Tuesday, September 5, 2023

CLASSIC KU vs Va Tech Finish - 2002 Champs vs. Steph Curry's Dad

Scroll to the bottom of this blog for the phenomenal final 6 minutes of this classic match-up between the 2022 national champs from Kansas and the underdogs - but always dangerous with Stephen Curry's Dad on the court, Virginia Tech Hokies of 1986. I started posting this chronologically, but the wrap up of the final 10 possessions was a classic.

A couple of notes as Virginia Tech 1986 and Dell Curry take the court against Kansas 2022 champs.

Note the two dimes on Dell Curry mean he gets the ball on not only a 1, but also a 6 or 7 on the 8-sided die. Those should be the numbers by "Gets Ball On" but sometimes a 6 and 7 combine to a 0 in the cards, so will fix that. At the outset if the game the other cards are all pennies so they cover the 2 (George Caesar), 3 (Tim Anderson), 4 (Bobby Beecher) and 5 (Phil Williams) but there is no extra dime on the court at the outset to get the ball on an "8." Therefore if an 8 appears on the 8-sided die the dice are all rolled again but in the second row only a 1-5 go to that positive while a 6-8 are all shot clock violation turnovers.

On the Kansas side they actually too many dimes at the outset so you must choose two dimes between Christian Braun, Ochai Agbaji and there are two dimes for Remy Martin (6&7). Braun is actually a slightly worse shooter than the other two, so we will start the game with him only getting the ball on a 1, Martin on a 2, 6 or 7, Agbaji on a 3 or 8, Jalen Coleman-Lands on a 4 and Mitch Lightfoot in a 5. However, Martin plays possessions 44-26, so once the top line is in from 25-1 Braun will get the ball on a 6 and center David McCormack will get the ball on an 8.

Keep in mind the 6, 7 and 8 are all interchangeable, so if you had one player who was a 1&6 and another who was a 2&6 then you can just make the second player a 2&7 before starting to roll.





Also note that another reason we want to get a game played for every team is to catch anything missing on the cards. For some reason a few.of the positions did not print so I added them in writing. Also I had not added suggested possessions on the bottom of the Kansas cards so figured them out and wrote them in - and will add all these to the cards.

Game results will be posted below.

1st half. After two possessions for each team Dell Curry and Ochai Agbaji both had 1 steal and 1 blocked shot in a 0-0 tie (really 20-20 since we start the game there). With 38 possessions to play in the game Agbaji hit a trey to give Kansas their first lead at 31-29, then Curry hit a trey to give Virginia Tech a 32-31 lead. At the buzzer at the end of the first half Remy Martin his a trey on the way to the locker room for a 38-36 lead.

Kansas the better team but in hoops the underdog wins about one in three games unless.ine if the teams is much lower rated, which none of the teams in our game are.

2nd half. 

On the 10th possession (counting down to 1) KUs Dajuan Harris fouled out on a Dell Curry 3-point attempt, joining Jayhawks star Ochai Agbaji who fouled out earlier.

Curry, Stephen Curry's dad, sank all three free throws and the upset minded 1986 Virginia Tech team led 71-70 against the suddenly short-handed Jayhawks.

The Jayhawks put capable backups in the game with excellent 6th man Remy Martin and to take advantage of the Hokies weaker rebounding a second big man in 6-foot-8 Mitch Lightfoot on the court the same time as starting center 6-foot-10 David McCormack and moving 6-foot-8 Jalen Wilson to small forward. 

The problem is that Marin already used up his stamina (15) as did Lightfoot (9) so both would play the last 10 possessions with reduced effectiveness, meaning every die roll of any type would be adjusted one against them. So Martin's normal potent shooting on the 20-sided dies of 1-3 three-pointer made, 4-8 two-pointer made and 9-11 fouled and two shots would be reduced to 1-2, 3-7 and 8-10. Likewise the team dunk range of 51-65 for Kansas for the game on the two 6-sided dice would be reduced to 51-64 when either he or Lightfoot had the ball. For Lightfoot, he is defensive process of a 21-26, 32 highest blocked shot range possible would be reduced to 21-26 (meaning he could not block other players shots like a 32 can do) and his offensive rebounding would change from 1-6 to 1-5 and defensive from 1-4 to 1-3 etc.

An upset was brewing, and with 7 possessions left Curry hit a 3-pointer to make it 74-72 Hokies.

However, McCormack and Lightfoot, not normally big scorers, both grabbed offensive rebounds on consecutive trips. McCormack scored on his to tie it 76-76, and then Lightfoot was fouled on his and while Kansas fans would have been holding their breath, the 50% free throw shooter (1-10 free throw made, 11-20 missed reduced by 1 since tired to 1-9) hit them both for a 78-76 Kansas lead.

The with 4 possessions left, we had the play of the game. Curry (21 points, 4 steals) had the ball with a chance to tie toe score at 80. The 6 on the 8-sided die goes to Curry, and the 20-sided die was a game-tying basket unless stopped by something on the 11-66 defensive dice. That number was 22. The rules stipulate that if the 8-sided die is a 1-5 then only the player guarding the player with the ball can steal or block a shot but if the player got the ball on a 6, 7 or 8 then team defense comes into play and any player can block the shot but on a 22 only a player with at least a 21-26 block range. Despite Lightfoot's block range being reduce by 1 due to being tired, his 21-26 was enough for a block of Curry on a 22, and on possession 4 the rebound automatically goes to the Power Forward, so he grabbed that as well. 

Virginia Tech had to foul to create the extra possessions and Kansas hit their free throws to escape with an 87-81 win to advance.

While the game was closer than expected, that does not necessarily mean Kansas cannot run through this tournament. In our first 96-team tournament, Michael Jordan needed to score on the final possession in UNC's 1st and 2nd game of the tournament to sneak out wins - but then they won three more games to make the title game before losing to Bill Walton's UCLA. 

Kansas rating drops from 7.4 to 5.3 to drop from 25th to 39th on the all-time list, while the 1997 and 2008 Jayhawks rank 2nd and 3rd all time behind Bill Walton's 1972 UCLA team in our game. Virginia Tech improves from a -9.8 to -7.9 to improve from 168th to 164th all time. Our system works just like Ken Pomeroy's except that in addition to the point margin and stretch of schedule, the winner gets an extra +5 and the lose loses and extra -5, so an upset even by one point would have shot Virginia Tech up to a -3.9 and 131st place.

Here is the box score, picture of our scoresheet, and the links to play your own games for free.

2022 Kansas 87, 1986 Virginia Tech 81

PosPTVirginia Tech 1986PtsRebStlBlkFouls
1-PG46Dell Curry215413
2-SG26Johnny Fort22102
3-SF42Keith Colbert92201
4-PF44Bobby Beecher188012
5-C26Dave Burgess83112
1-PG16George Caesar71004
2-SG7Mark Whitaker41101
3-SF13Tim Anderson22002
4-PF11Phil Williams82011
5-C9Roy Brow22001
 240Hokies Totals81289419
  Turnnovers 12     
        
PosPTKansas 2022PtsRebStlBlkFouls
1-PG29Dajuan Harris81205
2-SG46Christian Braun123101
3-SF22Ochai Agbaji133305
4-PF35Jalen Wilson75022
5-C27David McCormack167023
1-PG4Joseph Yesufu22001
2-SG41Remy Martin123001
3-SF8Jalen Coleman-Lands22001
4-PF8Zach Clemence63002
5-C20Mitch Lightfoot97023
 240Jayhawks Totals87366624
  Turnovers 13    

Click on the Value Add Basketball Game for everything you need to play the game for free. We added a couple of dozen teams, several from 2022 and 2023, and broke the teams into four lists because the file was opening and printing slowly for some people. Start by choosing two teams to play, click on the appropriate link below, and print the page number indicated for the team.

Click on the all-time great women's teams (we are just starting to have enough stats to make women's cards based on the great work by basketball reference, and will keep adding more teams as they fill in stats.

Men's Teams:

List A - Alabama 1977 to Georgia Tech 2004 (accidentally put UCF here under "Central Florida" for now






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