Gonzaga faces team that knocked it out of 2008 NCAAs
SEATTLE — Ask Matt Bouldin about Gonzaga’s only previous meeting with Davidson, and his eyes get as big as basketballs.
Stephen Curry was that amazing.
“He was hot out of his mind!” Bouldin, the leading scorer for No. 21 Gonzaga, said Friday of his former roommate on the U.S. team in the 2007 Under-19 World Championships.
Twenty-one months ago, Davidson met Gonzaga to begin the NCAA Tournament.
And the nation met Curry.
The sharpshooter made 8 of 10 3-pointers and scored 30 of his 40 points in the second half, wowing the Bulldogs and the country. Curry even made a left-handed bank shot while twice rallying his team from 11-point deficits.
Davidson’s 82-76 win was its first NCAA Tournament victory since 1969. It started a run that came within a missed 3-pointer of the 2008 Final Four.
The three wins in that tournament remain Davidson’s only ones in its last 65 games against a ranked team dating to 1974, entering today’s return game against Gonzaga, the Bulldogs’ annual appearance in Seattle.
“It was like an opening night, a star performance on Broadway,” Davidson coach Bob McKillop said after that game. “And he was the star.”
Curry’s spice spawned made-for-TV events that got Davidson a national presence — and got Curry closer to the real Broadway. The Wildcats played at New York’s Madison Square Garden. They played in fancy Conseco Fieldhouse, home of the NBA’s Indiana Pacers, against Purdue. They were enjoying a heyday that recalled the 1960s teams coached by Lefty Driesell.
Then, faster than Curry became a star and Davidson became mid-major darlings, he was gone. Off to the NBA early, after three years, as the seventh overall pick of the Golden State Warriors last summer.
The four others who started with Curry that wondrous March afternoon in Raleigh, N.C., against Gonzaga are also gone.
These Wildcats are 2-6.
The Zags who remain are disappointed Curry is not here for this “rematch,” which came together about the time Curry was drafted early last summer.
“It would certainly be quite the spectacle if he was here,” Zags coach Mark Few said before Friday evening’s practice at KeyAren.
The only three players left for Davidson from that first game with Gonzaga are seniors Will Archambault, currently its second-leading scorer at 12 points per game, fellow starting forward Steve Rossiter and reserve Bryant Barr.
