who’s got double-digit Davidson one game away from the Final Four.
But Curry didn’t get the Wildcats this far all by himself. There’s also Jason Richards, the sublime point guard who can shoot it as well as he sets it up. There’s Andrew Lovedale, a big guy with a feathery touch. There’s Max Paulhus Gosselin, who actually thrives on setting screens. And on and on.
Lose track of any of them, and Kansas is in for a long day today, followed by an equally uncomfortable offseason.
“There’s a lot of things that concern us,” Jayhawks coach Bill Self said, shaking his head as he ran down the list. “They’re a physical team. They do a great job of setting very physical, legal screens. They do a great job defensively of not letting you go where you want to go, riding off cuts, things like that ...
He was just getting started.
“They’ve got,” Self said, summing it all up, “a lot of pieces.”
On paper, Kansas (34-3) should win Sunday’s game easily. The Jayhawks are the power in a power conference, so stocked with talent they’re bringing guys off the bench who would start at most schools. They have four players averaging in double figures and another just short, and two guys who are averaging more than six boards a game. They can play big or small and do it at a grinding halt or a playground pace.
They’re walloping opponents by almost 20 points a game — best in the nation — and their three losses were by a combined 13 points.
“We’re just doing what people expect us to do, and that’s go to the Final Four,” said Brandon Rush, who leads Kansas with 13 points. “We don’t see it as pressure. We see it as people expecting things of us. Big things.”
But Davidson (29-6) didn’t just stumble into its first regional final since 1969. The Wildcats have the nation’s longest winning streak at 25 and counting, and they beat three very good teams to get here, including Georgetown, a Final Four team last year, and Wisconsin, the Big Ten champs with the best defense in the country.
The Badgers were holding opponents to a nation-best 53.9 points a game and hadn’t allowed a single 3-pointer in the second round against Kansas State. Davidson dropped 73 on them, including 12 3s.
Granted, Curry has had a lot to do with the Wildcats’ run. The son of former NBA sharpshooter Dell Curry is averaging 34.3 points in the tournament, best since Bo Kimble of Loyola Marymount averaged 35.8 over four games in 1990. And his 103 points are second only to Glenn Robinson of Purdue (108) for a three-game span since seeding began in 1979.
He’s gotten so big — he’s not nicknamed “Prime Time” because he likes Deion Sanders — even LeBron James has joined his fan club.
“That’s the thing, they have other good players,” Russell Robinson said.
Ask the Wildcats about their success, and they repeatedly refer to their system. It’s based on patience and balance, finding the open man and working for good shots. They’re infuriatingly persistent, passing the ball back and forth, back and forth, and back and forth again if that’s what it takes to get the shot they want. That kind of grinding eventually wears on opponents, and the Wildcats know it.
