He should stay

Fran Fraschilla:

First of all, Curry has the unique opportunity to build a legacy very few college players in the history of the game could ever achieve. Were he to stay, by the time his career at Davidson was over, he likely would be the NCAA’s second-leading scorer of all time, behind only the legendary “Pistol” Pete Maravich. And as inconceivable as it sounds, he could make a run at the all-time record of 3,667 points by averaging 29.5 points per game over 35 games. It’s not beyond his reach.

Curry already is a rock star and ubiquitous in college basketball circles. In fact, after a brilliant sophomore season that included an incredible NCAA tournament performance that led to Davidson’s Elite Eight run, CBS and ESPN turned him into a national celebrity, and Curry made himself a walking billboard for one of the great private liberal arts institutions in the country.

Gregg hearts Stephen

Doyel:

Stephen Curry is the most durably prolific collegiate scorer of our lifetime, but he has a chance to reach Maravich’s 3,667-point milestone only with two enormous advantages: One, he would have to play four seasons of college, one more than Maravich. Two, he has averaged close to four 3-pointers per game. Had he played in Maravich’s era, before the 3-point arc, Curry wouldn’t be able to come within 500 points of Maravich’s record -- not even in four seasons.

And that’s not a shot at Stephen Curry. I love Stephen Curry, platonically speaking.

More Pistol talk

Dick Jerardi in this morning’s Philly Daily News on Stephen and the Pistol:

If Davidson junior Stephen Curry comes back for his senior season, can average approximately 30 points per game and gets enough games, he has a real chance.

Curry’s NBA plans will be announced after the season. He has played a lot of point guard this season to get ready for the NBA. Anybody who does not think he can play in the NBA is confused. He can, now or some time in the future.

But Curry may want to continue the college experience. Anybody who followed Davidson’s journey last season knows what joy it brought to the team and its followers. That feeling is not something you can take with you to the NBA.

‘Like Pete’

Ken Tysiac in the Observer: Bucky Waters hasn’t watched a college basketball player this eagerly in almost 40 years.

Math

DeCourcy: Davidson graduate Michael Kruse, author of the new book, Taking The Shot: The Davidson Basketball Moment, has done some calculating and determined Wildcats All-American Stephen Curry could become the NCAA’s all-time scoring champ if he completes four seasons. After Davidson’s game against Purdue, Curry has 1,961 career points and at least 22 games left this year (including a minimum of one Southern Conference tournament game and one postseason game). Kruse points out that if Curry could play 60 more games for the Wildcats and average 30 points, he would blow past Pete Maravich’s career total of 3,667 points. Following a tough day Saturday against the Boilermakers, Curry is averaging exactly 30 -- and that’s including that gimmicky zero-point night against Loyola (Md.).

Stephen and the Pistol

David Sink brought it up on DavidsonCats.com.

Bob Huggins brought it up on The Dan Patrick Show.

John Akers brought it up in his cover story in this month’s Basketball Times.

I brought it up, briefly, last month in Staying Stephen in Charlotte mag.

It’s hard not to start doing the math in your head. All of this is totally cart-before-the-horse, but let’s say Stephen stays four years, and let’s say he keeps scoring the way he’s scoring, and let’s say he plays in all of Davidson’s games. Let’s say that’s 60 more games. Let’s say he scores 30 points per. That’s 1,800 points. Add that to the number of points he has now, which is 1,948 going into Purdue.

That’s more than Maravich.

“Pistol” Pete Maravich was not big, 6-foot-3 and 150 pounds in his senior year of high school at Raleigh Broughton, and he was skinny and even gaunt during his years at LSU. But he scored like no one had ever scored before and like no one has ever scored since. He scored from all over the court. The points just piled up. He drew crowds everywhere LSU went. People just had to see him play.

He scored 40 or more 56 times.

He scored 50 or more 28 times.

He scored 3,667 points in his college career, the all-time college record, thought to be all but unbreakable, and he did it in three years because freshmen were ineligible to play varsity back then, and he did it, too, with no three-point line. He averaged more than 44 points a game. What made Maravich all the more compelling was that he didn’t look like he should have been able to do what he did.

Which gets to Stephen.

If he comes back for his senior season the Pistol talk is going to get loud.

But they’re more different than they are alike.

Read Mark Kriegel’s Pistol. Read Phil Berger’s Forever Showtime. Read the stories from Sports Illustrated in the archives on SI.com.

Maravich played, consciously and purposefully, to put on a show.

“If I have a choice whether to do the show or throw the straight pass, and we’re going to get the basket either way,” he told SI in 1969, “I’m going to do the show.

“Sometimes,” he said, “when we start out and I see the play developing, I just want to shout out, ‘Hey, here we go. Hey, everybody watch this.’”

He never won a game in the NCAA tournament.

He never played a game in the NCAA tournament.

In the NBA, he led the league in scoring, and he was an All-Star, but he seldom played on a team that won more than it lost.

The most points he ever scored in a game, college or pro, came against Alabama. He had 69. LSU lost.

He hurt his knee -- the injury that hastened the end of his career -- while throwing a between-the-legs pass on a three-on-oh break.

And then there’s this: He scored a ton of points, and he made a ton of money, but for most of his life he was very, very unhappy. His father was obsessive and pushed him mercilessly. His mother was mentally ill and committed suicide. He drank too much. He drove too fast. He felt old when he wasn’t. In the last few years of his life, before he died of a heart attack, at 40, he found some personal peace, finally. But during his career in the NBA, he often seemed moody or joyless, and he talked at times about aliens and UFOs and at one point painted a message to them on the roof of his condo in Atlanta.

“Take me.”

Pete Maravich played basketball as an escape from who he was.

Stephen Curry plays basketball as an extension of who he is.

They keep coming ...

Huggins: “I don’t think we’ve seen anything like him in college basketball for decades.” Listen here.