Stephen Curry Headed to the NIT

We may have just seen Davidson guard Stephen Curry's last meaningful college basketball game. Why? Because his Davidson Wildcats lost to Charleston last night 59-52 in the Southern Conference tournament semifinals.

Curry was held to just 5=18 shooting and 2-11 from three, finishing with 20 points. The Wildcats were still able to open up a lead as big as 12 in the first half, heading into the break up 29-20. But Charleston came out guns ablaze in the second half, going of a 20-4 run to take a 40-33 lead that Davidson was never able to recover from.

Davidson, last year's tournament darlings, will be headed to the NIT in 2009.
(photo credit: Angela Lewis/AP)

By all accounts, Davidson has almost no shot at earning an at-large bid to the dance. No team from the Southern conference ever has. So do they stack up?

The Wildcats have a decent RPI (67) and a terrible SOS (176), but that is to be expected from a team that plays in a low-major conference. The bigger issue is that they have only played six games against the RPI top 100, losing four (Duke, Purdue, Butler, and Oklahoma). Their only wins came against NC State, whose is number 100 (according to RealTimeRPI), and West Virginia, who played without Alex Ruoff and had an injured Joe Mazzulla play the first five minutes.

The bottom line is that, like it or not, the Wildcats are not an NCAA tournament team. They needed to win their conference tournament to have a chance at a berth.

They didn't.

Which means that we will not be seeing March's golden boy in this year's dance.