ESPN Men's Basketball

Originally Published: November 11, 2004

IU coach confident he'll find results

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By Pat Forde
ESPN.com
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BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- There are three words Indiana University basketball players hate to hear, and they are hearing them often on this day in Assembly Hall:

"On the line."

The line is the baseline. The speaker is Mike Davis. The command is to run, atonement for sins committed in practice.

Davis has the team managers put five minutes on the clock and sends his players off in two shifts, running the length of the court and back. They go virtually non-stop on Davis' whistle, which tweets with a metronomic ruthlessness.

When the five minutes are up, the Hoosiers hurry immediately into a rebounding drill. When a blockout is missed, Davis says three terrible words: "On the line." When an exhausted player bends over and lets his hands sink to his knees: "On the line." When it happens a second time: "On the line."

Almost all of the final 20 minutes of practice are given over to full-out, lung-burning sprints. After practice ends with a terse talk from the coach, several players wobble directly to the bleachers and collapse.

In the larger sense, "on the line" is the operative phrase for Mike Davis this season at Indiana. His job could be on the line, and his serenity absolutely will be. A guy who has rarely been able to enjoy complete job security at IU is far removed from it now.

After a 14-15 debacle last season -- the worst record at IU in 34 years, dating back to before Bob Knight -- Davis has been fitted with an XXL bull's-eye by restive Hoosiers fans.

Many of them simply want better basketball, played with greater pride in wearing the Indiana uniform. They don't want to see losses by 33 to Wake Forest, 39 to Kentucky and 34 to Wisconsin. And if this season starts heading down that path, new athletic director Rick Greenspan will have more e-mails and phone calls than he can handle.

Many others are more basely motivated, still waiting for the program to pay for what happened to their personal savior, Bob Knight. The BK Militia isn't dying out anytime soon.

But amid that unsettling context, and even after what Davis called "our worst day" of practice, the 44-year-old coach smiles easily. He's a genuine guy in an occasionally disingenuous profession. Through a melodramatic four years, he has maintained a shatterproof confidence.

"The one thing I know in my heart, after looking at everything, I've done a great job," Davis said. "And I'm not tooting my own horn. I've won 80 games in four years (actually 81), and look at the schedule we've played. ... I evaluated my record, evaluated my personnel, evaluated my schedule, and I'm like, 'Man, put anybody else in my shoes.'

"If I'm on the hot seat, there should be a lot of people on the hot seat. To me, the hot seat is if you have NBA players and you're not doing something with them."

Davis has had two NBA players, and neither for very long. He had Kirk Haston his first year, and Jared Jeffries his first two. With Jeffries as his centerpiece, he took the Hoosiers to the national championship game in 2002.

The past two years, Indiana hasn't had an upperclassman worth drafting, and barely anyone worth even inviting to an NBA camp. Jeff Newton was a good college player. George Leach was an enigma. Jeffries' gritty supporting cast on that Cinderella Final Four run -- Dane Fife, Tom Coverdale, Kyle Hornsby, Jarrad Odle -- is collectively out of basketball.

Of course, that lack of talent -- particularly among big men -- is the responsibility of the head coach. Especially when he took the job with the reputation as a gangbusters recruiter. Problem was, after missing on Sean May, Ndudi Ebi, Luol Deng, Charlie Villanueva and other hotshot post players, Davis had no Plan B recruits.

"Personnel is my job," he acknowledged. "We just needed that one big guy, and we missed on every one. But we haven't missed since then. We're hitting home runs in recruiting."

The evidence was on the floor in Assembly Hall. McDonald's All-American D.J. White, a 6-9, 230-pounder with long arms and flypaper hands, will start right away at power forward -- a welcome sight for all Hoosiers fans who got tired of watching A.J. Moye try to guard the post at 6-2. Fellow freshman Robert Vaden of Indianapolis will start on one wing and could make an even more immediate impact offensively, serving as the second option to junior guard Bracey Wright.

And this week Davis expected to sign three highly touted recruits for 2005-06.

"Now the expectations should start to rise," Davis said. "We've got some talent. When you walk in, you can see the difference from last year. We've got six or seven guys who can help us.

"When we start getting to that level and I'm screwing it up, it's time to say, 'OK, Mike, go somewhere else.' But if it goes the way I think it can go the next two years, I think we could be playing for a national championship."

Not only do the current Hoosiers look more like a big-time team is supposed to look, they're being coached at a new energy level by new assistants. Kerry Rupp, who was the interim coach at Utah after Rick Majerus resigned last season, has taken over the offense. Donnie Marsh, former head coach at Florida International, is focusing on the defense. Practice this week crackled with intensity from the assistants.

"These guys," Davis said, "are both really good."

And the players are reportedly a more unified group, too. The Indiana locker room was, by all accounts, not the happiest place last year.

"This is a real tight team," said junior point guard Marshall Strickland, who will carry a heavy load while senior backup Donald Perry is suspended indefinitely for violating team rules. "Last year we were influenced by outsiders more than we will be this year. When we start losing games, people start talking -- on campus, in grocery stores, wherever. This year we're going to try to keep it all in-house."

Said White: "If we keep everything in the circle, we'll be OK. I like our togetherness."

Of course, togetherness is easier in preseason, when everyone is undefeated and optimistic. And a glance at Indiana's schedule lets you know that undefeated isn't going to last long.

The Hoosiers play a December stretch that borders on perverse: North Carolina, at Connecticut, Notre Dame, Kentucky in Louisville, at Missouri and Charlotte. In a row.

But as Davis points out, last year wasn't much easier. In a seven-game stretch Indiana played an eventual regional finalist (Xavier), two Sweet Sixteen teams (Wake Forest and Vanderbilt), a No. 1 seed (Kentucky) and NIT teams Missouri and Notre Dame.

Given the talent at hand, that's the definition of overscheduled. The same thing happened to Tom Izzo at Michigan State -- which is why Izzo picked up the phone and called Davis last season to offer support.

"Most of the top teams aren't even playing four (elite non-conference) games," Davis said. "We're playing six.

"If I was playing the cupcakes like everyone else, I'd be at 80 percent winning percentage."

Instead, he's at .604 -- a number that must rise eventually, no matter who is on the schedule.

Mike Davis knows that. For the Indiana coach, it's all on the line.

Pat Forde is a senior writer at ESPN.com.