(audience cheers)

(upbeat music)

- What's up Wildcats, whoo!

(audience cheers)

Thank you guys for coming out!

My name is Steve Rossiter.

I'm class of 2010.

You might know me as the weird alum

that's been in a few too many spring fall weekends.

But I was also had the privilege and honor

of playing for Coach McKillop

and playing on the Davidson team,

and on the Elite Eight team.

And had the honor of setting a lot of screens for Steph.

(audience laughs)

Before we get started with the great show,

I'm gonna read a quick advertisement slash announcement.

To accommodate this event,

which they generously did,

a previously scheduled event,

The Be the Match Typing Drive,

it's upstairs.

A student-led service organization

that adds Davidson community members

to the Be The Match registry.

This is one sentence, by the way.

(audience laughs)

Which pairs blood cancer patients

with life saving donors,

will be held in the 900 room following Stephen's Q and A.

I hope you guys will support this cause.

(audience cheers)

And I heard Riley might be there,

but I'm not sure.

(audience cheers)

So let's see what happens.

I heard, I heard.

Alright now before we bring out the special guest,

I want to bring out the man

who's responsible for all of this.

The man synonymous with Davidson basketball.

Thank you guys.

You guys can sit if you want.

(audience laughs)

But, but, but hold on.

I read the Tweets.

I read the Yik Yaks,

which you guys are kinda weird actually.

(audience laughs)

Alright but what I want you to do now

is get on your feet once again please.

I want you to make some noise for the man,

the silver fox,

Coach Bob McKillop!

(audience cheers)

Whoo!

Thank you, thank you.

(audience cheers)

Alright.

Now why I think you guys

all started lining up up 7:30.

I think he's here.

He might still be in the shower over at Baker.

But let's see if he's back there.

But can we make some noise.

Can we get a little clap going

for our man Steph Curry!

(audience cheers)

(upbeat music)

- [Audience] MVP!

MVP!

MVP!

MVP!

(audience cheers)

- Oh thank you very much.

This is a very surreal moment

to be back on Davidson's campus where it all started.

So thank you all for coming out.

For being a part of this special day.

I haven't back in I think a couple years.

So I wanted to bring some company with me.

(audience cheers)

When I stepped foot on campus in 2006,

I never would've imagined this day happening.

So thank you very much

and let's have a special time here today.

Appreciate it.

(audience cheers)

- Alright thank you guys so much for that intro.

We're gonna start it off.

It's going to be a little structured at first.

We're gonna ask some questions

that hopefully appeal to you guys.

And then we're gonna open it up to some Q and A.

So maybe try to think of a couple good ones.

Alright?

So Steph he just kinda touched on this.

But first time back.

I think you told me the other day in two years about,

what were the emotions that came to you right away?

- Um I drove on Griffith Street coming up

and turned the corner.

The first thing is all the new buildings.

(audience laughs)

That caught me off guard.

I walked by Thomason and saw the new buildings down there.

And coming around the back,

then you kind of settle in

and everything is pretty much the same.

The same field you see.

You know students going to class.

You have that same kind of odd look in their eye

that I had back when I was here.

So everything kind of comes back home.

It's just special to be back on campus.

There's no place like Davidson.

And I try to explain that to everybody

I come in contact with when they ask me,

where did you go to school?

When you try and put it into words

what this place means,

I do my best.

But whenever you step foot on campus

after a long, long hiatus away,

it all comes back.

So it's just special.

- Great, I'm sure we all feel the same way.

We come back from summer vacation,

you feel good,

you feel ready to go so.

(audience laughs)

- I'm just glad I didn't have any books.

For right now,

I still got some work to do.

(audience laughs)

- Cool, well that's great.

So you had an incredible year.

We all know what you did.

But I want to take it all the way back

to your very first workout, Fall 2006.

I'm gonna ask Coach to talk about it.

First workout on campus,

maybe a week into school.

- It was the first week of September

and I forgot the workout time,

but it might've been 3, 3:30 and there's no Steph.

(audience laughs)

And all of the sudden out the corner of my eye,

I see him come out of the locker room

and we had already begun part of the workout.

And Stephen starts to loosen up on the side.

I said yeah keep loosening up Steph.

(audience laughs)

And he then proceeded to come on to the court

and said Coach I'm ready.

And I said,

you're out of here.

Get in the locker room.

So I threw him out of his first practice.

(audience laughs)

- It didn't get much better from there.

(audience laughs)

My second practice I was a freshman

and I think he had some huge faith in me.

So he put me with all the seniors at the time.

Or the juniors at the time.

It was Jason Richards,

Boris Meno,

Thomas Sander.

And I'm a little scrawny freshman coming on,

I don't really know what college workouts really like.

And my first individual.

And about halfway through,

coach has a white towel that he has in his back pocket.

And I'm like huffing and puffing.

I got that look like

I don't know how much more I got left in the tank.

And he waves the white towel in my face like,

you want to surrender don't you?

(audience laughs)

You want to surrender don't you?

Go ahead and surrender.

Take the towel surrender, go ahead.

And I tried to dig deep as much as I could

to finish the workout.

I wasn't going to let him get the best of me there,

but that kind of motivation and that drive

is what makes him special.

Doesn't let anybody off the hook.

- It took about three weeks

for him to prove to me

that he was going to be a star.

We had an alumni function in Charlotte

where a lot of fans and a lof of alums and boosters came.

It was a luncheon and I stood up in front of that luncheon

and was asked questions about

what kind of year we are going to have.

We just graduated seven seniors.

And I said we're gonna be pretty good,

and we got a really special player

that's gonna go down in history

as the greatest ever to play the game at Davidson College,

Steph Curry.

(audience cheers)

- I wouldn't mind if one of these guys

would break some records too.

So y'all can make that happen too.

(audience laughs)

- Great yeah so we started off at the low

missing the first workout,

to the greatest Wildcat ever.

Let's take it back down again.

(audience laughs)

We're gonna go back

to Steph's first ever collegiate game,

which you played out of Michigan

in an open season tournament.

Coach if you want to talk about that.

- Well Stephen had caught our eye

for quite a few summers before that.

And we were recruiting him in the summer prior

to his senior year.

We're in Las Vegas and watching him play

in this AAU tournament and he was awful.

(audience laughs)

He had eight turnovers.

But yet we noticed

he never stopped playing defense.

He never stopped running the court.

He never stopped listening to his coach.

He never stopped cheering his teammates on.

He never complained to the officials.

No change in his demeanor whatsoever.

Fast forward to his first game in a Davidson uniform.

Played Eastern Michigan in the Michigan tournament.

He had nine turnovers in the first half.

(audience laughs)

We're down 16 points.

Our coaching staff got together before

we went to the locker room at halftime.

Do we take Steph out of the lineup?

Do we not take him out of the lineup?

Hey remember Las Vegas a year ago?

He's not going to stop playing.

He lives in the moment.

He's going to keep playing.

Let's keep him in the lineup.

We wind up winning the game.

And Steph finished with a double double.

15 points and 13 turnovers.

(audience laughs)

- It can only get better from there.

You set the bar real low.

- And he's right.

Next night he dropped 32 on Michigan.

(audience cheers)

- Alright so let's talk about

maybe one of the strangest games

that any of us have been a part of.

It was your final season at Davidson a junior.

The fall of 2008.

We were playing Loyola of Maryland at home.

It's a game we won by 30 points.

But instantly became national news for a brief time.

But coach you want to open up the story behind that?

- Steph was the leading scorer in the nation at that point.

And for whatever reason,

the coach of Loyola decided to go down in the history books.

He was gonna shut Stephen Curry out.