Jim Davis has experienced the extreme ends of the spectrum in more than 40 years as a basketball coach.
Whether it was as a junior high school coach in 1967 or as the women’s basketball coach at Tennessee Tech in 2013, one thing has remained constant: Davis loves to teach. That’s why Davis came out of retirement after a successful run as women’s basketball coach at Clemson to get back into the profession. He worked in the WNBA and then helped start a junior college program before longtime friend and colleague Andy Landers, the coach at Georgia, told him the job at Tennessee Tech was open.
Now in his second season in Cookeville, Tenn., Davis said he hasn’t changed much from the “old dumb-butt country boy” who grew up “a little off the beaten path” in Tennessee.
“I know I am perceived by many as old-fashioned,” said Davis, whose team will take on Mississippi State at 7 p.m. Thursday at Humphrey Coliseum. “I still believe in family values and doing things the right way, caring about teammates and caring about coaches and caring about moms and dads. I don’t think you can get away from that if we are teachers and coaches.”
Davis said the lessons he learned in two years at Englewood (Tenn.) Junior High School and 10 seasons in various Tennessee high schools, including stops at Madisonville, Charleston and McMinn high schools, taught him the importance of being a teacher. He also has taken words from longtime NBA coach Hubie Brown – “Teaching is coaching, and coaching is teaching” — to heart and has tried to teach the fundamentals of the game everywhere he has worked.
The results speak to Davis’ success. His overall high school record was 197-93 (.679 winning percentage). He then spent six years at Roane State Community College in Harriman, Tenn., where he led the Raiderettes to a 127-35 record (.784 winning percentage) and won four Tennessee Junior College Athletic Association divisional championships and one state championship. His biggest accomplishment was winning the NJCAA National Championship in 1984.
Davis worked one season as an assistant coach at Florida and one season as head coach at Middle Tennessee State before finding a home in Clemson, S.C. In 18 years at Clemson, Davis guided the Tigers to 16 postseason appearances, including 14 trips to the NCAA tournament and two Women’s National Invitation Tournament appearances. He won 355 games and helped the Tigers win two championships in the Atlantic Coast Conference, advance to the NCAA Sweet 16 of the NCAA tournament four times, and to the Elite Eight once. Clemson made it to the ACC championship game six times, claiming the title in 1996 and 1999. The team achieved 20 wins or more 11 times.
Davis stepped down at Clemson after an 8-20 season in 2004-05. He thought his time as a coach was done until he realized he still wanted to teach, so he spent a year as an assistant coach with the WNBA’s Minnesota Lynx and two seasons as an assistant coach helping build a program at Young Harris College in Georgia. He was hired at Tennessee tech in July 2012.
“You have got to have values, whether you’re running a business or teaching in a classroom or teaching on a basketball court or on a football field,” Davis said. “You can’t sacrifice your values, so yeah, if I didn’t believe I could get it done (at Tennessee Tech) old school, I still would be playing golf in Clemson, S.C., and not playing it very well.”
Davis remembers a time when high school coaches, teachers, and counselors played influential roles in the lives of young people. He feels players in the past were far more skilled than they are today because there was more teaching than playing. These days, Davis said players learn by the sheer experience of all of the competition they face. He wishes that wasn’t the case.
“I think we have lost the teaching part,” Davis said. “This is coming from an old guy who doesn’t know much.”
Davis also feels coaches do players an injustice because they play so many games. He referred to a comment by another veteran coach — Syracuse men’s basketball coach Jim Boeheim — about the state of basketball today. Speaking as part of a group of “old coaches,” Boeheim said players have lost so many games by the time they get to Syracuse that it doesn’t hurt them to lose and that they are immune to it. Davis said he had never heard that line of thinking and that he believes it. He tries to avoid that pitfall by teaching the game and by creating a program that is another family for the players.
“It doesn’t matter at which level you coach, winning feels just as good and losing hurts just as badly,” Davis said. “I started coaching in 1967 and spent two years in junior high, and that might be the best two years I have had as a coach. Those kids would run through a brick wall because they were so eager to learn.
“It is all about the relationships you build with young people and about seeing the look on their faces when they succeed and knowing that you might have had a little part in that.”
Davis went 19-12 in his first season at Tennessee Tech and guided the program to an Ohio Valley Conference regular-season title. This season, Tennessee Tech is 1-1 and coming off a 118-71 loss to Akron on Nov. 12. He said his goal is to make Tennessee Tech, the ninth-winningest women’s basketball program in history (873 victories through 2013), into a perennial top-25 program. Coming on the heels of successful coaches like Marynell Meadors and Bill Worrell, Davis said he and his coaching staff are in the building stages of doing that, and that he hopes to realize that goal by tapping into the depth of talent in Tennessee high school girls basketball.
Davis’ master plan at Tennessee Tech resembles the strategy he used at Clemson. Davis said he never relied on recruiting the McDonald’s All-Americans and instead signed solid players would were united in one purpose: to sacrifice for the team. Davis is confident that plan can work again at the mid-major level.
“It is not about the brass and the oak and the glitz and the glamour. To me, Clemson and Tennessee Tech are so familiar because, as corny as it may sound, it is about family,” Davis said. “We talked about the Clemson family and about the Tennessee Tech family caring for each other. That is what it is all about. I don’t know what the thinking is and the planning is (at Clemson since he left), but I know it all starts with recruiting. Good players make good coaches. I found that out a long time ago.
“I can’t change. I hope we can get it done with that mind-set.”
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor.
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 36 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.