Friday, February 13, 2009

Could Curry ever score 100??

OK, hear me out on this one.

It was 55 years ago today when Furman's Frank Selvy scored an astounding 100 points in a Furman win over Newberry. Selvy was an awesome college player and a solid NBA one, too, but he needed a lot of help to do it.

For instance: Furman's coach declared it to be "Frank Selvy Day" and catered to Selvy heavily for this one game. When it became obvious Selvy was very hot, the coach pulled out the rest of Furman's starters and instructed Selvy to shoot every time he had the ball. Selvy ended up with 68 attempts.

Newberry helped a lot, too, by shooting every 10-15 seconds or so. I've seen a tape of that game (won by Furman 149-95), and Newberry played pretty terrible defense. Selvy drove to the basket almost anytime he wanted.

OK, so how many could Davidson's Stephen Curry -- the nation's leading scorer in Division I-A and back on track after scoring 39 against Wofford Thursday night -- score under similar circumstances?

That's the subject of what will be my column in Saturday's paper. So here's the scenario I presented Curry and others with -- the closest I could come to what happened with Selvy.

1) Davidson plays VMI (which it doesn't this season, but use your imagination). VMI is renowned for its shoot-first approach, and it routinely plays games where both teams score 90 or 100 points. At least.

2) For one game, Davidson coach Bob McKillop declares it to be "Stephen Curry Day" and lets go of his team-first approach. Instead, Curry shoots constantly -- everyone works for him to get at least 50-60 shots instead of his normal 20-25 attempts. I know McKillop would never do this either, but work with me here, folks.

When I asked Curry about this, he started off by saying: "Well, that'd be a lot of fun, wouldn't it?"

Yes, it would be. Read more about what Stephen Curry, Selvy, McKillop and Dell Curry believe would happen in such a scenario in Saturday's Observer and online.

1 comment:

Rick Cerone said...
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