If you live in Maine and haven't adopted Davidson as your NCAA men's basketball tournament team yet, what are you waiting for? This bandwagon is filling up fast.

The Wildcats play Wisconsin tonight in Detroit in the Sweet 16 round of the NCAA tournament. Chances are, Davidson has already smashed you bracket to bits, so cheering for the Wildcats now won't hurt you one bit.

So you had Gonzaga winning in the first round. Big deal, you'll get over it. So you had Georgetown in the Final Four, or even worse, you had the Hoyas winning the whole thing, and Davidson went and turned your bracket into confetti. Take that as a sign to join the Davidson Booster Club.

The Davidson campus is in North Carolina, but the Wildcats are the closest thing Maine has to a team in the tournament.

The Wildcats have Maine's own Bryant Barr on the roster. Barr, a sophomore guard and Falmouth native, didn't score in either Davidson's 82-76 win over Gonzaga in the first round or the team's 74-70 win over Georgetown in the second round. He has played in all 34 games this season.

Barr only played three minutes against Gonzaga, and just five against Georgetown, but that's eight more minutes than anyone else from Maine played in the tournament. To do anything but get behind Barr, the state's Mr. Basketball 2006, just wouldn't seem right.

In the 2006-07 season, Davidson took on Colby. On Nov. 21, 2006, the Division III Mules went to North Carolina and took their shot against the Division I school. Colby trailed by just 13 points at halftime, 37-24, before the Wildcats pulled away with a 99-69 win. Barr scored 11 points in that game, but Davidson's leading scorer then, as he is now, is guard Stephen Curry.

Curry scored 29 points against the Mules. He sank nine of Davidson's 19 3-pointers. But that's nothing compared to what Curry's done in the first two rounds of this year's NCAA tournament.

Against Gonzaga last week, Curry scored 40 points. Against Georgetown, he scored 30 more. In the two games, Curry has made 13 of 25 3-point tries. Against Colby, he was just 9 for 20. Colby actually held the Wildcats to 28 percent shooting in the field in the first half.

If I'm Colby coach Dick Whitmore, I try and schedule either Gonzaga or Georgetown for next season. Heck, play 'em both. Wisconsin coach Bo Ryan should call Whitmore and ask how the Mules managed to keep Curry under 30 points.

Nearly three years to the day prior to playing Colby, Davidson took on the University of Maine at Farmington. On Nov. 24, 2004, the Beavers didn't have nearly as much luck as Colby did in keeping the game close. The final score was Davidson 103, UMaine-Farmington 33.

Lawrence High School graduate Trafton Teague led UMF with 11 points, or five more points than Georgetown's 7-foot-2 center, Roy Hibbert, managed to staple to the Wildcats.

Maybe some day, the University of Maine men's basketball team will make an appearance in the NCAA tournament, and Vacationland fans won't be left to adopt another team. Until that day, which doesn't look close, you could do worse than throw your support behind Davidson.

Your bracket won't thank you, but Bryant Barr just might.

Travis Lazarczyk -- 861-9242

tlazarczyk@centralmaine.com