University of Wisconsin men's basketball coach Bo Ryan and Davidson coach Bob McKillop don't know each other well, but it's easy to imagine the two sharing a park bench somewhere and swapping stories.

McKillop is a product of the playgrounds from a large metropolitan area in the Northeast and peppers his news conferences with folksy tales from a simpler time.

Sound familiar?

"I think there's a tremendous mirror between Bo and me," McKillop said Tuesday during a teleconference.

"He's a Philly guy and I'm a New York guy. I think we've climbed the ladder in college coaching. I'm still at a different rung than he is. He's welcome to share his paycheck with me any time he wants."

Not that McKillop is complaining. He has found his niche at the small (enrollment: 1,700) liberal arts college known for its rigorous academics, located in the well-heeled town of Davidson, about 20 miles north of Charlotte, N.C.

Nothing puts a college on the national map quite like an improbable NCAA tournament run to the Sweet 16. The 10th-seeded Wildcats, who face the third-seeded Badgers on Friday night at Ford Field in Detroit, are one of three double-digit seeds still standing, along with 12th seeds Villanova and Western Kentucky.

Yet, it's Davidson that has been fit for Cinderella's slipper, thanks to upsets over Gonzaga and Georgetown.

"I don't dwell on cliches like Cinderella," McKillop said. "We're a basketball team that has won (28) games and a significant number (24) in a row. We've played a terrific schedule. We've prepared ourselves for postseason."

Big-time foes

The Wildcats loaded up with non-conference games against North Carolina, Duke, UCLA and Charlotte. They lost all four, but the largest margin was 12 points to UCLA and they lost only 72-68 to North Carolina, in the second game of the season at Bobcats Arena in Charlotte.

McKillop traces the desire to play big-time opponents to the playground, naturally —you had to win to keep playing and nobody wanted to sit out. The only thing worse was going to another court where the competition wasn't as good.

"There were maybe two or three courts, you'd go and stay on the court where the great action was," McKillop said. "If you lost, you didn't go to the other court and start playing a pickup game, that was sort of sacrilegious. You went where the action was.

"I think our program has tried to do that, we have gone where the action is. We have tried to develop this 'stay-on' mentality."

The Wildcats made the NCAA tournament last year, losing in the first round to Maryland.

"We learned very sadly last year against Maryland ... that it's a 40-minute game," McKillop said. "That seems like a simple thing, but you need to play 40 minutes against the great programs."

Davidson certainly did that the first two rounds this year, rallying from a 17-point deficit in the second half to beat Georgetown 74-70 on Sunday. The Wildcats trailed Gonzaga for most of the game Friday, taking the lead when Stephen Curry made a 3-pointer with a little more than a minute to go before winning 82-76.

The main man

Even casual basketball fans who watch only until their brackets implode have become familiar with the baby face of Curry, who has 70 points in two games (55 in the second halves), while shooting 13-for-25 from 3-point range.

He is the son of former NBA player Dell Curry, who spent the 1998-99 season with the Milwaukee Bucks. Dell Curry played collegiately at Virginia Tech, and much has been made of how ACC schools all passed on the younger Curry. (Virginia Tech wanted him to walk on for his first year.)

"I think it's really an overplayed story," McKillop said. "I don't think a lot of people missed on him. I think people saw what they saw: A slight, young-looking guard who could probably be bumped off the ball, who might struggle against a hand on his hip when he's dribbling, who might get posted very easily, who, yes, had a great shooting stroke, but would he be able to get it off?"

Stephen Curry attended Charlotte Christian, so McKillop got to see a lot more, since he was so close.

"What (other schools) didn't see was Dell and Sonya, the parents, and how they have raised a young man who has an incredible balance of humility and fearlessness," McKillop said.

And more

A team doesn't win 24 straight games with just one player and Davidson has a nice supporting cast, including point guard Jason Richards, who leads the nation with 271 assists.

Thomas Sander, a 6-foot-8 senior forward, was part of a strong defensive effort that limited Georgetown 7-2 center Roy Hibbert to six points and one rebound in 16 minutes before he fouled out.

A team that has faced North Carolina's Tyler Hansbrough and UCLA's Kevin Love doesn't figure to be intimidated by any post players.

Davidson averages 78.6 points per game and won't change against the Badgers.

"We like to run, we like to push," McKillop said. "We don't adjust our style to who we play. We ran with Duke, we ran with Carolina.

"We are who we are. We do what we do. The rhythm of the season has to become the rhythm of the postseason. For us to try to tinker with that at this point is insanity."