MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin guard Johnny Davis drives to the basket with the same ferocity he used to show while running over defenders as a high school quarterback.

Davis’ emergence as the Big Ten player of the year and a likely NBA lottery pick has been one of college basketball’s biggest surprises this season. The 6-foot-5 sophomore believes his football experience made him a better basketball player.

“Playing football and taking shots, as a quarterback especially, it just prepares you for that physicality and allows you to get knocked down and get back up real quick,” Davis said.

Davis has averaged 19.7 points and 8.2 rebounds to earn Associated Press All-America first-team honors and help Wisconsin win a share of the Big Ten title.

Davis’ Badgers (24-7) are seeded third in the NCAA Midwest Region and play Friday against Colgate (23-11) in Milwaukee.

“I think people give him a lot of credit for being an incredible scorer, but he’s an incredible basketball player,” teammate Brad Davison said. “He does everything. Defensively. Rebounding. He’s not out there (just) trying to score. He’s trying to win.”

Johnny Davis and his twin brother – reserve guard Jordan Davis – are Wisconsin basketball teammates who played football together at La Crosse (Wisconsin) Central High School. Johnny was the quarterback while Jordan played receiver.

They played football at the suggestion of their father, Mark Davis, who had a 31-game stint with the Milwaukee Bucks in 1988-89 and played 13 seasons of professional basketball. He wanted his kids to play plenty of sports rather than specializing in one.

Mark Davis says Jordan originally was the more physical basketball player while Johnny relied on finesse. Football helped Johnny learn to relish contact.

“Even when we tried to tell him to take some slides in football and run out of bounds, he would still be willing to (say), `Hey, If we need that yard, I’m going to run that guy over and get that yard,'” said Tony Servais, his high school football coach.

That attitude eventually carried over to basketball.

“Football taught him to be tougher,” Mark Davis said. “That’s why, when he drives to the basket, the contact means nothing to him. He’s going to play through it.”

TEXAS TECH: Mark Adams describes himself as an old West Texas farm boy who grew up on the cotton field and dreamed of being Texas Tech’s head basketball coach.

He has done it, though it was a decades-long journey that rarely got too far away from home for the 65-year-old Adams. There were times he gave up on his dream; he even spent seven seasons out of college coaching when he started a minor league hockey franchise.

“When I look back, I guess God had a plan all along,” Adams said.

The 1979 Tech graduate, who as a student constantly observed Coach Gerald Myers, got his dream job after Chris Beard left last April for bitter rival Texas, his alma mater. Adams was on Beard’s staff over a five-season span when the Red Raiders made the national championship game in 2019, a year after getting to the NCAA Elite Eight.

The 12th-ranked Red Raiders (25-9), a No. 3 seed in this year’s NCAA tournament, play Montana State on Friday. They went 18-0 at home and swept two games each against the Beard-coached Longhorns and defending national champion Baylor. They lost in double overtime at Kansas while getting a regular-season split with the Jayhawks, a No. 1 NCAA seed like Baylor.

Beard wanted his top assistant to go with him to Austin, but Adams stayed in Lubbock with no guarantee about his future at his alma mater.

“This is home, and I love Texas Tech,” Adams said. “The first three or four days, I was kind of on an island thinking, what am I going to do if I don’t get this job?”

Adams already had 554 wins in 23 seasons as a head coach at small Texas schools. His resume included an NAIA title game appearance with Wayland Baptist and, after his coaching hiatus, a national junior college championship at Howard College with a team led by current NBA player Jae Crowder.

“There was nothing promised. And I think we had to be really careful because we were extremely proud of where our basketball program was, and how it had been established,” said Texas Tech Athletic Director Kirby Hocutt, part of a four-person search committee. “It was probably after one or two conversations that we had with Coach Adams, the question was why not? Why wouldn’t we stay internally with a candidate who has the experience that he has . who’s been an integral part of the success that we’ve had.”

And who clearly wanted to be there, less than 40 miles from the small farming community of Brownfield where he grew up.

“At my age, hopefully there’s some encouragement there for others that don’t give up on your dreams,” Adams said.

CHATTANOOGA: Former Kansas standout Silvio De Sousa has been to the NCAA tournament and told his new Chattanooga teammates just how much fun playing in the postseason can be.

Now the Mocs are about the find out firsthand for themselves.

For De Sousa, it has been a tumultuous trek back to the tournament. He is a big reason the 13th-seeded Mocs will be playing No. 4 seed Illinois on Friday night in Pittsburgh in the South Region, and he is also a big reason why the Jayhawks are still in NCAA limbo.

“I think the very first practice I remember saying in the locker room, `You think playing ball is fun? Just make it to the NCAA tournament, you’ll have a lot more fun,”‘ De Sousa recalled telling his Chattanooga teammates. “I just hope they will get to enjoy it, and just have the fun I once told them about. It’s a great experience.”

It’s taken De Sousa some time to get here again.

His recruitment to Kansas was part of a federal investigation into corruption in college basketball tying Kansas, Arizona and Louisville among others to possible NCAA violations.

The Kansas case is among a handful still making its way through the Independent Accountability Resolution Process (IARP), created out of proposals from the commission led by former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2018 to reform the sport.

De Sousa was ruled ineligible for the rest of the 2019 season and the 2019-20 season before getting a year of eligibility back in May 2019 on appeal.

The 6-foot-9 forward made headlines in January 2020 for his part in a brawl late in Kansas’ 81-60 over Kansas State. De Sousa sent DaJuan Gordon sprawling and stood over him, triggering both benches to empty. De Sousa picked up a stool at one point and held it over his head before an assistant grabbed it away.

That earned De Sousa a 12-game suspension from the Big 12. De Sousa opted out of the 2020-21 season, ending his career at Kansas.

After the long, winding road, De Sousa graduated from Kansas last May. In July, he decided to continue playing at Chattanooga, a Southern Conference program with its own proud NCAA tournament history.

This is the Mocs’ 12th NCAA tournament berth and first since 2016. Kansas also is back in a customary spot as a No. 1 seed for the first time since 2018, this time in the Midwest Region. The only way De Sousa would face his former team would be if Chattanooga gets to its first Final Four.

SAN FRANCISCO:  At his core, Todd Golden knew his University of San Francisco team had done enough to earn an NCAA tournament berth. It’s just that the coach had counted on a No. 9 seed and those were all gone with just four spots in the bracket remaining when the Dons were finally called.

“We made history,” the elated third-year coach said, “something I’ll remember for the rest of my life.”

Tiny USF, from the same talented mid-major conference as tournament-bound rivals Gonzaga and Saint Mary’s, is headed back to college basketball’s big stage for the first time since 1998 after a fantastic run through the West Coast Conference. The Dons (24-9) are a 10th seed in the East Regional and set to face No. 7 Murray State (30-2) on Thursday in Indianapolis seeking their first NCAA victory since 1979. USF’s storied program dates way back to the days of winning back-to-back NCAA titles in 1955 and 1956 behind star Bill Russell.

“It’s unexplainable, just seeing our name up there it’s something I always dreamed about,” senior Khalil Shabazz said shortly after the Dons punched their ticket. “Literally seeing it become a reality, it’s still unexplainable and I’m still in shock. My hands are shaky and my heart is beating fast. It’s crazy. I’m just really happy that we made it. We’re not finished.”

Everyone involved knew the kind of special season the Dons would need in order to get this far and secure an at-large bid in a conference featuring No. 1 overall seed Gonzaga and Bay Area neighbor Saint Mary’s. This marks the third time in conference history the WCC has sent three teams to the NCAA tournament, also done in 2012 and 2008.

Things got a little tough for Golden and the Dons during the selection show as USF waited – and waited. “It was stressful and surreal,” Golden said. “There’s no way CBS sent cameras out here to see us not get in right?”

“This is not easy to do,” he added. “We knew how difficult the challenge was going to be when we started, all through it and even ’til a minute before we got announced. So to get rewarded that way it means everything.”

Golden has pulled together players from Australia, Belarus, Italy, England, The Netherlands, Slovenia and Ukraine to build this team, which has won with consistency and a determination to stick together, like supporting sophomore center Volodymyr Markovetskyy of Truskavets, Ukraine, as his mother and sister relocated when Russia attacked their homeland and his father stayed to work in law enforcement.

“I think (he) knows that our team is behind him in every situation that he’s in and I think it’s a very important situation to support him and his family with everything that’s going on in the world right now,” senior Jamaree Bouyea said. “It’s a credit to him for showing up every day for basketball practice and giving it his all as he has other things going on.”

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