Mike Davis still emodies the attributes that drove him to the brink of a title and enabled him to survive replacing a coaching legend at Indiana: He's demanding, intense and ambitious.
That's why after leading UAB back into the NCAA tournament, he wants more.
''That's the driving force for me, is just to get back there,'' Davis said Monday before flying to Dayton, Ohio, for an opening-round game with Clemson. ''I'm never satisfied with just making the tournament. Once you play for a national championship, that's all you think about. You don't think about just making the tournament, you think about national championships.
''That's what drives me. That's what motivates me.''
He finally has his shot, long though it may be.
The Blazers (22-8) barely made the tournament as one of the NCAA's ''First Four'' teams who must win to join the higher seeds.
The winner heads to Tampa, Fla., as a 12th seed to face No. 5 seed West Virginia.
It's a big step for Davis & Co. at a school that has made the field at times with regularity - just not with Indiana-style regularity.
However, he's five years removed from his rocky tenure at Indiana, which included a trip to the national title game in 2002. He calls Indiana ''an unbelievable program with a lot of tradition.''
But now he coaches basketball in a state where football is supreme. And he's at UAB, which has always played in the shadows of Southeastern Conference teams Alabama and Auburn. (Neither of whom made the 68-team field).
The low-key Davis can go out in public without getting mobbed and has one newspaper beat writer covering the team.
He replaced Mike Anderson, not Bob Knight.
''It's a great fit,'' Davis said. ''No matter how good or bad you are, no matter where you are, a job is just like a system for a player. It has to fit you. A lot of players play in a certain system and they're not a good player. But when you put the player in a system that fits them, they perform better.
''My vision for this program is to get it to where it's a common thing for us to win 22-25 games a year. It's a common thing for us to sell out at home. It's a common thing for us to get in the tournament. That's my vision.''
And Davis said he has ''no doubt'' UAB can attain that kind of success.
He has won 92 games the past four seasons and taken the Blazers to three straight NITs since replacing Mike Anderson, who left to take over the Missouri program.
Only Hall of Famer Gene Bartow had a better four-year run, winning 94 games from 1983-87 during a seven-year string of NCAA tournament teams.
It might be unsurprising if UAB seems like a more comfortable fit for Davis, who rankled Indiana fans less than two months into his tenure. After an embarrassing loss to Kentucky, he said he wasn't ''the right man for the job.''
''It's who you follow,'' said Wimp Sanderson, who coached Davis for his final three seasons at Alabama. ''If you follow Bobby Knight, that's a pretty tough assignment. If you're a coach and follow somebody that's 2-25, that's not very hard.
''Based on that, coming here was a little bit easier for him.''
Plus, he's a Fayette, Ala., native and former Alabama Mr. Basketball who played for the Crimson Tide, where he was a tough defender who won the team's ''Hustle Award'' four years running.
''People know me here basically because I played at Alabama a long time ago,'' Davis said. ''And people recognize me more now because, after five years of being on TV sports, it adds up, 'OK, that's the coach from UAB.' I do speak and talk to people all the time when I go out but nowhere near the degree I had at Indiana.''
Bartow can empathize with Davis' situation when he replaced Knight. After all, Bartow followed John Wooden at UCLA.
''Any time any coach in football or basketball replaces a person that has won big, big, big like coach (Bear) Bryant did at Alabama or coach Wooden did at UCLA, the jobs are more difficult,'' said Bartow, now an executive with the NBA's Memphis Grizzlies. ''In baseball, if a manager's won World Series three or four years in a row, the job's more difficult. That's just part of the sports world.''
