Carsen Edwards breaks Stephen Curry’s record with heroic effort in Elite Eight game
Any time you’re in the same company as Stephen Curry, you’re doing something right.
Carsen Edwards did a whole lot right Sunday in the Elite Eight.
The Purdue Boilermakers’ bowling ball-built, heat check-happy point guard set the KFC Yum! Center on fire with a trip to the Final Four on the line.
Against the No. 1-seed Virginia Cavaliers’ always-excellent defense, Edwards found a solution by shooting a three-pointer any time he found a sliver of space behind the three-point line.
He sprinted around screens. He pulled up from the logo. The guard made up for his generously listed 6-1 frame by shooting without a conscious in traffic, and forcing the defense onto their heels with his ability to barrel into the lane and finish at the rim.
Edwards attempted 19 three-pointers in total and made 10. At least half of those attempts were bad shots, but it didn’t matter.
The Big Ten Conference’s leading scorer poured in 42 in Louisville, Kentucky, for his fifth straight 25-point game in the NCAA Tournament, giving him 139 points in the first four rounds.
The senior also eclipsed Curry’s total of 128 points he scored in the first four rounds of the 2008 NCAA Tournament, when he carried the Davidson Wildcats to the Elite Eight pretty much all by himself and set the previous record for a four-round total.
The degree of difficulty he did it with was as high as it gets.
Purdue wound up losing 80-75 in overtime, but Edwards’ performance — and his performance all week — will go down in history.
Edwards began the Tournament with 26 points in a win against the Old Dominion Monarchs, although it took 23 shots. Two days later, the junior went off for 42 to lead a blowout of the No. 6-seed Villanova Wildcats, the defending national champions.
On Thursday, Edwards got the Boilermakers to the Elite Eight by drawing a foul in the final seconds, then sinking two free throws to force overtime against the No. 2-seed Tennessee Volunteers. He scored 29 points in the overtime win.
In this overtime, Edwards’ shot failed him and he still scored four points with his ability to slither between defenders and find creases to shoot.
He might always remember the turnover in the final seconds, which sealed the win for the Cavaliers. We’ll all remember what he did in the first 44 minutes.
This story was originally published March 30, 2019 at 11:21 PM with the headline "Carsen Edwards breaks Stephen Curry’s record with heroic effort in Elite Eight game."