Big Ten Basketball: Top 10 head coaches of the century (2000-20)
By Joey Loose
8. Big Ten Basketball coach – Mike Davis (Indiana, 2000-2006)
It’s an exceedingly difficult task to take over a major college basketball program after the departure of a Hall of Fame coach. In 2000, that was Davis’s task, taking over for Bob Knight after spending the last three years on his staff. There was still a pretty solid group of players for the Hoosiers, but Davis went quickly to work supplementing that roster, and the results quickly appeared.
Davis lasted six seasons in Bloomington, leading the Hoosiers to four NCAA Tournament appearances. The clear highlight was the 2002 team, which not only won 25 games and tied for the Big Ten regular-season title but marched all the way to the NCAA national championship game as a 5-seed. His Hoosiers even knocked off 1-seed Duke on the way to that Final Four.
In the end, Davis couldn’t build sustainable results with the Hoosiers, who fired him in 2006. Still, he won nearly 60% of his games, won seven NCAA Tournament games, and kept Indiana afloat in a changing Big Ten. It’s conceivable that another coach (or Knight himself) could have accomplished more during that time, but it’s not like successors Kelvin Sampson, Tom Crean, or Archie Miller have led this team to the promised land.