Finally, He Made Hoosiers Happy

Mike Davis quit his job Thursday and seemed happy about it.

“This is a great day for Indiana basketball,” Davis said. And he sounded as if he meant it.

Davis wore a red Indiana University sweater vest and a broad smile as he resigned from his first-ever head coaching job.

He would stay on until the end of this season, Davis said, but his leaving was best for himself, for his team, for the university, for the state. It hadn’t worked out and he could accept that.

More than anybody, more than the moneyed alums who want to offer the job to former Indiana star Steve Alford, more than the cranky students who were booing the Hoosiers during home games, more than the men and boys who shoot baskets on hoops nailed to barns and form the heart of Hoosier basketball, Davis knew he was the wrong man for the job.

“This isn’t a sad day,” Davis said Thursday. Not for many Hoosier fans, certainly. And maybe not for him, either.

Davis got the job by default. His hiring was collateral damage in the public and nasty feud between then-Indiana president Myles Brand and revered coach Bob Knight.

When Brand sent a defiant Knight off campus in September 2000, Davis’ best qualification as heir was that he was ... there, as an assistant.

That’s not good enough for Indiana, just as it wasn’t good enough for UCLA when Jim Harrick was messily dismissed a month before a season was to start and assistant Steve Lavin took over.

In many ways, Davis was Lavin. Each inherited the job after an unseemly, unexpected, last-second loss of an accomplished coach. The handoffs were clumsy and both Lavin and Davis appeared to critics as no more than opportunistic assistants without a pedigree.

There are certain programs -- Kentucky, North Carolina, Kansas, UCLA, Indiana come quickly to mind -- where learning on the job isn’t tolerated.

Lavin lasted seven years in which the progression was continually downward. Davis made it six, and even on the day he quit seemed puzzled mostly by one thing:

All he ever wanted was for everybody to like him. And they never did.

Davis had replaced the all-consuming Knight, a brilliant coach, an icon in a state that worships basketball at the grade school, high school, college and pro level. But Knight was also a bully, profane and controlling, and finally so insubordinate that his boss fired him.

Davis’ biggest mistake was taking the job at all.

“I’ve done my best,” Davis said. “But this job should go to an Indiana man.”

That has been Davis’ mantra over the last month. That he had no chance because he was not an “Indiana man.”

It has been suggested that Davis was using “Indiana man” as code for “white man.” Davis, 45, was the first African American men’s basketball head coach at the university.

But if race was a part in Davis’ struggles at Indiana, it was a very small part.

Davis didn’t fit in because he never seemed to believe in himself.

Famously, after Kentucky had beaten Indiana, 88-74, in Davis’ 10th game as head coach, he ended a teary, emotional rant that included harsh criticism of his players by saying, “I may not be the right man to coach the Hoosiers.”

From that moment, Davis probably had little chance of succeeding.

His honesty was both touching and damning. In his heart, it appears Davis never really did think he could do it. And he was right.

In 2003, when Ben Howland’s Pittsburgh team eliminated Indiana from the NCAA tournament in the second round, Davis blamed his players. “This team has been selfish from the time we were 8-0,” he said, adding, “Pittsburgh is a team that understands how to play. They play the way they’re coached. My team hasn’t done that in a long time.”

Blaming the players? That’s for coaches who are flummoxed.

Whoever replaced Knight at Indiana would have had a difficult job. The state’s recruiting cachet was waning. Middle-sized industrial towns such as Muncie, Kokomo, Fort Wayne and Anderson have been losing their automobile and steel plants -- and their basketball players as well.

Davis could have gathered some ove from fans had he convinced Bloomington’s Sean May to stay home at Indiana. May, whose father Scott was a Hoosier great, turned down Indiana for North Carolina and helped the Tar Heels to a national championship last year.

Greg Oden, arguably the best high school player in the nation this season, plays at nearby Lawrence North High in Indianapolis. But he has already signed a letter of intent with Big Ten rival Ohio State. If Oden were headed to Indiana next season, Davis might have missed the NCAAs this year and still have been welcomed back.

Instead, Davis spent this season growing more and more publicly frustrated. He wondered why the fans would not support his players. The team was getting booed at home and last Saturday a faction of students urged everybody to wear black shirts to Indiana’s game against Iowa. The idea was to simulate a “black out,” to counter the “white out” effect students had offered by wearing white shirts when Indiana hosted Duke.

White shirts, black shirts, the result was the same. Indiana lost.

But Davis wasn’t there to witness it. He stayed home claiming illness, though he was well enough to do a telephone interview during the game with a national basketball writer to profess his exhaustion with the drama that was following him.

That has always been a Davis tactic at Indiana. When things were going bad, he retreated.

He wasn’t the right man, he wasn’t an Indiana man, he wasn’t who the people wanted, he was tired, he was sad, he was unloved.

Davis smiled as he left Thursday’s news conference. So did his bosses.

Now he’s loved.