As the first round of the 2024 Bad Boy Mowers (yes, that is the official name) Battle 4 Atlantis basketball tournament finished up at the Atlantis resort in The Bahamas, the Davidson men’s basketball team ended the night by being thoroughly pummeled by the University of Arizona Wildcats (Hey, that’s our mascot too! Unless you read www.insidethehall.com’s article where we’re also the Friars. I guess go with whatever mascot speaks to you). But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s go back to before the tournament even started. At the time, Arizona was ranked #24 in the Associated Press (AP) college basketball poll. A daunting but inspiring task for the Wildcats (our Wildcats, that is—gosh, this is confusing) to take on.
You may be thinking, why does the ranking matter? How did we get to this point in the story? What’s so significant? I’m so glad you asked. Here’s a quick explanation of the AP poll for you non-college basketball types out there: A) The AP poll has always been a trusted source for gauging the talent and success of college basketball teams, so just go with it, okay? B) The rankings are based on record, performance, and whose jerseys are the most badass (that last one might not be true). C) The AP poll only goes to twenty-five teams. Why? Don’t ask me, I’m just a sportswriter. Considering everything we’ve just learned, Arizona being ranked #24 out of the twenty-five best teams in the nation is pretty impressive. Unfortunately for us, they played like it, too.
So, with that loss, the ‘Cats were eliminated from the first-place bracket but still obligated to play two more games.
“I kinda wanted to go on the shark slide again,” one Davidson player said.
“The lazy river here is pretty great, and so is the fried conch,” another another.
Alas, the show goes on. As it happened, the next game was against the Providence Friars (because “Wildcats” was already taken), who were unranked in the AP poll but were ranked seventy-something in the KenPom.com metrics (just look it up) at the time. Not bad for the KenPom (you’ll have to take my word on that)! Thanks to twenty-two points from Connor Kochera ‘25, Davidson picked up a nice eleven-point win.
The team had punched its ticket to the fifth-place game. Spirits were high. That was until they checked the bracket and saw, to their horror, that the next team up was the University of Gonzaga Bulldogs.
Why would this induce horror? Wow, you are just full of questions today. Let’s back up to the beginning of the tournament, when Gonzaga had a lot going for it: it was #3 in the AP poll (remember that thing?), Hall of Fame Head Coach Mark Few was still at the helm, and they were favored to win the whole event. Their first-round matchup was against the unranked West Virginia Mountaineers.
“We figured it’d be a blowout,” West Virginia player Balin DaBasket said. “I thought we had no chance whatsoever. I mean, it’s Gonzaga. We almost left early, before we even played the game.”
But, in a shocking turn of events, something genuinely no one saw coming, Gonzaga fell at the hands of this clearly overconfident Mountaineers team in overtime.
“We really dropped the ball,” Coach Few said, the irony of his statement lost on him. Since at that point his team had already done each of the waterslides at the resort twice, the Bulldogs figured they could kill time by playing a few more games, even if it meant lowering themselves down to play with the ruffians in the losers’ bracket. After easily downing Indiana, they were slated to face our hometown heroes.
Unfortunately for Davidson, they were punching a little above their weight class this time. Gonzaga knocked Davidson out of their shoes (this is only a half-joke because Roberts Blums ‘28 literally lost both of his shoes on one possession and kept playing—it was nuts), with the final score tallying 90-65.
After the game, Coach Few was unavailable for comment, as he was on the way to his swimming with the stingrays appointment.
On the plane ride home, Davidson players began to speculate what they could’ve done to offend the universe to garner such rotten luck. I mean, really take a second and think about it. You lose to Arizona, understandable, you’re headed to the losers’ bracket. You expect to play someone like Providence, that’s doable. But Gonzaga?? In the losers’ bracket??? That’s gotta be a once-in-a-million case of bad luck. The Davidson players came to a similar conclusion.
“Has anyone broken a mirror lately?” one player asked.
“We’ll have to start calling ourselves the Davidson Black Cats,” someone from the back of the plane yelled, unhelpfully.
“What i-if the sc-school was b-b-built on an ancient burial g-g-g-ground?” gasped one hysterical player before someone grabbed him and shook him, like one might an etch-a-sketch.
“Get a hold of yourself!”
As the situation on the plane devolved into something not totally unlike that scene from Airplane! [Editors’ Note: If you don’t get this reference… there isn’t any hope for you], one assistant coach was sitting on crucial information he would only reveal days later.
“I saw it. It was Coach McKillop,” the assistant said, now broken out in a nervous sweat. “They had the ladders out to fix the rims before a game. I told him to just go around, but he… he didn’t listen. He walked right under it. I told him… [uncontrollable sobbing].”
THIS ARTICLE IS FROM A SATIRICAL ISSUE AND DOES NOT REFLECT ACTUAL VIEWS