Keno Davis — being introduced as Providence College’s basketball coach by athletic director Bob Driscoll in April — followed his father, Tom, into the coaching profession.

>

The Providence Journal / Ruben W. Perez

PROVIDENCE — OK, what’s the first thing I didn’t know about Keno Davis?

How about the fact he’s written two books.

I know a lot of writers who want to be coaches, but a coach who wants to be a writer?

Wow.

Now that’s as different as Davis’ first name.

“It’s kind of a hobby of mine,” he said.

It was a day last week, and even if he’s been the new Providence College basketball coach for two months now, you would never know it from his office. There were two large boxes in the middle of the floor, looking as if they’re still unpacked. There was nothing on the walls. The only personal touch was a huge trophy over in one corner, one of the five national coach-of-the-year awards he got this past season, the season that not only changed his life, but also brought him here.

“Do you know your way around yet?” he was asked.

“Well, I know how to get home and back,” he said.

“How do you do that?”

He mentioned a few streets, a trail that can get him from the PC campus to Smithfield.

After that?

One suspects that Rhode Island is a brave new world for Keno Davis.

It’s certainly understandable if he still feels a little disoriented. A year ago he was just a young coach who was getting his first job. That was at Drake, where he took over from his father, who retired.

The year before, Drake had had its first winning season in six years, so all he really wanted to do at the start of the year was continue that. The national coach of the year? Please. He was just trying to prove to people that he was ready to be a head coach.

We all know what happened next. Drake went 25-8, after being a preseason pick to finish ninth in the Missouri Valley Conference, and the world changed for Keno Davis. He went from being just another young coach trying to prove he was ready, someone known only as Tom Davis’ son, to one of those coaches all but covered in pixie dust, one of those names on the Rolodexes of athletic directors everywhere.

And when the smoke cleared two months ago, after a search that had taken roughly a month, there was Keno Davis being introduced as the new Friar coach, called “the answer to a prayer,” by PC president the Rev. Brian Shanley.

Could anyone make it up?

But there is an unassuming quality about Davis, as if nothing that happens in the game is really going to shock him one way or the other. Maybe that’s not surprising. He did, after all, come of age understanding about the vagaries of the business, a lesson he learned as the son of a coach.

Or how many other kids have a childhood memory that includes Patrick Ewing?

That happened when he was just a kid, maybe six or so, at his father’s basketball camp on the Boston College campus. Seems the first day he wasn’t big enough to reach the water fountain, and on the second day, when he went to reach for it again, two large hands picked him up and gave him a boost.

You guessed it

Ewing was a just a high school kid then, there at the BC camp.

Keno Davis also came of age moving around the country, leaving Boston for California and Stanford when he was 11, and then in high school to Iowa City where his father became the coach at the University of Iowa. That, too, came with being the son of a coach. Home was where your father’s job was, a life defined by the bouncing of a ball.

Rest assured that he’s seen unpacked boxes in the middle of a floor before. Rest assured that he’s had to find his way home to a new place before, too.

He came of age with moving. He came of age in the game. He’s seen his father have his contract not renewed at the University of Iowa, even though he was the winningest coach in school history.

He’s seen just one year not only put the big trophy in the corner of his office, but also bring him here to Providence. One senses that there’s not too much going on in coaching that’s going to surprise Keno Davis?

And the books?

He wrote the first one about a decade ago. It’s called Pressure Defense, the authors listed are Dr. Tom Davis and Keno Davis, but what it really is are the father’s philosophies written down by the son. It’s about 50-60 pages, was published by a small company in Iowa City, and Keno says that even today he gets a small royalty check once in a while.

The second is his own, called Camp Success, and is about 50 pages and deals with how to run a summer basketball camp. How to deal with the business side. How to maximize your workers. All the ins and outs of how to run the kind of camps he’s been around all his life, beginning when he was just a young kid and Patrick Ewing helped him reach the water fountain.

In fact, he has four weeks of camp starting today at PC, and says that camps are important to him, the place where so many young kids first get introduced to the game’s culture.

He also says he has more writing projects in mind, that he likes the process. Often, when he’s either on a plane, or has some time to kill, he will play around with writing. He says he might one day write about the incredible last year of his life.

“I like doing it,” he says. “I’ve always liked it.”

A coach who wants to be a writer.

Who would have ever believed it?

But, hey Keno, keep being a coach. It pays better.

Trust me.

breynold@projo.com