just like in track recruiting, coaches go after the best available kids. and they use track times as main predictors and then they watch the kid to evaluate further.
some footlocker finalists never amount to anything, and some less than average kids blossom into All Americans. it is not an exact science, but each coach would still take the footlocker finalist over the less than average kid EVERYDAY!
Stephon was small in high school. No one could have predicted how much he would grow in college. Of course he had pedigree in his dad, but that isn't enough for big time schools to give one of only 12 scholarships. (Michael Jordan's son is a walk on at Illinois.)
Now my real question is, why do you NEED a scholarship if you have the kind of money that an NBA player should have. Dell Curry wasn't in the league for a short time. Why is the scholarship so important. If Dell REALLY thought his kid was ACC material, then let him walk on and prove it. Then he would earn the scholarship.
To cut of ties with your school over it shows there is far more ego than finance involved here.
Davidson is the right place for him because noone can say if he went to Va Tech if he would have gotten the reps, or the encouragement needed to develop his game in practice. At Davidson, he was the "man" coming in and just turned out to be WAY better than expected.
Of course all of this is conjecture.