Call it a quirk in the schedule. Call it bad luck. Call it whatever you want, Friday will still sting for some die-hard Georgetown fans.

With three varsity teams – men’s soccer, volleyball and field hockey – competing against Davidson today, any devoted Hoya fan can’t help but think of that baby-faced scoring machine Stephen Curry and his underdog Wildcats who tore through the NCAA Tournament last March, leaving our beloved Hoyas in their upset wake.

Georgetown, the second seed in the Midwest Regional, had its sights on a second-straight Final Four berth. But in the second round, on Easter Sunday, Curry resurrected the Wildcats with 25 points in the last 14 minutes to erase a 17-point deficit and end the Hoyas’ season.

Paul Campbell (MSB ’09), communications officer for Hoya Blue, was at the game in Raleigh, N.C., and said it was such a bad experience for him that it took him a while to make sense out of what had happened.

“I was walking around in disbelief,” Campbell said. “For about a month, I wished bad things towards Stephen Curry.”

For some fans, like David Lamb (COL ’09), curse words come to mind at the very mention of Davidson. Patrick Go (MSB ’11) said beating any team from Davidson would help heal the basketball wounds, but only so much.

“[Beating Davidson in men’s soccer] would be good for a little vengeance, but basketball is where it counts,” Go said.

In football, the Hoyas and Wildcats last met in 2005 – Georgetown lost 10-3. The Hoyas, however, had won the previous four games and hold the overall advantage at 4-3. The two sides battled on the gridiron from 1999 to 2005, and, according to Marc Gignac, sports information director at Davidson, they will renew their football series in 2010.

Gignac gave several reasons why the two schools compete in several sports.

First and foremost, he said, is that Davidson and Georgetown compete in similar sports. The only varsity sport that exists at Davidson but not Georgetown is wrestling.

Second on Gignac’s list was that the two schools are similar institutions.

“Both schools recruit the same type of athletes, both academically and athletically,” he said.

Davidson is a private liberal arts college with an enrollment of 1,700 undergraduates. Though Georgetown has a larger enrollment, it is also known as a small private school in the college athletics world.

“We’re similar schools. Both have good academics,” Campbell said.

Third, Gignac said, was the proximity of the two schools. He said that the trip is an easy one to make for teams looking to add a non-league contest.

There’s another athletic similarity the two schools share: Basketball rules.

“A lot of pride comes from our men’s basketball team,” said Suzie Eckl, a senior at Davidson and editor in chief of The Davidsonian. “If Georgetown were on our regular season schedule, I’m sure a lot of people would look forward to a game with such a big name in basketball.”

Clearly, strong feelings are still running high at Georgetown, but one NCAA loss was not enough to create a rivalry that every Georgetown student enters the moment they cross the Key Bridge for the first time.

Freshman Pat Gorman (MSB ’12) knows about last year’s basketball upset, but said he didn’t really care one way or the other about Davidson.

Fans at Davidson also don’t give much thought to Georgetown. According to Eckl, they were excited to beat Georgetown in the NCAA tournament, but most fans view the magical tournament as a whole rather than just thinking of their one game against the Hoyas (the Wildcats beat Wisconsin in the Sweet 16 and lost by two to the eventual-champion Kansas in the round of eight).

Eckl added that the indifference spreads to other sports.

“We view rivalries in the SoCon [Southern Conference] as big,” she said. “I had no idea that we were playing Georgetown in any sports this weekend.”

The fact remains, however, that for many Georgetown fans, the mention of Davidson will only elicit thoughts of basketball. In the minds of Hoyas, the image of Davidson will be that of a smooth-shooting kid from North Carolina hitting a three-pointer with two hands in his face. And this weekend is sure to bring out some of those hard feelings.

“It’d definitely be satisfying to beat Davidson in any sport,” Campbell said. “I don’t care if Stephen Curry is on the soccer team or not.”

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