Antoine Davis is three points away from breaking Pete Maravich’s record

For nearly two decades, Mike Davis has appreciated a photo of his then 7-year-old son smiling next to a baby-faced LeBron James.

The Detroit Mercy men’s basketball coach has caught himself glancing at this photo a number of times this season, with both subjects chasing the story.

“I was thinking, ‘Is that the all-time leading scorer in NBA history and the all-time leading scorer in college basketball history?'” Davis told Yahoo Sports last week. “What a priceless image that would be if that happened.”

That future was achingly close to becoming a reality, but Antoine Davis was only a single flick of his wrist away from making it happen. The fifth-grader from Detroit Mercy missed a hasty pull-up 3-pointer in the dying seconds of a season-ending 71-66 loss to Youngstown State, putting him forever three points short of Pete Maravich’s career NCAA record.

Davis advanced to Thursday night’s Horizon League quarterfinals, 25 points behind the 3,667 that the legendary Maravich scored at LSU from 1967-70. It seemed easy work for a tough shooting specialist who’s averaged a national-best 28.4 points this season and has surpassed 30 in eight of his previous nine games.

The calculus changed when Youngstown State introduced a defense system designed to require everyone but Davis to attempt to cause offense. The top-seeded Penguins sent a double-team on the prolific 6ft-1 combo guard every time he attacked from dribble, whenever he saw daylight in transition, whenever he rolled around a screen for a catch- to find a shoot-and-shoot option. Sometimes Davis faced a trap as soon as he crossed midfield.

In response, Davis found a balance between chasing his own shot and trying to field his teammates. He had seven points at halftime, 15 early in the second half and 22 by the final buzzer. Only towards the end did he become ultra-aggressive, raising eight of his 26 shots while the outcome of the game was at stake for the last four-plus minutes.

The story goes on

It was a relief to some that Davis was not claiming a hallowed record that had remained unbroken for more than half a century. They argued that Davis could not be college basketball’s rightful scoring king that his performance would have come with an oversized asterisk. After all, it took Davis 144 games to get close to what Maravich did in 83.

Maravich played at LSU at a time when freshmen weren’t yet admitted to college. For three years he averaged an unfathomable, almost incredible 44.2 points per game despite having neither a shot clock nor a 3-point line. Due to rule changes due to COVID-19 disruptions, Davis received an NCAA waiver that allowed him to play five full seasons with Detroit Mercy. He scored 25.4 points per game for a struggling Titans program that set records in all but one of his five seasons.

The other factor at play was Maravich’s mystique. Pistol Pete became a basketball folk hero during his career, a player whose haircut and floppy socks were of his time, whose crowd-pleasing play was ahead of his time. LSU’s freshman team consistently outperformed their varsity during Maravich’s first year on campus. Fans in basketball-apathetic SEC cities flocked to see his string of behind-the-back dribbles, no-look assists and next-zip code jump shots.

Davis, on the other hand, has shone in anonymity on an off-the-radar program. Detroit Mercy’s 8,000-seat arena was less than a quarter full Tuesday night as Davis scored 38 points to extend his team’s season and keep his pursuit of Maravich alive. The 6-foot-1 combo guard’s quest to break Thursday night’s record was streamed on ESPN+.

Even Mike Davis said last week that if his son surpasses Maravich, they should both be remembered as record holders.

“I think Antoine is the top scorer of this generation and Pistol Pete is the top scorer of his generation,” said Mike.