Curry creates another moment

It took Stephen Curry 35 minutes to finally hit his stride against West Virginia. AP Luke Winn's Mailbag Have questions or feedback? E-mail Luke Winn. Name: Email: Hometown: Question: SEND Follow Luke Winn on Twitter

NEW YORK -- Stephen Curry was sleepy-eyed when he walked into an empty Madison Square Garden on Tuesday morning, jet-lagged from the previous night's flight, dragging from the 39 minutes he played against NC State on Saturday, when he scored 44 points and kept courtside spectator LeBron James entertained, no easy task. During Davidson's 11 a.m shoot-around, Curry yawned, rubbed his eyes, rubbed his face, and got yelled at by an assistant coach to "Wake up!"

Curry never really did. At the end of the workout, he walked over to the bench and reached for the miniature box of Frosted Flakes he'd brought in with him -- breakfast for the late-riser -- and accidentally knocked it onto the floor. That was his first turnover of the day.

By 7 p.m., when Curry and the 23rd-ranked Wildcats tipped off against West Virginia in the Jimmy V Classic, the Garden was packed.

The crowd was there to see him. Bigger games with bigger schools had been played at MSG already this season, and people hadn't turned out like this. Duke and UCLA were in the 2K Sports Classic in mid-November. Two-for-one tickets were on sale and the place was still only half-full. Purdue and Oklahoma were in the NIT Season Tip-Off on Thanksgiving weekend. You could count the fans who showed up. The recession, everyone said, was the reason no one was buying tickets. Stephen Curry appears to be the only college basketball player capable of beating the recession.

The Curry-mania that was born last March, with a Cinderella NCAA tournament run that featured wins over Gonzaga, Georgetown and Wisconsin, and Curry as a national scoring hero, has not waned. Said Curry, "I think the army is growing in our favor."

The expectations keep growing, too. Everyone wants their own Curry Moment. And they can't get one when he's sleepwalking. He missed his first shot of the game, made his second, and then, he said, "it was downhill from there." Curry went 4-of-15 from the field in the first half for 10 points, and was just 1-of-9 from beyond the arc. He did have eight assists, though, and Davidson led 36-29 at the break, but his body language -- slumped shoulders, and plenty of irritated fiddling with his mouthpiece -- suggested they were down 10.

Curry's father, Dell, a sharpshooter retired from 16 seasons in the NBA, looked on from a mid-level section of the Garden. An NBA scout, walking up through Dell's section, paused and silently handed Dell a copy of the halftime box score. He looked it over. The eight assists were the best thing on there.

"He better have some assists," Dell said of Stephen. "He's not making any baskets."

Dell was hardly the lone recognizable face in the crowd. Warren Sapp had stopped by to be a Witness, just like LeBron was on Saturday (although Curry wasn't pointing to Sapp after threes). Other famous names were there in a working capacity. Like Chris Mullin, the general manager of the Warriors, and Pat Riley, president of the Miami Heat. Never mind that every ACC school passed on Dell's son out of high school in Charlotte; he's a legitimate first-round prospect now. Scores of anonymous NBA scouts were looking on, too.

It should be noted that Curry did hit a second three before leaving the floor after the first half -- only it came after the buzzer. And on the wrong basket. He grabbed the rebound of Devin Ebanks' desperation heave, and then stood at the top of the key, sighting in the rim, as everyone else was walking off the floor. Curry toyed with his mouthpiece for a second, then calmly swished the shot on the basket he'd be using for the game's final 20 minutes. He admitted having been as frustrated as he'd ever been in a game -- "You started wondering what's going on, if it's not your night," he said -- but his teammates, like forward Andrew Lovedale, who had 10 first-half points, kept saying the same thing: "Just keep shooting."

West Virginia had taken the lead, at 56-53, by the time Curry drained his second actual three. It was on his 14th attempt, with 4:56 left in the second half. The Mountaineers had been doing a number on him defensively, switching screens and using long-armed menaces such as John Flowers, who's 6-foot-7 and outweighs Curry by 18 pounds (if you believe that Curry weighs 185, as it says on Davidson's roster).

Once he had tied the game at 56-56, though, there was a sense that Curry was finally coming awake. The crowd began calling for its Curry Moment. The kids in the Villanova section, waiting for their game against Texas that followed, got on the Curry bandwagon. It seemed as if 95 percent of the Garden -- all but the pocket of Mountaineers fans behind their bench -- was pleading with him to do as his teammates said, and Keep Shooting.

This was Curry's first game at the Garden, and although Dell had visited there in each of his 16 seasons as a pro, with the Jazz, Cavaliers, Hornets, Bucks and Raptors, he refrained from telling his son any stories about the place. "I wanted him to have his own memories," Dell said.

Davidson coach Bob McKillop, after the game, would use that word too: "It's wonderful," he said, "to have these experiences in a place like this, or Bobcat Arena, or last year with Duke, Carolina, NC State and UCLA, because you always create memories."

Curry creates more memories, or moments, than most. Two minutes after that slump-breaking three, he stripped the ball from WVU's Cam Thoroughman, dribbled up the floor and hit a pull-up jumper to tie the game again, at 58-58. And with 1:09 left in the game, he drilled another three, this time with a foot on the NBA line, after Lovedale found him open when Da'Sean Butler overplayed a perimeter cut. This slimmed West Virginia's lead to 62-61, setting the stage for Curry's army to get its money's worth.

Last week Curry had been working on a new move, one aimed at creating a bit of space to launch his three-point shot off the dribble. The way he shoots -- with a quick, beautiful flick -- he doesn't need much room, but anything helps against a 6-7 defender. Curry said it was something "to kind of keep the defender on his heels ... to get him going to the basket and rise up over him."

Thirty-nine seconds left in a two-point game, in front of a packed Garden on national television, seemed like as good a time as any for its debut. And so, after Lovedale stuffed a shot by Butler on the other end, Curry corralled the ball and took it up to the floor to the right wing, opposite from where he'd hit his previous three. Flowers manned up on him. "I'm sitting there with the ball in my hand," Curry said, "and he's staring at me."

Curry dashed left and paused, without picking up his dribble, and dashed right, left, and right again in quick succession. He pulled up and flicked over Flowers, who was a couple of feet back. There was no doubt where it would fall, and after it swished, Curry fell back into press row. With no LeBron to gesture to, he improvised, flashing a few Villanova fans a wide-eyed stare. As if to say, Was that what you were waiting for?

His stat line contained the good (27 points, 10 assists, 40 minutes played) and the bad (eight turnovers and 9-of-27 shooting from the field). The final score would read 68-65 in Davidson's favor. But all they would remember was how the latest Curry Moment unfolded. A new move led to a familiar shot -- and a new memory, oh so familiar to the old ones.

"I guess," Curry said sheepishly, "that's how it happens."

He had put Flowers on his heels, and then lulled him to sleep.