Crazy Curry adds

Georgia Southern coach Jeff Price is the latest victim of Stephen Curry’s accurate shooting.

Curry, Davidson’s all-everything sophomore guard, scored 35 points on 13-of-17 shooting in just 26 minutes in a 20-point win over Price’s team to cap the Wildcats’ 20-0 Southern Conference season.

“We didn’t do a good job of finding him in transition,” Price said.

Handing Curry a layup may be wiser than letting him line up a shot from the 3-point line — where he hit 43.7 percent of his attempts.

No other defensive game plan has worked.

He scored at least 10 points in every game this season, including losses against North Carolina, Duke and UCLA — teams that comprise half of the top six ranked teams in the country. Curry, who earned SoCon player of the year honors after averaging 25.3 points per game, is not a secret to opponents. In fact, he’s the focal point.

“I’ve seen zones, junk, man-to-man, variations of man-to-man,” Davidson coach Bob McKillop said. “I couldn’t give you a number, but we’ve seen a lot of different types of defenses.”

That trend is likely to continue beginning Saturday in the Southern Conference tournament when the top-seeded Wildcats face either Wofford or Western Carolina.

With a win there, Davidson would then face either Appalachian State or UNC Greensboro in the semifinals of a tournament the Wildcats are favored to win.

“This is Davidson’s tournament, and we’re lucky to be around to go to it,” University of Tennessee at Chattanooga coach John Shulman said. “If you want to be a champion, you have to go through them.”

Davidson was perfect in the SoCon — it won it’s league games by an average of 16.8 points — but was not uncontested. Elon and UNC Greensboro each had leads late in the second half.

Curry scored Davidson’s final eight points, including the game-winner, at Elon, and he had 41 points at UNCG to help erase a 17-point deficit.

“Maybe they were having a bad game,” Elon coach Ernie Nestor said. “My perspective is that we played well in that game, but we didn’t do enough against a team of that quality.”

Curry and Davidson have garnered enough attention to be ranked No. 25 in the latest AP poll.

“Elon had them beat, and Curry went crazy,” College of Charleston coach Bobby Cremins said. “Greensboro had a great opportunity, then Curry went crazy. I thought Georgia Southern had a shot, and Curry went crazy again.”

Curry almost drove Shulman insane earlier this year. The guard had 27 points in the first half against the Mocs earlier this year. UTC had 26 at the break.

Curry is able to record impressive numbers because he owns a quick, accurate jump shot that has endless range. He reads screens, adapts to defenses and has the genes of his father, former NBA star Dell Curry.

“You have to keep him out of rhythm,” Shulman said. “Sometimes you double, sometimes you play hard — change it up. Once he figures out the one way you’re guarding him, he’s so intelligent that he’ll pick you apart.”