Building a culture: Patience paying off for Davis, CMU men's basketball
As one head coach exited CMU on Thursday, another is just getting settled in.
There’s no doubt Central Michigan’s men’s basketball team has been rebuilding over the past two years under the leadership of Head Coach Keno Davis.
After winning 11 games in his first season at CMU and 10 last season, Davis has his squad at a 13-3 mark, with a 3-2 record against Mid-American Conference opponents.
In his seven years as a head coach in the NCAA, Davis has ridden the highs and lows on the roller coaster ride that is college basketball.
In his first year, he was named Associated Press College Basketball Coach of the Year and took a head coaching job in the prestigious Big East Conference.
By his fourth year, he was fired and had to start from scratch.
Such is the career of Keno Davis: The son of coaching legend Tom Davis, and father of the CMU men’s basketball’s resurgence.
Like father, like son
Before Davis was 10 years old, his father Tom coached Boston College into the Sweet 16 and the Elite Eight in back-to-back seasons.
By the time Davis was ready to go to college, his father was coaching the Iowa Hawkeyes. Davis joined him as an undergraduate assistant.
“I kind of planned on going into coaching,” Davis said. “I knew that rather than playing at a smaller level in any sport, it would be better for my profession, my career to be able to learn.”
He attended practices, kept statistics and attended some coaches meetings as an assistant.
After graduation, Davis served as an assistant coach at Southern Indiana and Southeast Missouri before coming back to coach under his father, who was now at Drake.
The hand-off
Drake finished under .500 in Missouri Valley Conference play in all four seasons under Tom. When he decided to retire, Davis’ first head coaching opportunity opened up.
“Part of that agreement with Dr. Tom is that his son would take over the program, which was terrific,” said Drake Athletic Director Sandy Hatfield Clubb, who took over the role in 2006. “He was being groomed by his father at Drake to take over that role.”
In Tom’s final season, Drake had its first winning season in over 20 years, but four starters would not return to the 2007-2008 team.
A 17-game winning streak and win over No. 8 Butler highlighted the season for Drake, which ranked 23rd in the final USA Today Coaches Poll in 2008.
When the dust settled on his first season, Drake had a 28-5 record. The team made the NCAA Tournament and Davis earned numerous coaching awards, including the AP Coach of the Year honor.
“All of the sudden I kept getting these coach of the year awards,” Davis said. “I didn’t know how many there were. It’s usually (given) when you have a team that’s not necessarily your best coaching job, but when you have a team that isn’t expected to be any good and then you surpass those expectations.”
In his first season, Davis won an award that’s been given to basketball legends like John Wooden, Bob Knight, Jim Boeheim and Roy Williams.
But Davis’ tenure at Drake would end there. An opportunity drew him east, specifically the Big East, where he took the head coaching position at Providence.
“I certainly never had hard feelings with him,” Hatfield Clubb said. “I think people understood he was coach of the year and had an opportunity to sign a significant contract that would help his family in ways that we weren’t able to do here.”
The Big East experiment
Davis’ first year with Providence showed promise, headlined by a victory over Pittsburgh, which was ranked first in the country at the time.
His next two seasons, Providence finished 4-14 in the Big East. Davis was fired.
He said he wasn’t ready to jump into a new head coaching job if it wasn’t the right fit.
“When I was let go there, I was looking at different coaching opportunities,” Davis said. “I’d made my mind up that if the right coaching opportunity wasn’t there, I wasn’t going to take the first one just because it was open.”
The Big Ten Network and Mark Cuban’s HD Network were the next destination for Davis, as he did television work in the studio and traveled to help cover teams doing color commentary.
“It gave me a chance to be able to evaluate other programs, other coaches to be able to clear my mind,” Davis said. “(I looked for) what I wanted to do if I were to get back into coaching.”
That next opportunity came quickly.
Taking his talents to Mount Pleasant
CMU Athletic Director Dave Heeke and Davis connected and both quickly realized they were looking to build a program the same way.
“When we were searching for a new head coach, his name was out there, I was familiar with Keno,” Heeke said. “From several people that I talked to in the industry, his name kept surfacing.”
The Chippewas were coming off their ninth consecutive season without a winning season and only had four winning seasons since 1980.
“The history of basketball here has been scattered for success and we’re trying to find a system that will allow us to have consistent competitive success,” Heeke said. “Keno’s doing an excellent job of positioning us to do that.”
The first two seasons didn’t show progress in terms of wins and losses. Davis was 21-41 through two years.
Junior forward John Simons had already committed to CMU before Davis was announced as the head coach. While Davis traveled to Cadillac to talk with the recruit, Simons wasn’t wavering from his commitment.
“My brother, he’s three years older than I am, he actually took an official visit to Providence when Coach Davis was the coach,” Simons said. “I knew a little bit about him, my brother knew a little bit about him. He didn’t have to sell himself.”
Simons transitioned from the center position to forward position this season when Davis brought in two big men to fill the hole. Simons is flourishing in his new spot and is second in the nation with a 51.2 3-point field goal percentage.
“If there were fans that were getting impatient, I never heard it,” Davis said. “I think those fans that had been coming and really supported the team, they could see it coming.”
Davis finds players who “fall under the radar slightly,” according to Heeke, which is how he managed to bring in 6-8.5 forward DaRohn Scott and 6-11 forward Luke Meyer.
Scott has already had the chance to connect with Davis in his first season.
“Keno’s a very funny guy, I’ll tell you that right now,” Scott said. “I got hurt in the summer and before that when he came up to me throughout the season I was like, ‘I’m Superman, I don’t get hurt,’ but as soon as I came here I sprained my ankle during practice and he was like, ‘DaRohn, I thought you were Superman?’ I was like, ‘oh yeah, I guess I’ve got to toughen up.’”
Keeping Keno
With Enos escaping to Arkansas and Davis’ history of leaving a job, it’s easy to question Davis’ expiration date in Mount Pleasant.
Heeke and Davis talk about building a successful program in the long term, but Enos’ departure is evidence that CMU is not always the dream goal in mind for coaches.
“You never know,” Heeke said. “People have opportunities, people have the chance to do different things, but we try to create an atmosphere that coaches want to stay. We’ll never be able to compensate coaches to the level that is out there nowadays at the Power Five level.”
But Davis said there’s no dream job in mind for him.
“I just want to make sure as I’m coaching that I really enjoy where I’m at,” Davis said. “I really enjoy it here at Central Michigan and I can really understand why so many coaches in different sports have stayed here for a long time.”
Davis’ work at CMU is far from complete, but his successful past is reassuring for his current team.
“When things go wrong, he’s still got to remember that it’s worked before,” Simons said. “I don’t think there’s anyone on our team that doesn’t have trust, that doesn’t have faith in Coach Davis and what he does and what he’s trying to do here.”
He may not win any more national Coach of the Year honors like he did in his inaugural season, but CMU’s not in this for just one year.
