Antoine Davis and his parting shots
The Detroit Mercy guard might become college's alltime scorer.
On Friday night, Detroit Mercy will retire men’s basketball jersey No. 0.
Never mind that Antoine Davis will be wearing it still.
The Titans, 13-16, will wrap up their regular season with two home games this week and then head into the Horizon League tournament. There is no March Madness for them, unless Davis’ accomplishments get them into the NIT, or one of those bootleg postseason tournaments like The Basketball Classic, where Detroit lost in the first round last year to Florida Gulf Coast.
Let’s say there are four games remaining in Davis’ career, He averages 27.9 points. If he averages 31 in those games, he would tie Pete Maravich as the leading scorer in NCAA basketball history.
If Davis sinks 22 three-pointers, he’ll draw even with Steph Curry, who set the season record with 162 at Davidson, 15 years ago.
On Jan. 14 Davis broke the existing 3-point career record of 515, set by Wofford’s Fletcher McGee, and now has 569.
There’s a board at Calihan Hall that charts Davis’ buckets. “I struggled with that as a freshman when I was trying to break Curry’s (freshman 3-point) record,” Davis stated in an e-mail on Tuesday. “I remember when I was getting closer and not playing as well. Honestly, once I’m playing, I’m playing to win. I’m not going to lie and say I don’t see the numbers, but I’m just trying to help us win a championship.”
A basket of asterisks surrounds this quest. Maravich got his points in three seasons, averaging 43.8, 44.2 and 44.5 points. He wore floppy socks and he made behind-the-back passes and he lured so many newbie basketball fans that LSU decided to build a new arena, which it eventually named after him.
Davis has spent five years at Detroit Mercy, averaging 26.1, 29.3, 24.0, 23.9 and 27.9, with eight games of 40 or more points. Still, Davis has attempted 284 fewer shots than Maravich.
There was no 3-pointer when Maravich played (1968-70), of course. According to one calculation, Maravich would have averaged 57 points at LSU with the weighted bomb, but who knows? He probably would have tried even more long shots than he did.
But a ghost from a couple of generations ago shouldn’t be used to disparage Davis, who is hitting 42 percent of his threes this season and is an 89 percent shooter from the free-throw line. He scored 41 on Robert Morris without even trying a foul shot.
He also is a spindly 6-foot-1, not 6-foot-5 like Maravich, and has an uncertain pro future.
Like Maravich, Davis plays for his father. Mike Davis swept up Bobby Knight’s debris at Indiana and took a marginal team to the NCAA championship game in 2002, where it lost to Maryland. Davis later coached at UAB and at Texas Southern, in Houston. That is where Antoine grew up, homeschooled, and he shot and he shot and he shot. When he heard that Kobe Bryant put up 2,000 shots a day, Antoine figured he should go for 5,000. Between his sessions at the TSU gym and his workouts at John Lucas’ facility, he grooved a shot that would take him deep into the record books without benefit of a single dunk.
Mike Davis rarely let Antoine get comfortable with his game, but has eased off somewhat as the finish line beckons.
“He knows my game better than anybody and, yeah, it can be difficult,” Antoine said. “But we’ve grown closer and I cherish the opportunity to play for him. I don’t think there are any cons, as far as playing for him, other than he’s my coach and my dad and I don’t necessarily get a chance to get away from it, like other players. But I wouldn’t change a thing.”
Davis originally signed with Houston but backed off to play for Mike. Then, after four years at Detroit Mercy, he had the option to transfer and play immediately. Power-conference schools campaigned for him, including Kansas State, and they came bearing NIL gifts. At one point BYU thought it was getting him. But after Davis weighed everything, he decided he didn’t want to walk through the record books wearing any other jersey, or hearing any other coaching voice.
In doing so Davis consigned himself to a low profile. Detroit Mercy averages 1,701 fans for its home games, played on a court named after ex-coach Dick Vitale, who went 87-30 and took the Titans to an NCAA Sweet 16.
Detroit Mercy has had one winning season since 2013. It did knock off UCLA in an NCAA first round in 2012. And it was represented, over the years, by basketball giants Spencer Haywood, Dave DeBusschere, current New Orleans Pelicans coach Willie Green, and John Long. Their jerseys are retired, too. The question here is whether Antoine Davis, whose gym is his terrarium, will remove his willingly.