By Michael Swanger

One of Keno Davis’ earliest memories of basketball is cleaning up sweat and orange juice from the court at Manley Field House in New York during the late ’70s. His father Dr. Tom Davis’ Boston College men’s basketball team was playing there when the host team Syracuse Orangemen’s fans started throwing oranges.

“I was about six years old, working as a towel boy, and wiping up the court,” he said. “I’ll never forget it. I was soaking it up at an early age.”

Not even the sticky mess of disregarded fruit could dissuade Davis’ love of the game or his work ethic. Looking back, Dr. Tom Davis said, there were signs that his son wanted to follow in his footsteps — though no one at the time could have predicted it would be at Drake University in Des Moines.

“When he was small, during my Boston College years, he enjoyed being around the gym and at practice,” said the 68-year-old Davis, who amassed 598 victories during a 32-year coaching career that included head coaching jobs at Lafayette, Stanford, Iowa and Drake. Davis now works as a special assistant to Drake Athletic Director Sandy Hatfield Clubb. “He helped the assistant coaches keep charts and sometimes would do a better job than they would. He even watched game tapes, all of which was somewhat unusual for someone his age… he knew the game.”

Drake Bulldogs men’s basketball fans are counting on the younger Davis’ knowledge and passion for the game to help move the program forward as he succeeds his father. Last season, Dr. Tom Davis guided the Bulldogs to their first winning season (17-15) in 20 years before handing the keys to the Knapp Center to his 35-year-old son on March 22.

At the press conference welcoming Davis, Hatfield Clubb called him “the perfect successor to take us to a new level of success.” Perfect is one thing, but nobody doubts that Davis has the pedigree and credentials to lead the Bulldogs. He served as an assistant coach at Southern Indiana from 1995 to 1997 under coach Bruce Pearl, a former Hawkeye assistant who is now the head coach at Tennessee. Davis then served six years as an assistant coach under former Drake head coach Gary Garner at Southeast Missouri State, before joining his father’s staff as an assistant at Drake in 2003. Along the way, he has written or co-authored two books, including 1994’s “Camp Success!” and 2004’s “Pressure Defense.”

Humble, like his father, though, Davis credits his former bosses for his success.

“There are a lot of things I learned from Coach Pearl and Coach Garner, but the thing they both had was a focus on building the program and winning and doing things the right way. They were incredibly focused on that, even though they went about it different ways,” he said.

Naturally, Davis said, his father also taught him much, both on and off the court.

“On the court, I think a lot of fans having watched his team play for years will agree there weren’t many games where you walked away, win or lose, and said they got out-worked,” Davis said. “Off the court, it’s been his relationship with his players. It was a big impact on my life and career to see how he would react with the players, and I think if I had to pinpoint one thing that would be his honesty with them. If you’re completely honest with a player — where you see them, what they need to do — they’ll play hard for you and they’ll appreciate the honesty.”

That kind of wisdom, Hatfield Clubb said, is an example of what made Davis a slam-dunk to become Drake’s new head coach.

“I’ve been really impressed. He makes very thoughtful and strategic decisions like an experienced coach,” she said. “Some young coaches tend to go too fast or be too eager, but he seems to be patient and can see the whole picture, which is a huge value.”

KXNO’s Larry Cotlar, the Bulldogs’ play-by-play announcer, said Davis has paid his dues and deserves the job.
“He knows the game,” Cotlar said. “He’s been groomed for this role, but this isn’t a case of nepotism. He’s very dedicated. He’s a good teacher and a good guy to be around. You can have fun with him. Like his dad, he doesn’t take himself so seriously, which is why people like him. There’s no ego.”

Klayton Korver, a senior forward from Pella and one of the stars of the Bulldogs team, said Davis is thriving in his new role as head coach.

“When he first got here he was more quiet, but the more I got to know him I’ve found we can talk about anything, whether it’s basketball or life,” he said. “He runs things like his dad did so there’s not a lot of change. He’s level headed and doesn’t get too high or too low. When he yells at you, you know it’s something to think about.”

He also brings a lot of energy for a “young coach,” said Korver, who in this year’s Drake media guide was voted runner-up among his teammates as most likely to become head coach behind senior guard Adam Emmenecker, and cites “Transformers” as his favorite movie.

“Well, he’s not really that young, he’s 35,” Klayton quipped. “Dr. Tom had a lot of energy for an older guy.”

Energy, by the way, isn’t a concern for Davis. He and his wife, Krista, welcomed their first child this week. “Coaches don’t sleep anyway, so I’m ready,” he said.

To win in the resurgent Missouri Valley Conference, however, Davis knows it takes more than energy when you’re competing against the likes of Southern Illinois, Creighton, Northern Iowa and Wichita State. Eight teams that advanced to 2007 postseason play are on Drake’s schedule this year. The Bulldogs finished seventh in the Missouri Valley last season, and haven’t finished above .500 in conference games since 1986. Davis said it takes a team effort from the president, boosters, athletic director, coaches, players, and sometimes even the fans, to succeed.

“It’s hard to win at Drake,” he said. “If it wasn’t we would have done it the last 20 years because there have been a lot of good coaches who have been through Drake and haven’t been able to win. We’ve won just once in four years. It’s not like we came in here and out-coached everybody.”

Recruiting top-notch players to a program that has been rich in coaching talent, but unable to post a winning record for 20 years until last season, has been difficult Davis said for himself, Associate Head Coach Chris Davis, assistant coach Justin Ohl and new assistant coach and former Hawkeye player Rodell Davis. Combine that with Drake possessing the highest academic standards in the Missouri Valley and it can test the mettle of any coach.

“We’ve had to sell our recruits on what Drake’s going to be like when they get here, not on what Drake’s been like the last 20 years,” Davis said. “Our recruiting class this year is the most talented and everyone in the department deserves credit for that. The guys already in our program have worked extremely hard to get up to this level, so it’s a nice mix. Hopefully those guys that have shown the work ethic will rub off on the more talented younger players coming in and we can look back and say ‘Here’s where it started.’”

With that said, Davis believes that Drake can return to its winning ways it enjoyed during the eras of Red Murrell, Willie McCarter and Lewis Lloyd. He hasn’t set any specific goals for this year’s team in terms of the number of wins or an NCAA or NIT tournament birth, only that he wants the team to improve each week. But you can bet post-season play is on his mind. The last year Drake reached the Final Four was 1969.

“I know the players have high expectations,” Davis said. “When we get into the Missouri Valley, it’s going to be a big unknown. You’ve got five new coaches in the conference and a lot of young talent, but not a lot of experience. When we got here we didn’t know the league would have its best four-year run in a long time.

“Nonetheless, I like our talent. Before we were just trying to compete in the league. Now we’ve got enough talent to make some noise.”

Passing the torch

Like a lot of coaches, Davis said he was better at drawing up game plans than he was at executing them as a player. “I think most coaches go into the profession because they need to fulfill their competitive drive,” he said.

Davis played basketball at Iowa City West High School and garnered some interest from a few small colleges. Realizing his playing days were numbered and convinced he wanted to someday become a head coach, he enrolled at Iowa where his father was coaching the Hawkeyes, studied communications, and joined a group of scrubs that practiced with the team on the road, guarding Andre Woolridge and other Hawkeye players. Davis said the experience was invaluable because he began to better understand the relationship between coaches and players.

“I was getting it from both sides, and I could see the things the coaches were doing to get the players motivated and how it was affecting the players,” he said. “I don’t think I can underestimate how important it was for me to be a part of that team during those four years.”

His parents, however, had other ideas about his future.

“I think we tried to discourage him from coaching,” Dr. Tom Davis said. “Both his mother [Shari] and I felt he should try to explore his options. He has a good mathematical mind and we could see him in a business career easily. But he had made up his mind, so we didn’t object to his decision.”

Davis soon set out to work his way from the bottom up the coaching ranks on his own merit, knowing that along the way comparisons to his father were inevitable.

“Growing up the son of Tom Davis I’ve never known anything different,” he said.

Davis looks, talks, smiles and acts like his father. He even developed a love of golf from his father, though he admits “I’m not as a good as my father — he loves to practice; I love to play, so he’s about 10 strokes better than me.” The similarities are so uncanny that Cotlar said last year he considered holding a contest to see if listeners could tell the difference between the two men on the air.

Personal characteristics aside, there are other commonalities between the two men when it comes to coaching basketball. Both preach pressure defense, fast breaks, hard work and team ball. “The only difference he seems to stress a little more man-to-man defense,” Korver said. “And you might see us shoot more three’s this year.”

Davis has even taken a page from his father’s approach to managing players.

“You treat everyone different,” he said. “Different things make different people tick. There’s certain players, if you don’t get after them every single second of the day they don’t produce for you and they’re not going to push themselves. Other guys you don’t need to say a word to and if you do it sometimes hurts them and they get frustrated. It’s helped me being at Drake as an assistant coach because I’ve got a pretty good handle on how to motivate our guys.”

Hatfield Clubb said that kind of familiarity has helped create a smooth transition from one Davis to the next. “They have such a wonderful relationship,” she said. “It’s been neat to observe the father-son relationship. I feel privileged to be part of it. They’re men of great integrity.”

Maintaining integrity can be difficult when faced with the pressure of winning.

“It’s important because the longevity of a coach isn’t very high,” Davis said. “There’s so much money involved and pressure from boosters and what not that sometimes I think administrators make rash judgments because they feel like if they fire a coach they can get a big donation or a quick spike in ticket sales.

“We’re a product of the money in college athletics. When you hear about a coach making $2 million a year to be a college basketball coach it’s out of hand. But on the other side, when you hear about a coach that’s there for one year and gets fired for not winning, it’s out of hand the other direction. There’s two extremes out there and you’d like for them to be somewhere in the middle.”

Because Drake is a private university, school officials aren’t required to reveal Davis’ salary under open-records laws. Salaries for coaches in the Missouri Valley can vary from $150,000 per year for Ben Jacobson at UNI to nearly $1 million for Dana Altman at Creighton, not counting endorsements, media stipends and other incentives. Seven of the conference’s coaches reportedly earn less than $500,000.

Still, no amount of money can relieve the headaches coaches sometimes endure, especially when it comes to off-the-court issues like problems with players’ academics and behavior, the media and fans.

“You have to understand that’s the profession you’ve chosen and people are going to say things you’re not going to agree with,” Davis said. “And that’s OK. That’s the way it is. Unfortunately, it’s difficult for players to understand that because you’re talking about 18- and 19-year-old young men who react to negative criticism in the wrong way.”

Ultimately, Davis knows that he will be judged by his team’s record. He said a few lucky or unlucky bounces of the ball could easily account for a five-game swing in a team’s record.

“You hope as a coach you have the time to develop your program in the right way and that’s by bringing in good kids and graduating them and treating people fairly,” he said. “And that you would hope that if you do that you would have enough time to put a winning product on the court.” CV

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