The hellos are out of the way ... Davidson is ready to play basketball
Men’s basketball coach Matt McKillop and his players talked Tuesday about their summer team-building programs.
Given the makeup of the Davidson lineup this season, team-building will be important.
Wildcats fans will find the names of eight returning players on the 2025-26 roster, but none of them started last season. There will be eight newcomers on the Davidson team that opens its season Nov. 3 at home against DeSales, a Division III school from eastern Pennsylvania.
“I’m excited about this team,” McKillop said during the team’s annual preseason luncheon with media members. “We’ll have the flexibility to do a lot of things, and do them well.”
But the Wildcats spent the summer getting to know one another.
There were big moments and small moments to the team-building exercises.
McKillop said the highlight came in early July, when his team spent four days at a training center near San Francisco, working with Davidson alum and NBA great Steph Curry.
During the offseason, Curry was named an assistant general manager of the Davidson basketball program.
“I had to pinch myself,” McKillop said of the training sessions. “It was great to watch our kids play and work with Steph. They learned a lot.”
McKillop, entering his fourth season as head coach after succeeding his father, Bob, said Curry was a very active participant in the training sessions.
“He was present for every conversation, for every workout,” the Wildcats’ head coach said. “He made our players feel special.”
And there were the smaller moments.
About 10 Wildcat players gathered every Thursday at Spare Time Bowling in Huntersville for bowling, conversation and bonding.
“We got together every week, for about two months,” said Manie Joses, a 6-foot-7 sophomore from London. “It was a great time to get to know each other a lot better. We really bonded.”
The players decided that each of them would give a presentation about a topic of interest to them.
“I talked about the time I spent in Australia,” Joses said. “It was a way of getting to know one another a lot better.”
One thing Joses learned was that this Davidson team is competitive.
“I mean, we’re competitive at everything,” he said. “That included bowling.”
Joses said he averaged nearly 190 and said a couple other players, like 6-10 seniors Joe Hurlburt and Sean Logan, were very good bowlers.
“We nurtured one another,” Joses said. “I’m really glad we spent that time together.”
Togethereness will only take you so far, though, and McKillop said he believes the 2025-26 Wildcats have the talent to do better than last year’s squad, which finished 17-16.
“We have the depth that we haven’t had for a couple seasons,” he said.
Two players who drew praise Tuesday from McKillop were transfer guards — Parker Friedrichsen, a 6-4 junior who played last year at Wake Forest; and Sam Brown, a 6-3 junior who came to Davidson from Penn.
“Parker is a dynamic guard who can score a lot of points, and he has ACC experience,” McKillop said. “Sam Brown scored 19 points a game at Penn. He’s a physical, crafty guard.”
McKillop said this year’s Wildcats team will have three good big players, a large group of talented guards, and solid defenders.
Media members in the Atlantic 10 aren’t impressed. They picked the Wildcats to finish 11th of 15 teams. And there were no Davidson players on the preseason all-conference teams.
“We would like to prove people wrong,” McKillop said.
Women aim for NCAA tournament
Davidson has never made the women’s NCAA tournament field. Coach Gayle Fulks and her team clearly is aiming to change that this season.
The Wildcats have scheduled seven non-conference games against teams that made postseason tournaments last season.
Coming off a 19-14 season, with three of its four top scorers returning and the addition of several promising transfers, Davidson could be poised to make a big run.
“We were picked third in the conference,” said Fulks, entering her ninth year at the helm of the Wildcats. “That’s meaningful for us. It speaks to our talent and our depth.”
The Wildcats won’t have to wait long to be tested, as they open their season Nov. 3 at perennial SEC power Mississippi State. Later in the season are tests against Florida Gulf Coast (30-3 last season), Miami and Baylor.
Leading the group is senior guard Charlise Dunn, who averaged 12 points and 6.1 rebounds last season and was a preseason first-team all-Atlantic 10 pick,
“Everyone can shoot the ball well on this team, and we have solid defensive play,” said Dunn, who played Australian Rules Football as a child growing up near Melbourne, Australia. “People will see us playing faster this year. We’ll move the ball quicker in transition.”