Hope Springs Eternal for the Men's Program

The leaves have changed color, the clocks have been turned back, and the jackets have been taken out of the closest. It’s College Basketball Season again and hope springs eternal.

For basketball-inclined Davidsonians this time of the year has often carried with it feelings of hope and optimism. For a magnificent stretch of almost three decades Bob McKillop built and helmed a program that let fans reasonably believe that their Cats would be contending for conference championships and NCAA Tournament births annually. As long as the silver fox patrolled the sideline in Belk Arena Davidson fans knew they would have the privilege of supporting a competitive team, with a beautiful offense, that would turn a corner in January and peak in February and March. When Bob McKillop retired after an illustrious career in the summer of 2022 we all knew that replacing a legend would be hard and patience was needed. Unfortunately, replacing a legend has been hard and our patience has been needed. Matt McKillop has struggled since taking over, hardly surprising for a first-time head coach, and the program has suffered some ignominious results. Some of that has been caused by realities outside of the Head Coach's purview, Davidson fans had become spoiled by consistent success and the landscape in college sports has done nothing but shift since Matt McKillop took over. Other gripes fall much more squarely on the captain of the ship, including a stunning inability to close out games and consistent holes in the roster.

That said, McKillop the Younger remains our guy. For all the angst and complaining, Davidson is best off with a McKillop leading the school's crown athletic jewel. And at the end of the day, he's one of us, a Davidson alum who's committed damn near his entire life to this special place, and we so desperately want him to succeed. After a soft reset this summer, which saw the influx of tens of millions of dollars courtesy of the Berman and Curry families (two families with deep ties to the McKillop clan) and a wave of exciting talent (these two things not being mutually exclusive), there is a realistic and believable longterm vision that ends with us back in the promised land.

In the short term though, reasonable expectations are still required; the roster is talented but it is young and it is incomplete, as is the reality of attempting to rebuild an entire roster at a school that remembers it is an academic institution first and foremost. We would all be best off reminding ourselves that though there will be bumps along the way, this team should get a lot better as the season progresses and the underclassmen gain experience and a group of mostly newcomers learn to play together... but right now, it is much more tantalizing to spin a story that includes Sam Brown joining the upper echelon of the A10 right away, Ian Platteuw grabbing the A10 ROY by the horns, Josh Scovens carrying over his play seamlessly from the Patriot League, and Parker Friedrichsen finding his level a step down from the rigors of the ACC. Who am I to put a damper on that sanguine picture, at least the season remains nascent and the story of the season resides in it's first chapter. After all, hope springs eternal.