A Summary about Texas Southern coach Mike Davis

Mike Davis played at Alabama, and is ranked third all time in career steals there.  He was drafted by the Milwaukee Bucks, but never played in the NBA.  He played overseas for a couple of years in Switzerland.

Davis has had a very interesting coaching career.  He was an assistant at Miles College, and left to  help out with the national team in Venezuela.  After that, he returned to be an assistant at Alabama, and eventually left Alabama to be an assistant for Bobby Knight at Indiana.  Myles Brand, president at Indiana and future NCAA president, fired Bobby Knight for "an unacceptable pattern of behavior".  Supposedly, several players threatened to transfer if an assistant from Knight's staff wasn't hired, so Davis became the coach at Indiana.  Davis had some success early, reaching the NCAA Tournament championship game in his second season.  However, things went downhill after that.  He ran out to the middle of the court with 2 seconds left in a game against Kentucky.  In his last three seasons, he missed the NIT, then was knocked out of the first round of the NIT, and was knocked out of the second round of the NCAA Tournament (this was well before the NCAA Tournament expanded to 68 teams, when the second round was actually the second round).  Indiana fired Davis.

After Indiana, Davis returned to his home state to coach at UAB.  Davis replaced current Arkansas coach Mike Anderson, who left to coach at Missouri.  At UAB, Davis had an impressive 62-34 conference record, but was fired after six seasons.  He made the NIT three times, and made the NCAA tournament once, and missed the NIT in his last season.  While Davis was at UAB, Charles Barkley said that Auburn should hire him.  Barkley argued that UAB had the best basketball team in the state of Alabama, and that Auburn would have actually been a step down at the time.  Auburn might as well have given Davis a chance.  They hired Jeff Lebo, whose best season involved a quarterfinal NIT loss.  Barkley later asked how Gene Chizik could possibly get the Auburn head coaching job over Turner Gill, who went 20-30 at Buffalo and 5-19 at Kansas.  Barkley also was "disturbed" that Alabama hired Shula instead of Croom.  MSU fans were disturbed by this as well, but I'm getting way off track here.

At Texas Southern, Davis has dominated the SWAC, going 44-10 in conference and winning the conference tournament last season.