Nearly a champ, TSU Mike Davis now just wants to win one NCAA game

GREENVILLE, South Carolina — Fifteen years ago this month, Mike Davis coached a team that unhorsed No. 1 Duke in the Sweet 16, the Duke presumably destined for a second consecutive title. Eleven days later, Davis led Indiana into the NCAA championship game against Maryland in the Georgia Dome. He was 41. It was his second season as a head coach.

On Friday, Mike Davis coached a team that had no chance. His Texas Southern Tigers faced top-seeded North Carolina. If you’re a No. 16 seed, the one team you don’t want to be paired against it’s the Tar Heels, who are too big and too smart and too focused to trip over a mouse.

The final score was 103-64. It could have been anything. Texas Southern led twice – at 7-6 and 10-8. Carolina led 24-10 at the second at the second TV timeout. And that’s enough – too much, really – about the game.

The ol’ roundball can take odd bounces. Steve Fisher won an NCAA title and made three Final Fours at Michigan and wound up at San Diego State. As we know, Paul Hewitt took Georgia Tech to the 2004 title game. Within 11 years, he’d be fired by both Tech and George Mason. Larry Brown, owner of an NCAA and NBA title, landed at SMU. (Then, being Larry Brown, he quit.)

Davis’ career path is the oddest. He was pressed into service as Indiana’s head coach when school president Myles Brand fired Bobby Knight in September 2000. Years later, he’d concede that he hadn’t been ready. Still, he looked pretty primed when the Hoosiers beat Duke and then Kent State and then Oklahoma to reach the NCAA final. You know the saying, “Fake it till you make it”? Davis had made it.

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