That old line about the camera adding 10 pounds? With Steph Curry, it subtracts 10 years, accentuating his middle schoolish features and underestimating his stature. Or maybe it's that he has grown since torching Georgetown's Hoyas for 25 points in one half. That's what he'd say. Curry was 6-1 1/2 , 160 pounds in high school, but he insists he is "a legit 6-3 now."

"Last year, about once a week he would wake up in the morning and tell me he was taller than I was," says Barr, who is 6-4. "We would go to the mirror, barefoot, and measure. And I would clearly be taller."

Of course, there are other ways to grow while attending college. Paulhus Gosselin's father imports gourmet cheese in Montreal. "I love cheese, and I asked my father to send me some, and since he doesn't do anything halfway, he sent me 30 pounds," Max says. So the third Saturday in September is declared Cheese Night for Davidson basketball.

"Are you going to have American cheese there?" Curry asks, laughing. "Because I'm all about the Kraft Singles."

The legend is Virginia Tech offered Curry only a walk-on spot while recruiting him. Dell Curry was one of the school's greatest players, and Steph's mother, Sonya, was a volleyball star for the Hokies. "I always wanted to go to Virginia Tech growing up," Stephen says. The Tech coaches spent their three available scholarships on other prospects, though, before sitting down with the Currys and offering Stephen the chance to walk on one year and then be placed on scholarship. They told him if an opening developed before he enrolled, he'd be on full ride throughout.

"It makes a better story the way they're telling it," says Hokies coach Seth Greenberg. "We were the only ACC school that made a home visit. He wanted to go somewhere and play right away, and he picked the perfect school."

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It's interesting that Curry was evaluated during his high school days primarily as a point guard, where he has had his share of adventures. McKillop remembers watching Curry in an AAU tournament in Las Vegas where "he made mistake after mistake with the ball, but he never made a mistake in terms of his energy, his teamwork, his attention to the coach." After he had played five college games, Curry was averaging 21.2 points -- and 7.2 turnovers.

When Curry showed up last offseason to try out for the U.S. junior national team, head coach Jerry Wainwright of DePaul asked if he'd ever played point. "He brought up that in his first D-I game, he had 13 turnovers," Wainwright says. "I said, 'It's not often a guy commits a capital offense and admits it.' "

Last season, Curry brought his turnovers down to 2.6 per game, but he still must do a better job of taking care of the ball. Like his dad before him, though, Curry has mastered the art of shooting. Dell did the Butch Harmon thing with Steph's jump shot before his junior year at Charlotte Christian, persuading him to quit firing from his hip and launch shots like a real man. Steph wasn't allowed to shoot from outside the lane for an entire summer. It was one of two times he thought about giving up the game. "I figured it out just in time," he says.

Now, Curry's shot is so sweet it romances the goal with everything but flowers and Barry White music. "I did some rebounding for him at the Paul Pierce camp," says ESPN analyst Fran Fraschilla, who coached this summer at several of the Nike instructional camps. "You could just stand underneath the rim and put your hand out, and the ball was going to come through the center."

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This move to the point is an obvious challenge, though. Curry needs to do more than enhance his ballhandling and decision making. He is in the rare and problematic circumstance of needing to both run the offense and be the offense. McKillop stresses that Davidson's system allows the three perimeter positions to be interchangeable, which means once Curry initiates a halfcourt attack he'll look very much like the player he was a year ago -- constantly running around screens, trying to get open for jump shots.

"That can mentally wear on you," Fraschilla says. "But there's no coach in basketball I have more confidence in utilizing a player as gifted as Stephen Curry than Bob McKillop."

The pros are concerned, also. "I'm a little bit worried about the transition he's trying to make because it's such a difficult one," says an NBA Eastern Conference scout. "It's going to take away from what he did so well."

There is the danger a struggle during this transition could diminish Curry's production and damage Davidson's drive for a fourth consecutive NCAA appearance. And this challenge may be exactly what he needs. For two seasons at Davidson, he thrived on being overlooked and undervalued. He says he doesn't put a lot of pressure on himself to prove people wrong. His dad says Steph is "relishing this opportunity."

Now the basketball world will be watching, closely. That may be the biggest change of all.

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