Fighting Illini Basketball Senior Week: Mike Davis

We continue in our senior day countdown with the other half of the Mike & Mike Show - Mike Davis. Mike was the last to commit in the class of 2007 when he came on board mere weeks before the season started. He wasn't that highly touted as the general consensus was that he would be going to prep school to develop for a season. I honestly didn't know anything about this guy as a recruit since he came on board so late and (to me) was rarely mentioned as a target during the bulk of the recruiting process.

Recently this year, I heard an announcer describe Mike's high schools scouting report as being 5-stars in terms of talent, and 1-star in terms of mentality, but I don't know if I buy that. I just don't think there was that much attention around him to garner an accurate scouting report. His "claim-to-fame" and annoyingly over-used media factoid is that he graduated from T.C. Williams HS in Virginia, the same one that was featured in the classic "Remember the Titans." Bruce was able to snag with the simple pitch "Why don't you come to U of I instead of going to prep school? If you want to develop, you can always redshirt your first season." Four years (and no redshirt) later, he hasn't looked back.

In his true freshman season, he showed flashes of his potential in limited playing time. But his real coming out party was against Clemson in the Big Ten-ACC Challenge of his sophomore season, where he exploded for 28 points and several dunks that brought the Assembly Hall crowd to its feet. During his sophomore season, he was a double-double machine. He made a living with his mid-range baseline (and straight-on) jumper, trailing fast-break dunks, good defensive rebound positioning, and pogo sticks for legs.

Mike showed modest improvement for his junior season, although he did develop a reputation of taking games off or just flat out disappearing for stretches of times. He did show a few more post moves and was more willing to put the ball on the floor, as opposed to sophomore year when I swear he might have dribbled like 6 times. He was still prone to avoiding contact, but still got his double-doubles pretty regularly. His senior season came and not much changed except for the early portion of the season when he was pretty ineffective for long stretches. He has been on a tear-recently and has almost single-handedly won a few games for us down the stretch.

He has his confidence back and has been playing very aggressive, which makes for the Mike Davis we all want to see, but won't know if we will until game time. He has always been plagued by confidence issues. You can usually read his body language and it's a pretty good indication if he's going to take over this game, or sit back quietly. Him playing with confidence will be huge for this team down the stretch.

As a team that gives up far too many offensive rebounds, his vacuuming abilities on the defensive boards will be huge for us. As well as his unofficial role as the emotional leader of this team (again, only when he has his confidence and mojo working). His contributions as a potential energy/leadership guy is huge, but I wish he could do so more consistently. He has stated recently, he needs to stop worrying about that and go out and do his thing. It's worked since then, I hope it will continue to work for the rest of his senior season.

The jump he showed from his freshman to sophomore season was so great that most fans (guilty!) unreasonably expected him to improve by similar margins for his junior and season campaigns. However, in retrospect, those expectations are totally unfair. First of all, when you get an unknown high school recruit ends up as a double-double machine and leading the Big Ten in rebounding his sophomore season, I'd say he's done pretty well compared to expectations. By expecting him to keep improving at that constant rate, he'd be on par with the Kevin Durants of the world (which is what I saw him as a poor-man's version of).

Personally, the two things I wanted to see him add to his arsenal was the addition of a three-point shot and some ballhandling and shooting off the dribbles moves. Needless to say, that didn't happen. I don't think wanting to see him develop a three was that unreasonable. He can hit that mid-range jumper in his sleep. So I was just hoping he can step back a foot or two and knock down the three. To this day, I still haven't see him put one up behind the three point line with confidence or comfort (excluding end of shot clock situations). But, again, no big deal. A 4 who can shoot the three is very much a luxury, so I wasn't too disappointed.

It was unreasonable to expect him to develop ball handling skills and become a poor-mans Kevin Durant. Big men just aren't natural ball handlers. Kevin Durant, Magic Johnson and LeBron James are the exceptions, not the norm. It might have something to do with how big their hands or how much farther they have to dribble the ball compared to guards (taller).

And even though he's athletic and a great shooter, ball-handling just wasn't something he was born to do. If he came out of high school a 6'9" athletic forward with that jump shot, rebounding hops, and ball handling skills, he'd very much be snagged by a bigger program, not unlike Kevin Durant was. So in a way, Davis has more than lived up to his expectations as a recruit. In another way, by reaching his potential so quickly, he created new expectations that were almost unreachable. I hope fans realize how former, and not the latter, when remembering his legacy at U of I.