Tom Archdeacon: A 'throwback' with a story to tell

Feb. 21—WILBERFORCE — As the old idiom goes, "don't judge a book by its cover."

And I'm not talking about the one — "You Don't Have To Be A Shark" by Robert Herjavec — that Cory Davis was reading as he sat on his gray yoga mat behind the bench of the Wilberforce women's team the other night while the Lady Bulldogs battled Central State University in the loud, cacophonous confines of sold-out Beacom/Lewis Gymnasium.

He seemed to belong in a "Sssh! Quiet!" library and not CSU's rockin' gym.

What was this chill guy doing at The Battle of Wilberforce?

That answer came later that night.

Turns out he was the hoops version of a hungry hammerhead and he devoured almost every basketball that caromed off the rim or backboard.

A 6-foot-5 freshman starter on the Wilberforce men's team, he grabbed a game-high 16 rebounds in the Bulldogs' stunning 91-65 upset of CSU.

As for the pregame yoga mat, he explained that this was the first time he'd ever experienced the intense Central State-Wilberforce rivalry.

In fact, this is his first basketball season in seven years.

He had walked completely away from the sport when he was a 15-year-old high school sophomore and soon found himself on a personal roller coaster and ended up in foster care.

By the time he was 18, he was working two jobs (he's a certified welder, too) and eventually he launched his own landscaping company — Quintessential Lawns — in Fairfield. He now has a successful business with five employees and plenty of work, from putting in and maintaining plants and lawns to building patios.

But laying sod and spreading mulch are a little different than holding your own on the hardwood.

"When we walked into the gym before the game," he said, "a group of guys were outside saying stuff like 'You guys suck! It doesn't look like you're ready to play!'

"I was afraid I was gonna get lost with the crowd when the game started; that I'd lose my focus.

"I'll be honest, I was a little anxious. To distract myself while the girls were playing, I rolled out my yoga mat next to their bench, sat down and started to read.

"On game days I also have little note cards with my defensive keys and offensive keys on them. I kept going over them and I read my book."

As a Macmillan Publishing introduction puts it, Herjavec's work is "about the art of persuasion."

And Davis and his Wilberforce mates quickly persuaded Central State they were ready to play. They had Marauders down 11-3 in the first two minutes. Soon Davis was controlling the boards against a CSU front court that had him by a few inches and several pounds.

No one expected the rout. Wilberforce came into the game 4-22 and at one point in the season had lost 15 games in row, eight by more than 20 points.

But the team had refused to fold and had just beaten Ashland, an NCAA Division II team with an 18-8 record, and a pair of their NAIA Mid-South Conference rivals: Freed Hardeman, which had beaten them by 43 points in late December and Bethel, which earlier had topped them by 25.

"Cory Davis is our glue," said Wilberforce coach Mark Mitchell, whose team meets Pikeville today in the first round of the Mid South Tournament in Bowling Green, Ky.

He said it's not just because of Davis's box score lines, but what he does off the court and in the classroom , where he's become a Dean's List student after graduating from high school with a 1.7 GPA.

"He empowers us and won't let us fall below a certain standard," Mitchell said.

Assistant coach Eric Salter summed up Davis best: "He's just a great role model for our kids to see."

Journaling sessions

Mitchell is a sideline veteran. He was the head coach at Taft and Western Hills in Cincinnati and an assistant coach of the Ohio State women's team. His daughter is Indiana Fever guard Kelsey Mitchell.

But he said he recently picked up a real coaching aid from his wife, Cheryl, who has long kept a journal of her thoughts and experiences.

He eventually began to journal himself and this season he had the whole Wilberforce team do it. The players' well-thumbed personal ledgers are kept on a shelf in his office

"We have journaling sessions two or three times a week," Mitchell said. "I may give them a topic or I'll just ask them: What's on their mind. What are they feeling. What's the event of the day.

"And oh my god! Our guys have gotten into it. They just write and write and write. We've had plenty of tear-jerking sessions when they shared some real stuff from their lives."

And no one's story can match the one the 22-year-old Davis can tell.

He said his dad, who raised him, "had me in basketball from a very young age. From the time I was 7 to 15, I was in the gym seven days a week, 4 to 5 hours a day.

"At the time my father was coaching a local AAU team, the Cincinnati Lakers. Then I went to Columbus to play for the All-Ohio Red and my last season I came back to Cincinnati and played for Ohio Unity.

"I started at Walnut Hills as a freshman and the next season I played there and at Hamilton High School a little."

Eventually, he quit.

"I didn't have the best family life and I went through some personal issues," he said.

He said his parents both had considerable struggles themselves and he said the courts "deemed I didn't have a parent who could adequately take care of me."

In foster care, he was raised by a family that knew him.

He admitted he was unruly and acted out. He got a landscaping job, but said he spent his paychecks on drinking with his friends.

"I didn't know what my purpose was, but I soon realized the stuff I thought I wanted, the stuff I spent my money on, wasn't what I wanted," he said. "I felt I'd let myself down."

One thing he said he did remember: "When I was playing basketball, I felt like my true self."

He started going to open gyms again and Mitchell said a good friend of his — Bill Miles, an administrator with the Cincinnati Public Schools — called and said: "Mitch, you're gonna really like this kid!' and put together the introduction.

'It was refreshing to see'

"I'd never even heard of Wilberforce before," Davis admitted. "Coach Mitch told me to come up to open gym the next day, so I typed the school into my GPS and drove up.

"I had no idea what I was getting into. It took me three weeks to even realize it was HBCU. I didn't know much about them either, but now I love the atmosphere."

Mitchell knew little about Davis, but the more he watched, the more he liked what he saw:

"He literally did not leave the paint. All he did was rebound. He wasn't out there trying to take a lot of goofy shots. He wasn't trying to reinvent the wheel or be everybody's point guard. He just stayed in his lane.

'I said 'Wow! This is a throwback. A young person who just comes in and works, goes about his business and doesn't feel a sense of entitlement.' It was refreshing to see."

Salter remembers Davis sometimes showing up in the summer to work on his shot and he was still wearing his work boots and work clothes from a day of landscaping.

Davis redshirted last season to bolster his academics. "He exceeded our expectations," Mitchell said. "He took 37 or 38 credit hours last year and had a 3.8."

Away from school, Davis now employs three of his Wilberforce teammates at Quintessential Lawns.

"The business is worth over a half million dollars," Mitchell said. "He just works quietly and makes sure his mom has everything she needs. He makes sure his girlfriend does, too, and he does the same for his grandmother."

Just as he's reconnected with his mom, he's starting to rebuild a relationship with his dad.

After the victory over CSU, his father, who was at the game, gave him a hug.

"I'm just really, really lucky to have a second chance," Davis said.

As for those guys who taunted him and his teammates as they came into the CSU gym last week, he said he didn't see them when he and the Bulldogs left after the 25-point victory:

"I guess they got out of there a little faster than we did."

They'd found out he was a shark after all.