If Joe Alleva is smart, I mean, if he wanted people to think he was smart, he would hire Mike Davis as the new head basketball coach. Over his 17-year coaching career, Mike Davis holds a 335-219 record at Indiana, UAB, and Texas Southern. His accomplishments include an NCAA title game appearance, eight total NCAA tourney appearances, six regular season championships, three conference tournament championships and 2014-15 SWAC Coach of the Year.
If the numbers aren’t convincing enough, that’s okay. Davis has more than just a few stats on his side; he has learned from the best. Davis is part of the Bob Knight coaching tree and eventually succeeded Knight at Indiana. He also played under coaching legends C.M. Newton and Wimp Sanderson at Alabama, where he won the team’s Hustle Award all four seasons and was selected as a member of the Southeastern Conference’s All-Defensive team his senior year.
Davis might not be the flashy name some are hoping to hire, but he brings strategic prowess and a commitment to winning that the team needs them desperately.
These attributes are best represented by Davis’ quote after his team’s upset of Tom Izzo’s Michigan State team: “We want to play as many games as possible after December 11th. That’s when the first semester is over … It’s better for us because your students are gone.”
Davis did just that when he scheduled to play the University on Dec. 17, 2016 in Baton Rouge. Unfortunately for Davis, his team fell just short of a win in the PMAC, not that it would have boosted his team’s strength of schedule very much. The point is, a coach that puts that amount of effort into scheduling is a coach who will ensure that a commitment to winning is brought back to the team. As a side note, his players’ intensity served as a testimony to his ability to get the most out of his players, something that will be important given our talented returning roster and incoming class.
Hopefully the next time he’s in the PMAC, he’ll be coaching the Tigers to victory. Davis would be doing us a favor if he accepted the job, given our dismal season and considering next year he’ll be returning all five of his top scorers. However, his current salary leads me to imagine a scenario in which he will graciously accept the job without the University having to break the bank. Sadly, Alleva will probably overpay someone with very little tangible success as a head coach. The coaching search would be over if there were already one on staff with a good Cajun accent.
On Friday, Davis leads the nation’s shortest team into a David and Goliath matchup against number one-seeded North Carolina, providing him with a great opportunity to make me look like I know what I’m talking about.
Matthew Hutchins is a 20-year-old petroleum engineering sophomore from Birmingham, Alabama.