Davidson

In my bracket I picked Stanford in the Championship game despite never seeing a full Stanford game. I put Drake in the Elite 8 even though I couldn't spell Adam Emmenecker or knew that one of the Korvers played there. I let my personal feelings cloud my judgement when picking against UNC (I picked Tennessee) and picking Duke to make it to the Final Four. Currently I am in the 44.3% percentile on espn.com's bracket challenge.

In terms of basketball knowledge why do I feel smart tonight?

I picked Davidson to go the Elite Eight. I picked them to beat Gonzaga, Georgetown, and Wisconsin. The thing is I didn't even think twice about picking them to go to the Elite Eight. Why?

1. They had tournament experience from last year's close loss to Maryland.
2. They played a tough non-conference schedule (tougher than their in-state public school neighbors 133 miles northeast of Davidson), which resulted in close loses to UNC, Duke, and UCLA.
3. They had a ton of momentum going into the tournament stemming from winning 22 straight games coming into the tournament.

It is hard not to be happy when watching Davidson play in this tournament. I have thoroughly enjoyed the ability of their point guard Jason Richards who so far this tournament has 24 more assists (27 overall) than Greg Paulus had in the tournament. Also, it is hard for me not to love Andrew Lovedale's inside play. However, none of those are the main reason for the kid-like joy I get while watching this year's tournament run for Davidson. The reason is the man amongst boys in the 2008 tournament who just so happens to be the player who looks most like a 14 year old boy. That player of course is Stephen Curry and when it comes to him there is no hyperbole. When my friend called me after Curry hit one of his 6 threes, we both were almost at a lost for words to describe how great he had been playing in the game and in the tournament. Simply put he is the best player in the tournament. Now normally I get tired of reading national media fawning over and over the same player (example Tyler Hansbrough), but this time is different. This time the media is right. Read the below articles:

Davidson's Curry puts on Sweet 16 show fit for a King

Curry belongs in history books after stunning performance

Davidson's Curry scoring 40? It's out of his hands

Crazy first four days of NCAA tourney

Now we've got exciting games

Some quick highlights from those articles:

• "Davidson's Stephen Curry is Wally Szczerbiak, circa 1999." Grant Wahl
• "What did I write Friday about Davidson's Stephen Curry? Whatever it was, run it back. Print it again. The same thing happened Sunday." - Gregg Doyel
• "Curry played with the confidence of someone who has already played the game and knows its result. It must come from being the son of an NBA player, from getting into shooting contests with one of the greatest shooters of the last quarter-century -- and winning" - Gregg Doyel
• "The best player in the world was watching the best player in the NCAA tournament, and for a while, I forgot which of these guys was the best player in the world. I'm not sure LeBron James remembered, either" - Gregg Doyel

Congrats to my sister for her school's success. Congrats to everyone with a connection to Davidson. Congrats to the board of trustees for paying for the Davidson students to go the game for free. I couldn't be happier for a team not named Duke or Miami. Hopefully now national writers can write about something else besides free laundry when talking about Davidson.