THE ROAD TO NO. 1 : After the Coaching Change From George Raveling to Tom Davis, Iowa Reaches New Heights by Finding the Depth of Confidence

The coach who recruited all the players on the team quit last spring. The player on the cover of the media guide broke his hand before the season started and missed the first 11 games. The team trailed by 14 points with four minutes left in the second game of the season. It trailed by 22 at Illinois, then lost its leading scorer at Purdue.

And so, 18 games into this most unlikely of seasons, the University of Iowa is 18-0 and for the first time in 1,729 games and 85 years of basketball, is ranked No. 1 in the nation.

“I keep telling the players that we really aren’t good enough to be ranked No. 1,” said Tom Davis, the first-year coach on this joy ride. “They keep going out and finding ways to win, to beat quality teams on the road. I really don’t know what to tell them now.”

What he undoubtedly has told them in the three days since their remarkable 70-67 victory at Purdue is that in the Big Ten this season, there is no rest for the weary. Not with four teams -- Iowa (1), Indiana (3), Purdue (5) and Illinois (9) -- in the top 10. Thursday night, Iowa beat Indiana as six players scored in double figures.

“We know what kind of team we have,” said Jeff Moe, the first man off Davis’ deep bench. “No matter what happens in a game, we always think we’ll come back from it. That’s what comes from having depth. Everyone knows they’ll get a shot to play. The bench is always alive. And if the guys in the game aren’t doing it, then the guys on the bench will. Right now, this is a confident team.”

The equation, then, is depth plus confidence equals winning. It is easier said than done. And Iowa’s story is not an easy or simple one.

It begins in the spring of 1983. Lute Olson was lured from Iowa City to Tucson, enticed by sunshine and dollar signs at Arizona. Olson had gone 168-90 in eight seasons at Iowa, including a Final Four appearance in 1980, after taking over a program that had gone 51-71 in the five seasons before he arrived. He had become a revered figure throughout the basketball-mad state, and his departure appalled nearly everyone.

The new coach was George Raveling, who had done a rebuilding job at Washington State that was, in a sense, as impressive as the one Olson had done at Iowa. But Raveling was very different from Olson. Raveling was an extrovert, Olson was an introvert. Raveling sounded city, Olson could sound Midwest cornfield when he had to. Olson was blond, Raveling was black.

“From the beginning,” Raveling said this week, “Iowa and George Raveling just didn’t go together well.”

If Raveling had won from day one, perhaps no one would have noticed the differences. But, taking over a team that had been 22-9 in Olson’s last season, Raveling went 13-15, including 6-12 in the Big Ten with a team that had been picked first in pre-season.

Everything Raveling did, it seemed, was questioned. He became extremely sensitive to criticism, even after the Hawkeyes went 21-11 and 20-12 and reached the NCAA tournament the last two seasons. Last season, after Iowa had blown Indiana away at home, someone asked Raveling about his substitution pattern during the game.

“Why the hell would you ask me that?” Raveling snapped. “Why don’t you guys just let me coach this team? I’m a pretty good coach, you know.”

He was also an excellent recruiter. Quietly, Raveling put together a very talented team. “When we recruited the kids, we told them we were building towards the NCAA championship,” he said. “I didn’t think it was an impossible dream then and now.”

But if that dream should come true, Raveling won’t be a part of it. Last March, he left Iowa to become the coach at Southern California. He knew then he was leaving a lot of talent behind. But the choice was an easy one. “A lot of people told me to stay one more year,” Raveling said. “But I needed more in my life than my profession. I just wasn’t happy. I needed an urban environment. I needed a change. I have no regrets at all.”

Raveling refuses to say if race was a factor in his decision. Others who know him say it was. “Iowa City is a college town, and everything there was fine,” said one friend. “But once you get 10 miles outside of town, it changes. People said some cruel things.”

Specifically, they were quoted as saying some cruel things in a newspaper story written last March by a reporter from Seattle. When a local paper reprinted the story, that, many people feel, was the last straw for Raveling. Off he went.

Enter Davis.

At 48, Davis is similar to Olson. He is soft-spoken and has an easy smile that masks his intensity. Davis had been at Stanford for four years, and although he had more success than almost any coach in school history, he was frustrated.

“I think I was getting beaten down by losing,” he said. “We finished tied for fifth in the Pacific-10, and that didn’t seem so bad. ... I was starting to accept not winning, and that bothered me. I wanted to compete.”

Davis had gone to Stanford from Boston College shortly after a point-shaving scandal erupted there. He is still uncomfortable and guarded in talking about that time in his life. “It was an event that certainly touched me deeply,” he said. “I’m really not sure how significant it was to me because I’ve never examined it. In this profession, when something goes wrong, you look at it, try to learn from it and move on. This is an emotional profession. I question myself every day. I did then, I do now.”

Davis went to Stanford with a commitment from the school that it wanted to make an effort in basketball. In many ways, Davis says now, it did. But he found himself embroiled constantly in battles with the admissions department, and when first Houston and then Iowa came looking last March, Davis was willing to listen.

After listening, he left the sunshine of Palo Alto for the snows of Iowa City. “I’m from Wisconsin,” he said. “It’s no problem for me.”

As it happens whenever a coach leaves, the players were skeptical about the change. “You never know what you’re going to get,” Moe said. “Maybe it’s a guy you turned down. Maybe the system won’t fit you. I think it’s amazing that not one player left. That almost never happens.”

Not only did all the players Raveling recruited stay, they all got an early chance to see the new coach in action when they toured China in August. That trip, everyone agrees, had as much to do with the current record as anything.

“Coach Davis told us everyone would have an equal chance to play,” said 7-foot senior Brad Lohaus. “Okay, you figure he’s going to say that. But in China, we all played. That opened some eyes. It hasn’t changed since then.”

Lohaus is the only player on the team who has played for Olson, Raveling and Davis. At the end of last season, after averaging 3.6 points per game in limited time, he was ready to pass up his final year of eligibility and “get my degree and go look for a job.”

But the coaching change made him curious and China made him eager. Now, Lohaus is playing forward, is the point man on the Iowa press and is averaging 12.6 points and seven rebounds a game. Many pro scouts, looking at his size and shooting touch, rate him a first-round draft pick.

The only player this season has not worked out great for -- so far -- is Gerry Wright. He was the leading returning scorer and the media-guide cover boy. But since he broke his hand in pre-season, Wright hasn’t gotten back into the starting lineup. He is averaging 4.2 points in the six games in which he has played.

“Gerry knows he’s going to get a chance,” said Ed Horton, a 6-8 sophomore who has become a force inside. “That’s the good thing about this team. Everybody knows he will get a chance.”

That was never more evident than Monday at Purdue when Roy Marble, also a sophomore and this season’s leading scorer, accidentally thumbed himself in the eye and had to leave with blurred vision. Instead of crumbling, the Hawkeyes turned to senior Kevin Gamble, who produced a career high 19 points (on nine-for-10 shooting) and eight rebounds.

“Great teams find a way to win, and tonight I was needed,” Gamble said. “I don’t know if we’re a great team yet, but we’re working towards it. I do know this: It will take a great effort to beat us because we’re always going to give everything we have.”

That attitude may best be personified by Moe, who is from Indianapolis, but looks more like a Dead End Kid from New York. Moe, a 6-4 junior, reminds people of another Indiana kid, Scott Skiles. Game after game, Skiles was booed and taunted on the road in the Big Ten. He took the taunts and nailed his jumpers, game after game. Moe can’t shoot as well as Skiles, but he does compete like him. And, he hears the taunts.

“I figure if people are getting on you, it must be because you’re doing something right,” Moe said. “I know I don’t have the athletic ability of the other guys on this team, so I figure it’s my job to dive after balls, hustle and try to get the other guys to work like I do. I figure if they do that, with their talent, we’ll be pretty darn good.”

They are just that: pretty darn good. And, Davis thinks they can get better. “Maybe I haven’t given them the credit they deserve. It’s just that I see so much room for improvement. We’re going to lose some games, everyone knows that. But we have 10 guys who are playing and we’re going to get better.”

For now, then, this story has a happy ending: Raveling is comfortable rebuilding in the sunshine of California, Davis looks at 10 inches of snow and says -- “Gosh, it’s pretty out there, isn’t it?” The players are winning and happy and Davis, inveterate Midwesterner, is building a house in Iowa City. Included in the plans is an indoor swimming pool.

A leftover dream, perhaps, from California. But also evidence he plans on sticking around for a long time.