![Onsted high school's Austin Davis goes through drills during practice on Monday, Febuary 8,2016 at Onsted high school in Onsted MI. Kirthmon F. Dozier/Detroit Free Press]()
Onsted high school’s Austin Davis goes through drills during practice on Monday, Febuary 8,2016 at Onsted high school in Onsted MI. Kirthmon F. Dozier/Detroit Free Press
TECUMSEH – The gym was packed on a Saturday night when Tecumseh hosted nearby unbeaten Onsted in a nonconference basketball game.
The draw was Onsted’s new and improved 6-foot-10 Austin Davis, who signed with Michigan in November. He is the No. 2 ranked player in the state, one notch below U-D Jesuit’s Cassius Winston.
Davis is easily the most dominating post player in the state, averaging 22 points, 14 rebounds and hitting an incredible 78.5% of his shots from the field this season.
But Davis also dominated as a junior a year ago. As a senior, however, he is much more than just a guy who clogs the lane defensively and scores only in the half-court offense.
The first time a Tecumseh player drove to the basket, he found Davis lurking in the lane, and the player threw up a wild shot that had absolutely no chance of going in.
The second time a Tecumseh player challenged Davis, the player became so discombobulated the closer he got to the basket he traveled before he could get off a shot.
On offense, Davis posted up on the block and most of the time was surrounded by three players. On one possession he flashed to the high post, caught a pass and immediately dropped a pass to teammate Skyler Lipinski, who made a backdoor cut for an open lay-up.
In the first half, Davis did a lot of the same things he did a season ago.
But early in the third quarter an Onsted teammate made a steal — and suddenly there was Davis sprinting down the court, catching a pass, dribbling a few times and throwing down a rim-rattling, teeth-quaking, backboard-shaking flying slammer.
A bit later, Davis caught a pass on the baseline, faked one way, spun the other and drove for a reverse jam.
Now, those are things we had never seen from Davis before.
The reason Davis is able to pull off moves like that is there is so much less of Davis to see.
While he was 6-10 a year ago, he was also 265 pounds. Today he is a svelte 235 and his game has benefited immeasurably.
“The big thing is I changed my diet around; I changed it pretty drastically,” he said. “And then I got on a new weight program.”
Hey, Jenny Craig could take tips from this kid.
“There’s a lot of foods you don’t think about when you eat and they have a lot of sugar,” he said. “A lot of white breads — those are really bad. White pastas. That’s probably the biggest thing, making everything whole grain.”
But this is not the first time Davis lost weight. When he was in the eighth grade, he was 6-3 and weighed 275 pounds. Over the course of the summer he grew three to four inches and lost 40 pounds.
“I was scared to death of two-a-days for football,” he said. “I had to do something so that I could get through it.”
With the added height and lost weight, Davis moved from left tackle, where he played in middle school, to tight end and defensive end.
He showed good promise at tight end, but his football and baseball careers — he was a hard-throwing pitcher and first baseman — ended after his freshman year.
“I liked football,” he said. “but I kind of saw the writing on the wall when I started to grow more and football wasn’t going to be my thing.”
Over the next three years Davis added height … and weight.
Although he earned first-team Class B All-State honors as a junior, Davis still wasn’t a player capable of playing at an upper-echelon college program.
A year ago, Davis was more of a plodder as he moved up and down the court. His teammates often had to wait for him to join them before they could run their offense.
That, more than anything, is why no major college offered him a scholarship — and U-M coach John Beilein made Davis aware of that fact.
“We had a directive,” said Eric Davis, Austin’s dad. “Coach Beilein really wanted to see him start moving better and running the court better.”
That was the only missing piece to the puzzle because Davis has everything else. He is a model student — his 4.11 grade point average makes him Onsted’s salutatorian, and to boot he scored a terrific 30 on the ACT.
“Both my parents placed a huge emphasis on academics,” he said. “They pushed me to always excel in the classroom.”
Of course they did. His mother, Marsha, is the principal of Onsted’s elementary school.
The truth is, it did not take much prodding from mom or dad for Davis to work as hard on his academics as did on basketball.
“You have to have that internal fire and he does,” his mother said. “I’m the luckiest mom in the world. He’s a good kid that does it on his own. We kind of started out early and you set the tone and that’s how we operate and that’s our expectations.”
Davis has his own set of expectations, so when Beilein said he wanted to see him moving better, he went to work.
Over spring break, Davis committed himself to improving his ability to run the court. It didn’t take long for Beilein to offer him a scholarship, which Davis accepted in about three seconds.
“We’ve grown up Michigan fans all our lives,” Davis said. “My parents took me to a lot of football games, a few basketball games. Probably one of the coolest experiences of my childhood was we got to sit in an end zone for the Ohio State game one year.”
Once Davis committed last spring, something peculiar happened. He began reading disparaging things about himself written by U-M fans upset that Beilein offered a scholarship to a kid from Onsted.
Forget that an overwhelmingly large percentage of those critical comments came from people who had never seen him play, or that most of them likely couldn’t find Onsted, located in the Irish Hills not far from Michigan International Speedway.
Still, the comments stung, and Davis wondered how U-M fans could question the judgment of a coach who took the Wolverines to the national championship game a few years ago.
“You don’t really get a lot of that here,” he said of the criticism. “You’ll get it from other schools, but that was really surprising to me when that happened. My parents have helped me a lot, shielded me from that stuff. I know they have.”
By then Davis was well on his way to changing his diet and in turn, his body. The results have been amazing, as anyone who watches him play can see.
“Probably the biggest change I’ve noticed is being able to play in transition and get up and down the floor a lot better,” he said. “That’s something I’ve had to learn how to do this year. I’ve never been able to play like that so that’s been a process this year, working with my teammates.”
Onsted coach Brad Maska first met Davis when he was in the third grade and watched him develop his game.
“He’s always worked hard, he’s always had great hands and he’s always had great footwork,” Maska said. “The thing with him has been being able to change his body. That’s the thing that’s been just unbelievable.”
Davis’ ability to run the floor has given Onsted’s offense another dimension. Onsted no longer is limited to a half-court game.
“I knew Austin would get to this point, I just didn’t think it would be with me,” Maska said. “It’s really hard for a high school kid to take that much determination in your diet. Heck, we have a tough time doing it as adults. For a high school kid to be that serious about his diet and what he eats and change his body, that’s a tremendous attribute to him.”
During a course of a game Davis still exerts the same amount of energy he did a year ago, but now he can accomplish so much more.
That was an adjustment, too.
“Coach Beilein has actually said a lot about it, too,” Davis said. “He says I have to have it in my head that I wasn’t able to run like I can now with my new body. I can do a lot more things and push myself a lot harder than I could have.”
Davis’ dad, who has lost 130 pounds, provided the early guidance in changing the diet, and then he got out of the way and let his son go.
“The kid works endlessly, he doesn’t quit,” Eric said. “We have to shut him down. Once he gets the encouragement to do something he goes overboard on it — with lifting, with nutrition, with everything else.”
Near the end of the game at Tecumseh, Davis got the ball inside and made his move to the basket, throwing down a thunderous dunk. When he landed he let loose with a loud yell, wrapping up a 33-point, 12-rebound performance.
It had been a physical game. Davis could have stopped by the Tecumseh police department and filed assault and battery charges against a couple of the players who tried in vain to guard him, so his scream may have been the release of a lot of frustration.
Or maybe it was about the comments he reads about himself, or perhaps it is the fact that his mother isn’t as lucky as she claims.
On the November day her 39-year-old brother was buried after losing a bout with colon cancer, Marsha told Davis and his two younger siblings that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer.
She is in the midst of her second 12-week series of chemotherapy treatments and will have surgery this summer.
“It’s small, I found it early, good prognosis,” she said, matter-of-factly. “It’s just getting through the feeling not great.”
And trying to keep the eldest of her children from worrying too much.
“He is super protective,” she said. “I don’t see a lot of physical signs of how hard it is on him, but I know it is. He’s very loving already, but he’s attached at the hip because he’s old enough to understand and my brother just dying, a very fond uncle, that was hard on all of them and everybody.”
Davis is reserved and soft-spoken by nature, and rarely allows his emotions get the best of him.
“I know she’s a strong woman and she’s going to be able to get through it so I try not to worry about it too much,” he said. “It’s always in the back of your head, but I try not to let it overwhelm me or anything.”
Instead he overwhelms the opposition on the basketball court, and looks forward to the day he can do the same in Ann Arbor and show the U-M fans why Beilein signed him.
“I’m very excited to see what the coaches can do with me,” Davis said. “I want to see how they can push me and mold me into the best player I can be.”
Meet Austin Davis
Who: Senior center, Onsted High School.
Vitals: 6-10, 235.
Committed to: Michigan.
The numbers: This season, he’s averaging 22 points and 14 rebounds a game while hitting 78.5% of his shots.
Did you know? Davis will be just the 14th player from Lenawee County to play Division I basketball, according to the Adrian Daily Telegram.
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