The spring before I arrived at Davidson, I watched our men’s basketball team suffer a heartbreaking loss at the hands of Michigan State in the first round of the 2022 NCAA tournament. I took this loss with some reserved optimism. I hoped that I would be able to see at least one tournament appearance in my four upcoming years at Davidson. My junior year has now passed and no signs point toward the team achieving a tournament appearance, barring a miracle conference title run. Don’t get me wrong, I’m just as excited as the next guy for the multi-million dollar NIL package that Stephen Curry ‘10 and new program General Manager Austin Buntz will bring in. However, I can’t help but notice the immense apathy among the student body for our men’s basketball team. I understand that our new eight-figure fund will keep the team’s staff around for at least another year. However, the current coaching staff has done very little to show me that they should stick around. 

Following Bob McKillop’s retirement in 2022, the team has regressed substantially. Under Bob McKillop, Davidson’s average standing in KenPom, a predictive basketball metric, was 69th out of 364 teams. In the past three years under Matt McKillop, the team sits at 137th after our 146th place finish this year. 146th place in KenPom puts us behind programs like Seattle University, Cal State Northridge, Illinois State, UNC Greensboro and the lowly NC State Wolfpack. This is quite the fall from grace for a program where a top 60 finish was quite common. Since Matt McKillop’s promotion to head coach, the Wildcats have lost thirteen games where they have been leading at halftime. Moreover, the Wildcats are 5-17 in games decided by one possession since the 2022-23 season. This pattern is a clear example of poor late-game management from the coaching staff. In a time when the Atlantic 10 feels more top heavy, the days of receiving an at-large bid in the Big Dance feel further away than ever. This means Davidson’s only way to get to the NCAA tournament is through winning the A-10 conference, a feat that currently seems far-fetched.

With the dawn of this new era of Davidson basketball, I’m hoping there can be some sort of movement among the student body to care about our team again. It’s disappointing to see a mostly-empty Belk Arena during a Saturday noon tipoff. But frankly, how can you blame the students when there has been very little to look forward to regarding the men’s basketball program? When the performance on the court isn’t what students expect, the majority have no desire to show up. It feels like we’ve lost our way as a program and nobody wants to take accountability.

 Students won’t care about the team if they are constantly being let down by poor performances from the squad on top of the poor coaching. I want a reason to care about Davidson basketball, a feeling I am sure many share. Some of my most influential memories are directly related to college basketball. I want Davidson to be a part of those memories. Whether it was being up by 17 against La Salle only to lose by three or losing to Saint Louis on a Robbie Avila buzzer beater, all the team has given me is bad memories. Hearing stories from my friends in the grades above me about their trips to Greenville, South Carolina to watch Davidson play Michigan State in the 2022 tournament gives me a false sense of nostalgia for a time that I wasn’t even around to experience. I can only hope for some sort of positive movement or revitalization surrounding the men’s basketball team that could unite the campus and bring the hype back.

Thanks to the size of the College and our collective priorities, Davidson does close-knit better than any other “big” schools. We rally together in our classes, communal endeavors, clubs, fraternities, sororities and eating houses. It saddens me that we cannot rally together around our basketball program, the focal point of Davidson athletics. For 40 minutes, our students could file into Section 30, elbow to elbow, voices uniting with alumni spanning generations, all united by a common goal: cheering on a win. 

I suppose I should not limit myself to expect growth in the men’s basketball program solely in the four years that I am at Davidson. Perhaps we will turn into a perennial powerhouse who consistently gets five-star recruits. Or maybe another March Madness run reminiscent of 2008 is in our future. In the current moment, though, none of this seems possible. I truly hope I am proven wrong, and while the new changes coming to the program excite me, they don’t outweigh my disappointment in the team’s current state.