PROVIDENCE — As Dr. Tom Davis watched his only son coach his way through Cedar Falls, Peoria, Terre Haute and the other outposts in the Missouri Valley Conference last winter, one win led to another, and the father’s eyes widened with each passing week.

When Davis retired in March 2007 and left the Drake University basketball job in his son Keno’s hands, he was confident the 35-year-old was ready for the challenge. He had groomed him for this chance, after all, almost from the time he left the cradle.

“He literally grew up on the bench. He must have absorbed a lot of things,” said a proud Dr. Tom.

With his father purposely lurking in the background, Keno Davis won 28 games for Drake, the most in school history. All along the way, the son kept his father in close touch, picking his brain about strategy, dealing with fickle players and anything else that popped into his head. By the time the dream season ended with a crushing overtime defeat in the NCAA Tournament to Western Kentucky, the rookie head coach was the consensus National Coach of the Year.

“As he went through the year it was clear that he was mature beyond his years,” Dr. Tom said. “It was shocking to me, really. The things he knew to instinctively do normally take years to learn. Like things that happen during a game, how to handle the referees and call timeouts and such. The best thing I did was to stay out of his way. I didn’t go to road games. If he was going to be successful, he’s got to do it on his own.”

That may be the father’s wish, but Dr. Tom and Keno Davis are a twosome and will always be linked. Last spring, Keno left Drake for bigger money and a bigger stage at Providence College and the Big East. His father, who won 598 games and coached in 11 NCAA Tournaments while at Lafayette, Boston College, Stanford, Iowa and Drake, stayed behind in Des Moines. But he’s never too far away.

When asked whether Providence hired two coaches when he moved East, Keno Davis quickly agreed. “I do. I’m not afraid to admit that,” he said. “I don’t have all the answers. I’m going to use the resources that I have to be as good a coach as I can. My dad’s at the top of that list.”

Keno loved the Eagles

Dr. Tom Davis says it wouldn’t have surprised him if his son had grown up to be a math whiz or a journalist, but sports, and basketball, defined his family’s life. When Keno was 5 years old, the family moved into a house a few blocks from BC’s campus in Chestnut Hill. He quickly adopted the Red Sox, Celtics, Bruins and Patriots as his teams, allegiances that last to this day.

“His first pro game was a trip to the Bruins. We sat down on the ice. That makes a tremendous impression on a young kid,” said Dr. Tom.

Keno also loved his father’s Eagles teams. Led by stars such as Dwan Chandler, John Bagley and Jay Murphy, BC whipped tiny Roberts Center into a frenzy at the dawn of the Big East. Dr. Tom’s team won the Big East title in 1981, and the next year advanced to the Elite Eight, but lost to Houston’s Clyde Drexler, Akeem Olajuwon and the rest of Phi Slama Jama.

Davis left Boston after the defeat and moved to Palo Alto, Calif., and a job at Stanford. After four uneven seasons, Dr. Tom kept moving, and landed at the University of Iowa. By then, Keno was 14 and asking questions about X’s and O’s.

“I thought he’d end up in the stock market or finance. When he told me he wanted to coach, I told him he might want to rethink that,” Dr. Tom said.

After an undistinguished playing career at Iowa City West High, Keno decided to enroll at Iowa and learn under his father. He was a walk-on in name only, practicing and traveling with the players but studying the coaching staff’s every move. Dr. Tom cemented his reputation as one of the game’s elite bench bosses during his 13 years in Iowa as he led the Hawkeyes to a No. 1 ranking in 1987, nine NCAA trips, and became the school’s all-time winningest (270 victories) coach.

“My biggest break was growing up with a father who was in the business all those years,” said Keno Davis. “When I chose to go to school at Iowa, I knew I wanted to coach, and that’s where I learned the craft.”

When Keno graduated from Iowa, he juggled a few options in his head. One was to coach local high school ball. Another was to stay with his father in some capacity. But he chose to work for a young, eccentric coach at Southern Indiana, a Division II school in Evansville. Nearly 15 years later, Bruce Pearl is one of the premier coaches in the country at the University of Tennessee.

“We met Bruce at BC,” said Keno. “The athletic director (Bill Flynn) had talked to my father and said, ‘I don’t know how you can use this guy, but he’ll be great for you.’ The way he is today, the guy who takes his shirt off and paints himself orange, that’s how Bruce was then. Probably even more so then.”

For $3,000 a year, Keno did just about everything for Pearl, yet always kept an eye open for a bigger job. That chance came in 1997 when he joined Southeast Missouri State and head coach Gary Garner.

“One thing my dad said was that it was great that I got an opportunity to work for Bruce, but he ran all the same stuff we did at Iowa,” said Keno. “If I really wanted to learn coaching, it would be great for me to work for somebody else that runs a different system. Gary Garner had just won a national championship at Fort Hays State, so I knew he could coach. I met him and I just kept showing up until he hired me. I showed up at the school, I showed up where he was recruiting, whatever it took.”

Garner, who now coaches the Iowa Energy in the NBDL, spotted something special in the eager young coach.

“He was very observant about everything. He always had his eyes and ears open,” said Garner. “He was a very quick learner.”

Garner said Davis came to him with the requisite basketball knowledge but didn’t choose to flaunt his father’s name.

“He was a worker. No one will outwork Keno,” he said. “I remember we couldn’t grab a rebound at all and he said he was going to recruit us a rebounder. He bulldogged this kid (Brandon Griffin) from down in Louisiana somewhere and got him for us. Sure enough, he led us in rebounding for two years.”

S.E. Missouri lost to Murray State at the buzzer in the Ohio Valley finals in 1999 but won the crown in 2000 before letting an NCAA tourney win against LSU slip away in the final minute. In 2003, Dr. Tom Davis came out of retirement to coach at Drake. Keno quickly joined him in Des Moines.

In 2007, four years into his return to coaching, Dr. Tom led the Bulldogs to a 17-15 record. It was the program’s first winning season in 20 years. Then he retired again, this time for good. Keno took over and built on his dad’s success, but in spades. After opening the season with a loss to St. Mary’s, Drake won an amazing 22 games in a row and shot into the Top 25.

When his first season as the boss ended, Keno Davis had become one of the hottest young coaches in the game. That’s when he answered PC’s call.

Quietly efficient

In six of the previous seven seasons, Providence has won just enough games to fall short of the NCAA Tournament. The Friars never sank to the depths of the Big East but clearly lacked the firepower to compete on a nightly basis with the elite in perhaps the best conference in the country. How will Keno Davis go about elevating the Friars into that rarified pack? Quietly.

“He has a very cool temperament. He’s not a screamer and yeller in practice or on the sidelines,” said Garner, his old boss.

Jeff Xavier, one of five returning seniors on a PC team that is picked to finish 10th in the Big East, said his new coach is more of a teacher than a screamer. He’s also clearly shy, a somewhat shocking personal trait in a profession filled with self-promoters. At PC’s annual Late Night Madness event, Davis refused to grab a microphone and help whip the fans into an already gurgling frenzy. At a season kickoff event at a downtown sports bar a few nights ago, Davis was introduced to Friar fans and received a rousing ovation. He proceeded to speak for about 30 seconds.

Davis says he’ll leave the promotion of his program to others. Winning, after all, is the ultimate sales tool. If he can somehow fill the rebounding and defensive holes and avoid the injury woes that have plagued the program in recent years, the Friars may just be an NCAA contender.

Dr. Tom Davis spent almost a week in Providence recently and watched his son’s team nearly every day. He helped push Keno to take on the challenge at PC, and sees lots of positives going forward.

“I’m excited about Providence because it is a basketball school. They know basketball and want to win at basketball. It’s not a school with doubts about how it wants to succeed in basketball,” said Dr. Tom Davis.

As for the time-honored groaning about how difficult it is to win at PC in a bear of a league like the Big East, the father says his son already knows the feeling.

“Drake has the same role in the Valley,” he said. “It’s hard to win in every league, and some schools have advantages over others. His year at Drake had to give him some confidence in that department. Now it’s on to a larger stage.”

kmcnamar@projo.com