What’s gone wrong at Davidson? How Bob McKillop’s team can salvage the season

Is there still time for Davidson to salvage its basketball season?

Junior guard Kellan Grady remembers his freshman season and thinks there is.

“We started that year 5-7 and ended up 21-12,” Grady said Tuesday night, a few minutes after the Wildcats lost 70-64 against Richmond in Belk Arena, dropping to 7-9, 1-3 in the Atlantic 10. “But we’re 16 games in now and you’d think we’d have it figured out. We’re still confident we can turn it around.”

Indeed, the Wildcats did have a turning point two seasons ago. Heading into a game at Saint Louis with that 5-7 record and trailing by 11 points at halftime, Davidson rallied to win. The Wildcats — with Grady eventually earning A-10 Freshman of the Year honors — would end up winning the league tournament and give Kentucky a game of it in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

Whether Davidson can duplicate that kind of turnaround this season remains to be seen. But circumstances surrounding this edition of the Wildcats have made it difficult, as Grady says, to figure out.

Two months ago, the Wildcats were anticipating a season pulsating with promise. Coming off another 20-victory season (24-10), Davidson was among the preseason favorites to win the A-10 title. Coach Bob McKillop had his top six players coming back: guards Jon Axel Gudmundsson (the returning A-10 Player of the Year), Grady (a first-team all-conference player), sophomore Luke Frampton, senior KiShawn Pritchett and junior Carter Collins, as well as sophomore forward Luka Brajkovic.

It became evident early in the season that something was amiss. Playing without Pritchett, who was dealing with recurring knee soreness from an injury he first sustained in high school, the Wildcats split their first four games (beating UNC Wilmington and Nevada; losing to Auburn and Charlotte).

Then came a bombshell announcement. Days after the Wildcats dropped to 2-3 with a loss against a sub-par Wake Forest team, Frampton took a personal leave of absence and left school.

Losing Frampton meant the Wildcats were without perhaps the league’s top 3-point shooter and one of the team’s best passers. The continued absence of the 6-foot-6 Pritchett (McKillop said Tuesday he doesn’t expect Pritchett to return) has left Davidson without a physical, experienced presence to hold things together.

Grady doesn’t want to sound like he’s making excuses. But ...

“I hate to bring it up, but we lost two starters who were very, very, very valuable to our team,” said Grady, who’s averaging 16.0 points per game. “You prepare for the entire season, with six months of offseason with the expectations of those guys playing. Doing things with those guys, then all of a sudden not having them, adjusting can take some time.”

Losing Frampton and Pritchett has forced other players into new, often uncomfortable roles.

Collins, who McKillop said was the team’s most improved player during the offseason, is starting now. Although he’s averaging 11.9 points, the energy he provided as the team’s sixth man is missed. Other players, like redshirt freshman Mike Jones and junior forward Bates Jones, have seen their minutes increase more rapidly than McKillop had anticipated in November.

There have been bright spots: Freshman forward Hyunjung Lee continues to show promise, and sophomore Nelson Boachie-Yiadom gives the team a potential athletic option in the front court it hasn’t had in recent seasons.

But with 40 percent of the starting lineup unexpectedly gone, it’s fallen to Grady, Gudmundsson, Collins and Brajkovic to shoulder the load.

Gudmundsson has not performed like the player who dominated the A-10 last season. His numbers (12.4 points, 6.8 rebounds, 3.6 assists per game) are down — although those from 2018-19 (16.9 points, 7.3 rebounds, 4.8 assists) are certainly a high bar to match.

Gudmundsson has shown signs of breaking out lately, scoring 30 points and grabbing 10 rebounds in an overtime victory last Saturday against Saint Joseph’s. Against Richmond, he had 14 points, 16 rebounds and six assists. But, on the other hand, he missed critical free throws down the stretch against Saint Joseph’s and had six turnovers against Richmond.

McKillop has said for much of the season that Gudmundsson has let the pressure of living up to expectations affect the “joy” he usually has in playing. After the Richmond game, McKillop said Gudmundsson had a “glazed” look in his eyes.

“It’s as though he can’t believe this is happening in his senior year,” McKillop said.

The Wildcats play again Sunday at Fordham (6-10, 0-4), perhaps the A-10’s worst team. But the same can be said of Saint Joseph’s (3-14, 0-5), which came close to knocking off the Wildcats.

“Are (the players) pressing? I think so,” McKillop said after the Richmond loss. “The locker room is very solemn. Look at the expectations on their plate. Look at what’s expected of every one of these guys in the A-10. This is a new experience for them. It’s going to take some time. But they’ll fight. They’ll continue to be a joy to coach.

“They’re feeling a tremendous amount of pain for this. I feel their pain. They’re hard-working kids who just want to do the right thing and be the best they can be. It’s just not working out sometimes. It’s painful.”

This story was originally published January 16, 2020 at 1:58 PM.