When Mike Davis woke up Thursday morning, his 7-year-old son, Antoine, was crying at the thought of Dad no longer being the basketball coach at Indiana University.
The boy’s tears stopped with a little bargaining.
“I figured out that all he wanted was some toys,” Davis said, using laughter to break the tension at the Assembly Hall news conference at which he announced his resignation effective the end of this season.
In the same way Davis used toys to cheer up his son, the $800,000 Indiana will pay him helped ease the pain of walking away with two years left on a contract from a job that never fit comfortably.
“Please don’t be sad for me,” Davis said. “This is like the MasterCard commercial. It’s priceless what God has given me, to be the head basketball coach here.”
Around campus, Davis’ going-away gift was being hailed as the wisest use of university funds since the last John Mellencamp concert.
As of Thursday night, 77 percent of students responding to the Indiana Daily Student online poll said they were happy Davis was leaving.
A pickup truck in Assembly Hall’s parking lot with “Get Alford” painted on its windshield and passenger-side window summed up the prevailing sentiment all over Monroe County.
Online posters to the message board at www.firemikedavis.com rejoiced that “the darkness was over.”
This was the schism in the basketball program Davis was aware of every day he drove to work and before every Hoosiers game, an empty feeling that had gnawed at him ever since he replaced legend Bob Knight in September 2000.
A feeling that ultimately brought him to the podium again Thursday.
“It is time for this program to be united,” Davis said, sounding more relieved than disappointed. “I just felt like it was time for the former players, the fans, the alumni and everyone who loves Indiana basketball to be a part of Indiana basketball again.”
When Knight was fired by then-Indiana President Myles Brand, now NCAA president, 2,000 students marched in protest and hung Brand in effigy at a campus rally.
The reaction was so visceral and potentially violent for some longtime Knight supporters that Brand’s wife, Peg, had to teach her philosophy class with policemen in the room.
In contrast, current Indiana President Adam Herbert’s wife, Karen, might have been the safest and most popular woman in town Thursday after her husband presided over the removal of a coach whom Hoosiers fans never fully accepted.
“I’m not really sure [Davis] was given a fair shot from a fan standpoint,” said fifth-year senior Sean Kline, first recruited by Knight.
Davis did not help matters by being one Mike that was always on, delivering unfiltered comments that portrayed him as something between a persecuted basketball martyr and a self-pitying adolescent.
As far back as Dec. 22, 2000, barely into his first season as Knight’s “interim” replacement, Davis whined after losing to Kentucky that “I’m not the guy for this job.”
The following season, on the eve of the Hoosiers’ 2002 NCAA championship game against Maryland, Davis floated the idea of bolting Bloomington for an NBA job.
Hoosiers who consider the Indiana head basketball coach deity interpreted Davis’ heart-pouring honesty as the rants of an ungrateful interloper.
Whether it was coaching paranoia or acute awareness, Davis came to believe his fan base hoped the Hoosiers would fail so someone bred within the Indiana basketball family could replace him.
“I was here as an assistant coach [under Knight] when we would go play a game and 50 people send us off to the bus, or we’d walk out in the hotel lobby and it was packed with Indiana fans,” Davis said. “But since I’ve been here, that has not been the case and that should be the case.”
He came to that conclusion the night of Nov. 30 walking onto the Assembly Hall court before the Duke game as a buzz filled the building unlike any Davis had felt since Knight occupied the throne.
“I thought, `It should be like this every night,'” Davis said, knowing the only way it could be would be if he left. “I really made my mind up I wouldn’t come back before the Illinois game [on Jan. 17].”
Davis initiated a discussion with Herbert two days before the Hoosiers played Connecticut on Feb. 1, and again the day after the team lost that game.
That began serious talk about an exit strategy that culminated with Davis telling his team on the bus Wednesday night after an unexpected loss to Penn State that he would be stepping down.
The players’ reaction represents the only way Davis’ departure resembles Knight’s.
A player mutiny back in 2000 was imminent, and Davis acknowledged again Thursday that the only reason he stayed was “to keep a basketball team together.”
Likewise, Davis barely had left a room packed with onlookers when star sophomore forwards Robert Vaden and D.J. White hinted that their loyalty to their fallen coach might lead them out of town too.
“Hopefully I can be with him wherever he goes,” Vaden said.
Added White, out for the season with a foot injury, “I came all the way from Alabama to play for Coach Davis. Him not being here makes it hard for me to play. I’m a Coach Davis guy.”
So is Indianapolis radio personality Amos Brown, who hosts a program popular within the black community each afternoon on WTLC-AM.
Brown closed his show Thursday by proclaiming, “Mike Davis got a raw deal.”
Brown interviewed Black Coaches Association President Floyd Keith, who vowed to get involved with Indiana’s coaching search, and challenged Hoosiers fans to give Davis a standing ovation in each of the team’s two remaining home games.
If that does not happen, Brown said, “the black community of Indiana needs to scream bloody murder because it shows me this was about race.”
To some fans in the state, race perhaps was a reason Davis struggled for acceptance.
But most longtime Hoosier basketball observers believe the enmity toward Davis had more to do with two straight seasons of missing the NCAA tournament and a third staring Indiana in the face after losses in six of the last seven games.
“This is a great day for Indiana basketball,” Davis said. “Trust me, it is.”
In Bloomington, where many still fondly remember one Knight long ago, that was not a hard sell.
Davis’ record at Indiana
Mike Davis was named Indiana’s 25th head coach Sept. 12, 2000
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YEAR REC CONF B10 NCAA QUICK HIT
2000-01 21-13 10-6 2-1 0-1 4 more wins in 1st year than any IU coach
2001-02 25-12 11-5 1-1 5-1 Took team to title game (lost to Maryland)
2002-03 21-13 8-8 2-1 1-1 1st IU coach to top 20 wins in 1st 3 seasons
2003-04 14-15 7-9 1-1 — Streak of consecutive NCAA bids ends at 18
2004-05 15-14 10-6 0-1 — 1st-round NIT home loss to Vanderbilt
2005-06 13-9 5-6 — — Mounting injuries, fan criticism took toll
TOTALS 109-76 51-40 6-5 6-3 4th winningest coach in Hoosiers history
B10–Big Ten tournament
Source: Indiana University.
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dhaugh@tribune.com
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