LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Purdue guard Carsen Edwards said Friday his phone "kind of blew up a little bit" after his name was linked to Stephen Curry's in NCAA tournament lore.
Edwards scored 29 points on Thursday in the Boilermakers' Sweet 16 overtime win over Tennessee, marking the fourth straight NCAA tournament game in which Edwards has scored at least 25 points. The last player to score 25 or more points in four consecutive NCAA tournament games? Curry, who had a five-game streak when he was at Davidson in 2007 and 2008.
"Honestly, I feel like I haven't really done enough yet to consider my name getting thrown around with Steph Curry," Edwards said. "But just kind of the stats was something similar to his. For the most part, I don't look at it like my name's thrown around with Steph Curry. Just a cool statistic I was able to do in the last four games."
When Edwards was first informed of the stat on Thursday night, he had a slightly different reaction.
"Oh man. That's pretty dope. I didn't know that," he said. "It's a blessing to be here and have an opportunity to play at this level and play with a bunch of good guys and a good staff that believes in me. I'm just happy to be here, man. I just want to continue to play. When it comes down to it, I don't even really care about the points, man. I just want to win."
In addition to the 29 points Edwards scored on Thursday, he also put up 42 points in the second round against Villanova and 26 in the first round against Old Dominion. He scored 30 points in last year's Sweet 16 loss to Texas Tech.
"He's got a quick release. He's aggressive," Purdue coach Matt Painter said after Thursday's win. "So if you get up into him, he's going to drive the basketball. If you give him space, he's going to shoot. Just a dynamic scorer. He's very confident. He's got a short memory. I think that really helps him in situations like this, where he can miss three, four, five, six shots in a row and he's going to keep coming back at you and keep getting there."
Purdue (26-9), a 3-seed, faces top-seed Virginia (32-3) on Saturday night in the South regional final.
