David and Goliath

Maryland knew something about Davidson.

Three of the four years, Maryland has made an unceremonious trip to the NIT. Two years, it was dealing with the diva, John Gilchrist, and the turmoil between coach and point guard lead to an underachieving team. Last year, however, Maryland managed to string enough wins together to make the NCAA tournament, where it faced a mid-major team in Davidson.

Davidson's star player was Stephen Curry, son of Dell Curry, a former NBA player. Too short and slight to be considered by most major programs, Stephen decided to take his prodigious talent to this small school.

While Maryland won that game, it did not lead to a better season. Maryland limped to the end of the season, with loss after loss, following a familiar pattern of taking a big lead, before going cold, and losing at the end.

Davidson, on the other hand, rode the hot shooting of Stephen Curry, who seems like this generation's Reggie Miller. Give the man a little sliver of space, and he'll sink 3 pointers with ease. He's not scared to drive to the bucket either.

With so much talent already drifted to the NBA, many college players lack the kind of consistency to hit long shots. So many teams rely on a stout defense to cover those nights where they can't score that much, due to lack of superior talent.

Davidson started off challenging the original mid-major, Gonzaga, which has yet to reach the dizzying heights from ten-fifteen years ago. These days, Gonzaga struggles to get out of the second round. Davidson had the country's long win streak, at 22 games. And often, a huge win streak leads to a lot of confidence, heading into tournament time.

Although Gonzaga was the higher seed, Curry had too much for them. Most people felt, for certain, that Georgetown, with its Big East pedigree, its son of the famous coach, its Princeton-style offense, would end the Cinderella story for Davidson. Despite a huge lead, Davidson managed to come back and beat Georgetown at the end, as Georgetown whined about the fans that were more for Davidson than Georgetown.

Davidson could perhaps not wish for a better opponent that Wisconsin. Not blessed with a tremendous amount of talent, Wisconsin plays tenacious defense, and tries to keep the score down. This is the kind of team which Davidson could beat, provided Curry could get some good looks.

And, boy did he. Scoring 33 points, Davidson took a game that was touch and go for most of the first half and early into the second half, and stretched the lead to 10 points, and even close to 20 points.

They won 73-56, and now await the winner of Kansas and Villanova. Kansas has looked as dominant as it has in recent years, and many people think they have a clear road to the final four.

Is this the year of Stephen Curry? The year of Davidson? The year of the dominant mid-major thumbing their finger at the selection committee?

Curry's become the poster boy of the 2008 NCAA men's division 1 basketball tournament, and we are all merely witnesses.

(EDIT: I had made the comment from a Nike ad about Lebron James "we are all witnesses". They kept focusing on this guy in the audience, who I thought was Stephen Curry's dad, who looked awfully young. Turns it out wasn't Dell Curry at all, but one Lebron James, who had taken a break to catch this potential star of the future. True, Lebron has intimidating size and talent to match, where Curry is slight of frame--but wasn't Reggie Miller similarly slight? So I found it more amusing that it was indeed Lebron watching, and that he too, was a witness).