Davidson coach Bob McKillop doesn’t want to hear NCAA talk
Don’t ask Davidson basketball coach Bob McKillop about his team’s chances at making this season’s NCAA tournament because he doesn’t want to hear it.
“We really don’t think too much about that,” said McKillop, whose Wildcats (14-5, 5-3) play St. Bonaventure (11-8, 4-4) in an Atlantic 10 game Wednesday at Belk Arena. “You need so much energy for the next game. You don’t want to expend that energy thinking about what-could-have-been and what-has-to-be.
“So we don’t dwell on rankings and numbers or anything other than what’s in front of us. Nothing other than what requires us being competitive in this conference.”
But with the conference season at the halfway point, the Wildcats are very much in the conversation as a potential NCAA tournament team. If not as the Atlantic 10’s tournament champion and automatic qualifier, then as an at-large team (the Wildcats are tied for fifth place in the 14-team league with Richmond and Massachusetts).
Davidson’s resume is solid. The Wildcats are ranked 46th in the Ratings Percentage Index (RPI), and even higher in the Sagarin (31st) and Pomeroy (33rd) ratings. The Wildcats also own a victory against a top-50 RPI team (Dayton).
In past years, Davidson wouldn’t normally be mentioned as a tournament team, except as the favorite to win the Southern Conference tournament, the winner of which has taken what is historically the only path to the NCAAs for the league.
That happened often enough, with McKillop’s Davidson teams playing in the NCAA tournament seven times – each after winning the Southern Conference tournament championship.
McKillop has said those three or four days at the Southern Conference tournament each season were always among the most stressful of his career.
That stress for McKillop might well now be transferred to the regular season in the more competitive Atlantic 10, which had six teams make the NCAA tournament last season.
“In the Atlantic 10, getting an at-large bid is mandated by being a middle-of-the-pack team,” McKillop said last summer.
But McKillop does admit that he’s starting to become accustomed to the higher profile that comes with playing in the A-10.
“It’s very visible and in front of people all the time,” he said. “You hear people in town talking about it. Your wife. Your assistants. But I have the ability to discipline my mind to try and lock in on what’s in front of me. Those are the only things of input that I can control.”
This story was originally published February 3, 2015 at 5:57 PM with the headline "Davidson coach Bob McKillop doesn’t want to hear NCAA talk."