NCAA Basketball: Revisiting Stephen Curry’s strangest college game ever

The Game: Davidson def. Loyola (MD) 78-48

Here’s where things get weird. Davidson crushed the Greyhounds by 30 points and led by 22 at half. Given the final score and Curry’s scoring average at this point, one would likely conclude that the junior had put forth yet another scorching offensive performance.

Stephen Curry scored zero points. He only took three shots in 32 minutes played. What???

Jimmy Patsos’ grand defensive plan for this game was to prevent Stephen Curry from touching the ball by double-teaming him for the entirety of the contest. If Davidson was going to beat the Greyhounds, it wasn’t going to be on the back of their star guard. From tip-off, Loyola employed a ‘triangle-and-two’ defense with two men assigned to Curry, leaving their other three on-floor players to guard four Wildcats.

Rather than just utilize this defense for a few possessions to keep the offense off balance, as is customary with the triangle-and-two, Patsos played it the entire game. You don’t need to be an expert in basketball strategy to recognize that this wasn’t (and probably never will be) a winning game plan. Once Curry figured out Loyola was determined to not let him get open for shot attempts, he simply parked himself in the corner, leaving his team to play four-on-three for the rest of the game. Even when Davidson went up by 22 at half, Patsos continued his triangle-and-two until the final buzzer.

Davidson did just fine in the 4v3 scenario as senior forward Andrew Lovedale scored 20 while junior guard Bryant Barr added 18 of his own to lead the 30-point triumph. The Wildcats shot 43% from the field and 52% from beyond the arc, which makes a lot of sense considering they always had a man open.

It was Stephen Curry’s only scoreless game in his college career and became the first time a team had held the nation’s leading scorer to zero points. Mission accomplished, I guess.