Some have coined Friday’s Sweet 16 matchup between Davidson and Wisconsin, “David(son) vs. Goliath,” but the UW men’s basketball team has spent the week preparing for a team that hardly resembles a small, weak team that on paper has no chance to slay the Badgers.
Davidson might be a small school—its enrollment barely exceeds 1,700—but it is an academic powerhouse and this year its basketball team is anything but a Cinderella.
“We realize that (Davidson) is a good team,” senior forward Brian Butch said. “You know, people look at the seeds and make a big deal about it. But for us, they’ve beaten two great teams to get where they’re at now.”
The Wildcats’ wins over Gonzaga and Georgetown last weekend were two of the biggest wins of the season for Davidson, a main reason why its 22-game win streak entering the tournament only resulted in a No. 10 seed.
Beating good teams is something Davidson had struggled to do during the regular season, but scheduling good teams was not the problem. The Wildcats lost to North Carolina by four, Duke by six and UCLA by 12 earlier in the year but never got the big resumé win they needed. Now they have, and the UW players say they see a lot of similarities between their team and the team they are favored to beat Friday.
“They’re pretty similar to us where, you know, they’ve got a lot of role players that do a great job and really look to carry the ball in positions to score, but yet they make plays themselves too,” Butch said.
The similarities between Davidson and Wisconsin have been a major topic of discussion this week. The major difference on paper is the schedules. While the Wildcats were narrowly losing to top teams, the Badgers were narrowly beating top teams like Texas and Indiana. But now Davidson has their big wins, and Friday’s game will be played on a neutral court where records and previous results will be thrown out.
It’s not “David vs. Goliath” for the Badgers.
“That is an awesome team,” senior guard Michael Flowers said. “I was watching the game and luckily we weren’t Georgetown, so I was able to be in awe of their talent and their coach and just see them come back and handle what Georgetown threw at them.”
It’s a good thing Flowers was paying attention, because Friday he will have the privilege of guarding arguably the most underrated guard in the country, Davidson’s sophomore Stephen Curry. Curry is averaging 35 points in two tournament games and 25 points per game this season. Fifty-one of his 70 tournament points have come in the second half.
“He’s going to get his points, and all my life my mom told me that people are going to score on you and whatnot, but you just have to make them work for it,” Flowers said. “At the end of the game, no matter if he has eight points or 12 or 34, I will want him to say that he had to work for every point he got.”
Flowers is no stranger to guarding players who can score. He has drawn the opposing team’s top scoring guard in almost every game since he was a sophomore, and even in his freshman year, head coach Bo Ryan used Flowers’ defensive capabilities off the bench fairly often.
“I’ve been preparing for this game against Michigan State, against, you know, Shannon Brown and Maurice Ager,” Flowers said. “Against Illinois’ Luther Head, Deron Williams and Dee Brown. I’ve been preparing for this game, playing against Drew Neitzel and Eric Gordon. Hopefully I can take my lessons learned playing those great players and try to remember what I did against those to help me try to contain Curry.”
Friday night’s game tips off at 6:10 p.m. on CBS.
