Danny Jones gives Randolph-Macon a team-high 13.1 points and does it in just under 20 minutes per game. Randolph-Macon athletics file photo

By Evans Clinchy
D3sports.com

It's not as though Randolph-Macon's never made noise in March before. In Nathan Davis' Yellow Jackets, you're looking at a men's basketball program with a history of getting it done in the NCAA Tournament.

They've made the dance 18 times before, including a trip to the Div. II Final Four back in 1977. But this time, they've really broken through -- it's time to make that three-hour bus ride across Virginia to Salem.

"It's a great honor for our program," Davis said. "We've always had a very good program here, but the Final Four has always been something that's just eluded us up until now. We've had some very good teams, but we haven't been able to get here. We've been for some reason unable to get over the hump. So we're excited for the opportunity to get down there and try to win a game."

For Davis, this opportunity has come quickly. This is his first game manning the sidelines for Randolph-Macon -- a 1997 graduate of the school, Davis ventured out into the world of D-I coaching before returning to Ashland, Va., to coach the Yellow Jackets this season. He was a student assistant at Macon, an assistant at Emory and Henry, an assistant at Bucknell, an assistant at Colgate, and now he's finally got himself a job as a head coach, back at his alma mater again. It didn't take him long to find success on the job.

"Personally, it's exciting," Davis said. "Everyone always wants to go to the Final Four, and I feel very fortunate to have that opportunity. There are a ton of coaches and a ton of players that are frankly better at their jobs than I am, that want to be here. I'm certainly very fortunate to experience this in my first year on the job. But more than anything, I'm excited for these players. They've worked so hard all season, and they deserved to get this chance to see what the Final Four is all about."

The Yellow Jackets will encounter a couple familiar faces in Salem -- they'll see a Williams team that they beat earlier this season, and they'll also see Guilford, a long-time in-conference rival in the Old Dominion Athletic Conference. Davis' team hasn't found any success against the Quakers yet this season, losing once in the regular season and once on Feb. 28 in the final game of the ODAC tournament. But rather than be daunted by the prospect of meeting their rivals again, Davis is proud of what their conference has accomplished.

"It's certainly great for our league," the coach said. "It's been a very strong league. We had four teams in the Sweet Sixteen that easily could have gotten here, and that's the way our league was. It was a fight all year long. Every single night."

The one team the Yellow Jackets aren't yet acquainted with is the one they're playing, from UW-Stevens Point. And while you can never be totally comfortable when you're up against the unfamiliar, this is a team ready for the challenge that's up ahead.

"The team's playing pretty well, and this point they have no reason not to feel confident," Davis said. "But at the same time, there's a difference between confident and cocky. They know that if they play hard and they play together, they have a chance to beat anybody that they play. But at the same time, they know that there are no guarantees, so they have to go down to Salem and give it everything they've got."

This time of year, everyone does.