If you haven’t heard of college standout basketball Antoine Davis, you’re not alone. But for basketball fans, it’s clearly time to start brushing up. Davis is on the cusp of breaking one of the most unbreakable records of all time: Pistol Pete Maravich’s all-time NCAA scoring record. Maravich tallied 3,667 points in his three-year career at LSU in the late 1960s.
As of today, Davis, a senior at the University of Detroit, is 124 points away with two regular season games left and (at least) one Horizon League tournament games after that. Today is Senior Night for his Detroit Mercy squad and after the game, Davis will have his jersey retired by the school—a big and rare honor. Going into the game, Davis is also 22 three-pointers away from Stephen Curry’s single-season NCAA record.
For many, this would be a blur, even an impossible task to complete. But Davis, the son of a coach, Mike Davis, formerly of Indiana University (first an assistant under Bob Knight and then as the school’s head coach from 2000 to 2006) and then University of Alabama at Birmingham from 2006 to 2012 and then Texas Southern University from 2012 to 2018 before taking over at Detroit, poise isn’t a problem. For the 24-year-old Davis, the sky is the limit.
Davis, who was the first freshman to be named to the First Team All-Horizon League team since Gordon Hayward, has broken scoring records, shooting records and has put the University of Detroit, a school formerly coached by Dick Vitale, back on the map in a major way. Here, below, we caught up with the star collegiate player to ask him about his roots, his style, LeBron James and which NBA player he patterns his game after.