Drake Is Finding The Spotlight

The most remarkable story in college basketball this season actually began five years ago, when a son said something he thought his father already knew: "I've always wanted to coach with you."

It is the story of a school that went 20 years between winning seasons before going 17-15 a year ago. It is the story of a team picked to finish ninth in the Missouri Valley Conference that instead leads the league and is 20-1 after last night's win over Indiana State. It is the story of Drake University, a tiny, academic-minded school in Des Moines that last knew real basketball glory before man landed on the moon.

Keno Davis always had figured his father, Tom, understood how much he would enjoy working for him. Keno had grown up sitting on his dad's benches from Boston College to Stanford to Iowa -- all places where Tom Davis had known coaching success. Keno graduated from Iowa and got into coaching, working for Bruce Pearl at Southern Indiana and then for Gary Varner at Southeast Missouri State.

When Iowa decided it wanted someone younger to coach its team (Steve Alford was both hot and available at the time), Tom Davis was pushed into "retirement" in 1999 even after taking the Hawkeyes to the round of 16, where they lost to eventual national champion Connecticut.

"I told people then I was not retired," Tom Davis said earlier this week. "I was only 60. I was willing to come back for the right job."

Not surprisingly, given his r¿sum¿, his name popped up often when jobs opened. Each time Keno would call and say, "What do you think, Dad?"

Davis finally asked his son why it seemed so important that he coach again.

"That's when he told me about wanting to coach with me," Tom Davis said. "I guess I should have known; we'd been so close through basketball for so long but I hadn't thought about it. When the Drake job came up, it seemed right for a lot of reasons, but knowing that Keno wanted to go there with me probably sealed the deal for me."

Exactly why the Drake job would seem right to any college basketball coach is tough to say. The school tasted real glory once, when it reached the Final Four in 1969 and played UCLA and Lew Alcindor tough for 40 minutes before losing, 85-82, in the semifinals. Since then, the highlight film wouldn't be much longer than a movie trailer.

The Bulldogs last reached the NCAA tournament in 1971 (that was also the last time they won 20 games), the NIT in 1986. A year later, they were 17-14. That was the last winning season for Drake until 2003, when then-athletic director David Blank called Davis on a golf vacation in Palm Springs, Calif.

"Logistically it worked because I was still living in Iowa City," Davis said. "I knew they'd had tough times, but the school reminded me a lot of Lafayette -- small school, good kids, the chance to build something. Also, I figured I couldn't possibly make things much worse."

Davis's first head coaching job had been at Lafayette, where his only assistant coach was an intense young Maryland graduate named Gary Williams. In fact, Keno had been born the same week Lafayette beat Virginia in the first round of the 1972 NIT, which remains the Leopards' only postseason victory.