Antoine Davis reflects on Detroit Mercy career as he nears Pete Maravich’s scoring record

Editor's note: Antoine Davis scored 38 points Tuesday night against Purdue-Fort Wayne in the Horizon League tournament and now needs just 26 points to break Pete Maravich's NCAA scoring record. Detroit Mercy plays again Thursday night. 

As Antoine Davis reflects on his last five years of playing college basketball, a few things come to his mind.

His journey to Houston and working with former NBA player John Lucas, the relationship with his father, and the next phase of his basketball life.

A quiet person by nature, Davis takes a few seconds to answer when asked if he has thought about his legacy playing basketball at Detroit Mercy.

"This university has embraced me so much," Davis said to USA TODAY Sports. "They put me out there to people. They just love me and I love it back. They gave me the opportunity to be a student and embrace everything here. They welcomed me and my dad with open arms and I'm thankful for them and thankful for that."

While many outside the college basketball world haven’t heard of Davis, that is likely to change in the next week, as he is close to breaking one of the most storied records in college sports.

Chasing Pete Maravich's scoring record

What Davis has accomplished in his five seasons is nothing short of remarkable.

Davis is the second all-time NCAA Division I career scorer, entering play Feb. 23 with 3,543 points – just 125 points from surpassing LSU phenom Pete Maravich’s record of 3,667 career points. He is already the Division I career record holder with 569 3-point field goals and has scored double figures in each of his 140 career games. He is one of two players in NCAA history with at least 3,000 points and 500 assists.

(Maravich set his record in 83 games over three seasons because freshmen were ineligible when he played and he still holds the best NCAA career average at 44.2 points a game. There was also no shot clock or 3-point line.)

This season, Davis is the national leader in points (809), points per game (27.9), 3-pointers (140) and 3-pointers per game (4.83).

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Of the 31 different times a player has scored over 40 or more points this season, Davis has four such games. Two of those games have come as he has averaged 35.0 points in his past six contests, putting him in range of Maravich and a record that seemed unbreakable.

In today's sometimes high-flying, above-the-rim game of hoops, not one of his 3,543 points has come via a dunk. Davis acknowledges that Maravich did things no one else has and if he gets the record that has stood for 53 years since Maravich completed his college career in 1970, he is going to embrace it.

"It would be nice to get the record. It's something I will think about. But at this point, I can't avoid it. It's in my face every day," Davis said. "We have a (scoring) tracker at every home game, so it's always in front of me. But other than that, I try not to think about it and just go out to help this team win."

With two regular season games and at least one game in the conference tournament remaining, Davis would need to average more than 41 points in the three contests to break the record. Any wins in the conference tournament greatly reduce the needed average and a deep run could see him achieve history.

Making history at Detroit Mercy

While Davis’ accomplishments haven’t resulted in team success this season, the school has decided to retire his No. 0 jersey on Feb. 28 after the team’s home finale against Wright State.

"It's just a great feeling. It's a special feeling," Davis said. "Normally, it takes two or three years for a player to have a jersey retired after you leave a school. I am really blessed and fortunate for that."

As humble as he is, he says he can’t exactly hide from the fact that he is nearing the record. If he is recognized around town, people ask him about it. And in the 8,000-seat Calihan Hall, where the Titans play their home games, there is a big banner with a countdown to the scoring record, so he has no choice but to look at it every time down the court.

A Davis family affair

At first glance, Davis wouldn’t seem like a candidate to be such an opposing figure on the court. He is listed kindly at 6-foot-1 and 170 pounds.

That slight frame is the only thing that concerns his father, Mike, who has coached Antoine in each of his five seasons at the school. Davis entered Detroit Mercy weighing 142 pounds, but any concerns about his strength or stamina went away in his first collegiate game against Western Michigan, where he scored 32 points and made six 3-pointers.

The evolution of Davis is credited to his father and John Lucas, who refined his shooting touch and linked up with him after moving from Alabama, where Mike Davis had previously coached Alabama-Birmingham, to Houston in middle school. He was homeschooled during the latter part of his high school days, giving him more time to become more skilled at basketball.

After Mike Davis got the job at Texas Southern, he immediately put his son in scrimmages with his team and noticed the remarkable improvement. With his and Lucas’ guidance, the University of Houston and head coach Kelvin Sampson came calling.

"I didn't have a whole lot of recruitment coming out of high school, but I think I was like a two- or three-star," Antoine Davis said. "I just put in so much work over the years from seventh grade to now, really just high school is where I really started to notice that I was getting better and better."

But Davis never suited up for the Cougars and followed his father to Detroit Mercy in 2018.

Antoine Davis is product of hard work

One thing that is repetitive when anyone speaks about Antoine is his work ethic.

Part of that work under the watchful eye of Lucas was often putting up thousands of shots in a day from all over the court and not leaving the gym until he is satisfied that the job at hand is complete. That meant 500 shots had to touch nothing but nylon for him to even consider leaving the gym. Working out two and sometimes three times in a day was also part of the training.

"So, the work ethic has always been there," Mike Davis says. "But he was weak. He would have one really good day. Then the next day, it was like a recovery thing. It was a struggle not because of his skill set, but because of his strength. Go back and watch games. Everyone thought Steph Curry came out of nowhere. But those of us know he would go to camps and do the exact same thing Antoine is doing."

Another interesting part of Antoine Davis' development is how he shoots the ball. Most shooters' guide hand – in this case, his left – doesn’t face the basket when releasing the ball, but Antoine’s thumb was getting in the way of his shooting, so Lucas put a quarter in his thumb during training sessions to make sure his shot went off without a hitch.

Davis is not just a prolific shooter, sometimes commanding double and triple teams, but he also is a capable passer, averaging 3.5 assists this season. He is doing all of it while playing with a face mask, as a result of a broken nose suffered earlier this season.

Mike Davis, who has won more than 400 games in 23 seasons as a collegiate coach, doesn’t put restrictions on his son and gives him the green light to shoot it from anywhere the moment he enters the gym for a game.

"Every player that has ever played for me, that was really good, they’ve had that green light," Mike Davis said. "A lot of guys averaged 20 points and have good careers, but nothing like this."

Sense of pride for Mike Davis

Watching his son put up numbers is nothing new, but Mike Davis says now that his career is winding down, he is looking at his son differently.

"Don’t make me tear up," Mike Davis says, who also credits his other son, Mike Jr., who is an assistant at Detroit Mercy, for Antoine's development. “He has worked so hard. And for Detroit Mercy to recognize that, is something special."

The father-son dynamic of their relationship has weighed on the elder Davis for some time, knowing that the time coaching his son is coming to a quick end.

"Our relationship has grown so much over the years and this (year) he's actually giving me a lot more leverage, a lot more opportunity to be a leader for this team," Antoine Davis says. "So, he's basically giving me the keys to the car in terms of just allowing me to basically reiterate what he says to the players. I know him better than anybody. I know what he wants so it allows me to help the other players out (on) the team."

A bright future possibly in the NBA

A self-described "old soul," especially in a city that created the Motown sounds, these days when the 24-year-old isn’t lighting up opponents, he's playing NBA2K, listening to Gladys Knight, Bobby Caldwell, and sharpening his photography skills.

Last offseason, the allure of name, image, and likeness reared its head and although overtures from BYU, Maryland, Georgetown, and Kansas State came calling, he decided to stay at Detroit Mercy.

The Titans are 13-16 and haven’t been to the NCAA tournament in a decade and unless they go on a run and win the Horizon League title, many won’t get to see him play until he enters professional basketball.

As for his professional prospects, Davis’ name is mostly absent from most of the mock drafts that predict where players will be drafted.

But he knows he can play in the league for one simple reason: he can put the ball in the hoop.

"I am also a great teammate," Davis says. "I feel like I've heard that before, not just from just my dad, but other people too. They will get a great shooter, and in my opinion, a scorer, and just somebody that listens and knows the game.

"Most importantly, I am someone with a chip on their shoulder."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Detroit Mercy's Antoine Davis on chasing Pete Maravich scoring record