FanHouse JasonRichards

Bracket Busters 2009 matchups have been announced. FanHouse has the skinny.

The Davidson Wildcats and Stephen Curry have been a disappointment this season, relatively speaking. Curry is leading the nation in scoring, which is quite impressive, but the Wildcats don't seem nearly as dangerous this year as they did in 2008.

Part of that could be that they no longer retain "sleeper" status. Or part of it could be that they no longer have the heavily underrated Jason Richards manning point for them. Or maybe they just have three losses to nationally-ranked teams. Either way though, they'll be playing the highly-ranked Butler Bulldogs on February 21 in the headlining game of ESPN's Bracket Busters.

This week, FanHouse is taking a look at the top teams heading into 2008 with a BlogPoll decided on by our college hoops bloggers. To help with the team capsules, we've brought in some of the top fan bloggers around the internets to give us insights on their teams.

Today, we have enlisted me, The Sportz Assassin, of FanHouse and SportzAssassin.com, to break down the Davidson Wildcats.

We all remember last season. Davidson began the season taking on top programs like North Carolina, UCLA and Duke, rolling through the Southern Conference schedule and then getting to the Elite Eight. Along the way, the Wildcats popped Gonzaga, Georgetown and Wisconsin and nearly beat eventual champion Kansas.

Stephen Curry became a superstar. Head coach Bob McKillop was finally getting his national recognition. The little school just outside of Charlotte is now big time.

Every year Cinderella captures our hearts in the NCAA Tournament. They begin fittings for their glass slippers in November, though. They Do Not Come From Nowhere introduces you to the teams that will be busting brackets nationwide come March.

If you were building an unsung team that has the makings of a March surprise it would have experience on the court and on the sideline, play good defense and have a superstar capable of taking over a game on the offensive end. In other words, it would look like Davidson and that's why they almost knocked off North Carolina in Charlotte last night.

Davidson returns every scholarship player from last year's 29-win team, a team that was considered too young to challenge for the Southern Conference title. Jason Richards is a heady point guard whose 7-plus assists a game were attained with a sparkling 2.35 assist/turnover ratio. Forwards Thomas Sander and Boris Meno combined for nearly 25 points and 15 rebounds a game and with Andrew Lovedale created a frontline that helped the Wildcats outrebound their opponents by a wide margin.

All of their work set up Stephen Curry.