True believer

IU's Davis shows his loyalties are in good standing

"We’re on our way," Indiana coach Mike Davis told Dick Enberg in the flush of an Oh, My moment, his Hoosiers’ 74-73 defeat of Duke in one of Thursday night’s South Regional semifinals. Then he said it again. If the words evoked the call-and-response in a clapboard church on a Sunday morning, it’s because the man who uttered it is a devout one, who keeps religious homilies in the tape deck of his car. And because the phrase is adapted from the refrain of a spiritual: I’m on my way, to the promised land.

Yet even as he savors the highest of highs, in the eyes of Bob Knight, Davis is the lowest of the low. He is disloyal. His treasonous act was to stay at Indiana after Knight was at long last shown the door. To Knight, it wasn’t enough that he go down; the entire basketball program had to fall with him.

High Fife Click the image to launch the clip Indiana guard Dane Fife recalls the relief he felt when the Hoosiers beat Duke and discusses the relationship he has forged with head coach Mike Davis. Start Video Plus Visit Video Plus for all the latest video and audio.

Given the way Knight administers tests of loyalty and holds people to them, it’s no surprise that he still has followers throughout the state he once ruled. Many have made Davis’ life difficult, whether or not on the orders of the ex-IU coach. Davis has been loath to say so explicitly, speaking most recently, vaguely and darkly, of "ghosts." But he has all but hoisted high the lines for us to read between, particularly after a recruit from Bloomington, Sean May, turned down the Hoosiers last fall to sign instead with North Carolina -- this within hours after May and his dad, former Hoosiers star Scott May, returned from a trip to Lubbock, where Knight now wields a clipboard for Texas Tech.

It’s hard to imagine a Knight-coached team committing 16 turnovers in a half, as the Hoosiers did during the first 20 minutes against Duke. But it’s been ages since an Indiana team in the NCAAs played with as much spirit as the Hoosiers did after the intermission. Following the lead of the hyperkinetic A.J. Moye (if an A.J. can play, he’ll wear crimson and cream), the Hoosiers seized the game as their own. With the stalwart exception of Carlos Boozer, the Blue Devils contented themselves with 3-point shots after their lead had crested at 17. Whereas Indiana resolved to find its way to the basket.

The Hoosiers did so in old-school fashion: with crafty entry passes; with dogged retrieval of their own missed shots; even with a high-post pass-and-cut play that would have made an Original Celtic smile. (Would have made Shooter, the Dennis Hopper character from Hoosiers, smile, too.)

And, then, the final sequence: Tom Coverdale bagging his lone field goal of the game, a three-bounces-on-the-rim supplication job from along the baseline. Dane Fife, committing a gigglebrained foul of Duke’s Jason Williams, on what should be a moot 3-point attempt in the final seconds, only to be pardoned when Williams misses a free throw to tie. Davis’ whipsaw mood swings, from despair at Fife’s boner, to exultation at Indiana’s first trip to the Final Eight in a decade. All stories that could have been torn from the page of a worn Bible—tales of suffering and redemption, of deliverance from the slough of despond.

There are those for whom Indiana University will always be a crypto-professional sports franchise. These people still worship at the altar of Knight, buy and sell Texas Tech regalia, cheer on the former coach’s legal challenge to the school’s decision to salvage its dignity by letting him go. As of Thursday night, some of these people are scrambling to reboard the Hoosiers’ bandwagon.

Mike Davis will surely welcome them back, for he’s liege to the lord that deserves his loyalty. He’s true to his school.

SI senior writer Alexander Wolff is author of Big Game, Small World: A Basketball Adventure, which is available online and in bookstores everywhere. He can be reached at http://www.biggamesmallworld.com.

 

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