LEXINGTON, Ky. — Two years ago, when I last checked in with Scott Davenport, it was to inform you that the ebullient Bellarmine men’s basketball coach was about to take on one of the most daunting challenges in college sports.
Bellarmine had just announced it was moving its athletics programs to NCAA Division I from the Knights’ longtime perch in Division II.
One doesn’t have to be much of a sports historian to dig up a list of coaching careers undermined by the task of guiding a college program through the transition to D-I.
Though he ultimately thrived, even the estimable Rick Byrd had three losing seasons in the five years of Belmont’s transition from NAIA to NCAA Division I.
This past winter, Davenport and Bellarmine made a mockery of all transition foreboding. In their first season playing D-I college hoops, all the Knights did was:
— Move their home games into historic Freedom Hall;
— Tap some well-heeled boosters for Freedom Hall renovations that included a remodeled locker room and a Bellarmine-themed playing floor;
— Play their first official contest as a D-I school against Duke and Mike Krzyzewski in Cameron Indoor;
— Perform so well (14-8, 10-3 ASUN Conference), they came within one game of winning the ASUN regular-season championship;
— Win a postseason game by beating Army in the College Basketball Invitational;
— Sign Kentucky’s 2021 Mr. Basketball, Lexington Catholic star Ben Johnson, in recruiting.
“It was incredible,” Davenport says of Bellarmine’s initial year in Division I.
After watching from afar the boffo results the Knights produced in their first season playing at college basketball’s highest level, I have a new question:
Is it possible that Bellarmine, the small, Catholic university in Louisville, could emerge as “the next Belmont” in men’s college basketball?
After moving up from NAIA in 1999, Byrd built Belmont, the small, Christian university in Nashville, Tenn., into one of the most respected mid-major programs in college hoops.
Once through the rocky transition, Byrd directed Belmont to 13 20-win seasons and eight trips to the NCAA Tournament before retiring in 2019.
“Those are the goals,” Davenport says of Belmont-like success.
Of course, in year two of its D-I transition, there’s no guarantee that Bellarmine can match last year’s achievements.
Davenport is putting together a rugged non-conference schedule that will see Bellarmine test itself against some of college basketball’s elite programs. That will start Nov. 9 when the Knights face Big Ten power Purdue in West Lafayette, Ind.
The ASUN figures to be a far tougher basketball league in 2021-22 now that Eastern Kentucky (22-7 last year) and Jacksonville State (18-9) have left the OVC to join.
Bellarmine will be without its best player from a season ago. Forgoing his remaining eligibility, forward Pedro Bradshaw (team highs of 16 ppg and 6.9 rpg) has turned pro.
On the plus side, Davenport will return one of Kentucky’s more entertaining college hoops players in 6-foot-3 senior Dylan Penn (12.9 ppg, 3.8 rpg, 3,6 assists).
“The first truly ambidextrous player I have ever coached in my life,” Davenport says of Penn. “If I asked him to shoot 10 threes right-handed and left-handed, he is going to make the same number (with either hand).”
Signing the player who went on to win Kentucky Mr. Basketball honors in 2021 is a coup for Bellarmine.
Davenport believes the 6-3 Johnson, who averaged 27.3 points while making 53% of his shots and 44% of his 3-point attempts at Lexington Catholic last year, will “play a very big role” for Bellarmine this winter.
“I think he is going to make every shot (he takes),” Davenport says of Johnson. “If I swung a golf club as fundamentally sound as he shoots a basketball, I would have the ball right in the middle of the fairway every time.”
Davenport, 65, has already left a deep imprint in Kentucky basketball lore. He directed Ballard High School and Allan Houston against Clay County and Richie Farmer in the back-to-back epic Sweet Sixteen finals of 1987 (won by Clay County) and 1988 (won by Ballard).
After a nine-year stint as an assistant under Denny Crum and then Rick Pitino at Louisville, Davenport built Bellarmine into a Division II national power.
The Knights played in the NCAA D-II Tournament 11 straight times under Davenport, advancing to four Final Fours and winning the 2011 national title.
Now, after Bellarmine’s stellar first season in Division I, it does not seem farfetched to at least wonder if Davenport (378-117 as a college head coach) can do in the Derby City what Belmont’s Byrd did in Music City.
In February, Sports Illustrated did a deep-dive that traced Gonzaga’s rise from obscure private college in Spokane, Wash., to one of the Goliaths of men’s college basketball.
Davenport had copies of the article printed and given to everyone involved with Bellarmine hoops — players, coaches, key boosters.
“Who was Gonzaga 20 years ago,” Davenport asks. “They were Bellarmine. Who was Belmont 10, 12, years ago? They were Bellarmine. You have to have a plan to have a program — and we do.”
