The Virginia Tech Hokies have made it past the first weekend of the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1967, and the ACC underdog will have a chance Friday night to topple conference rival Duke for the second time this season. The Hokies beat the Blue Devils earlier this season in Blacksburg, though Zion Williamson was not healthy for the game.

Virginia Tech is becoming an NCAA tournament regular under coach Buzz Williams, but some Hokies fans will always wonder what might have been if the school had offered a scholarship to a young and undersized Stephen Curry, the son of Virginia Tech legend Dell Curry.

In a 2014 appearance on ESPN’s Highly Questionable, Curry opened up about his frustrating recruitment process in high school. Curry said that he wanted to follow his father and play for Virginia Tech, and while the school expressed interest early on, the program tried to convince Curry to come to school without a scholarship and redshirt as a freshman.

Dan Le Batard: “If I asked you to go back to the time in your life or your career when you doubted the most, or you had the least confidence, what would you point to?”

Curry: “The beginning of my senior year in high school. I hadn’t gotten really many scholarship offers, and I grew up in Charlotte, so I’m right there in ACC country. Really no teams were coming, and at that point I got a little down. You see guys you play against all the time signing letters to go to major D-I school and all that, and I was still kind of in the whole recruiting process.”

Bomani Jones: “Was it particularly frustrating that Virginia Tech, your father’s alma mater, did not offer you a scholarship?”

Curry: “Yeah, because they were one of the first ones to call, and then nothing ever happened. It kind of added insult to injury telling me ‘you can come on and redshirt and pay your own way to school your first year, and we’ll see what we can do your second year.’ It’s kind of like ‘we like you, but don’t really believe that much in you’ to offer you a full scholarship now…. That definitely hurt the most.”

Curry committed to the Davidson Wildcats in September of 2005, and scored 21.5 points per game as a freshman. The Wildcats nearly knocked off Kansas in the Elite Eight of the 2007 NCAA tournament, and Curry went on to lead the nation in scoring the following year as a junior.

Seth Greenberg, the Hokies’ coach at the time, has said that while he liked Curry, the team couldn’t offer him a scholarship because they had already used up their allotted scholarships on other players.

“We scouted him in high school and recognized his potential, but didn’t have an available scholarship for him to play his freshman season due to several early commitments. We did offer him a 4 year scholarship with plans for him to red shirt his first year at school and laid the groundwork for him to play on scholarship the next four years with the team.”

Virginia Tech, meanwhile, has made the NCAA tournament just four times since passing on Curry in 2005. The Hokies made it to the second round in 2007, and suffered first-round exits in 2017 and 2018.

Despite the family legacy, Stephen Curry’s brother, Seth, will be rooting for the Hokies to fall on Friday night. Seth Curry, another undervalued high school player, went to Liberty for his freshman season and averaged 20 points per game. He then transferred to Duke – and had to sit out the Blue Devils’ 2010 national championship run per NCAA rules. Years later, Curry has carved out an important role with the Portland Trail Blazers.