BYU basketball recruiting: Why Antoine Davis’ visit to BYU is important

It’s been a busy week of transfer portal talk for the BYU men’s basketball program.

With so much change coming for Mark Pope’s team, the Cougars will need to find ways to revamp their roster for next season.

One potential addition could be one of the NCAA’s most prolific scorers of all time.

Last week, Detroit Mercy guard Antoine Davis entered the NCAA transfer portal.
He’s played the past four seasons for the Titans, who compete in the Horizon League.
He will have one more season of eligibility, thanks to the COVID-19 relief year awarded to Division I student-athletes by the NCAA.
BYU reportedly made the short list of schools that, so far, he’s planning to look into for his final college season.
College basketball expert Jon Rothstein reported Friday that Davis will visit BYU next week.

Detroit transfer Antoine Davis plans to visit BYU next week, per Mike Davis. https://t.co/qZ0EQ4zmoX
— Jon Rothstein (@JonRothstein) April 22, 2022

Davis is visiting Kansas State on Friday, per Rothstein, recently visited Georgetown and Maryland, and is also considering Cincinnati.
Davis, who originally committed to Houston out of high school before playing for his father at Detroit Mercy, reportedly had more than a dozen teams, including blue bloods like Kansas and Kentucky, show interest after he entered the portal, per Stadium’s Jeff Goodman.

Scoring. He is already the No. 22 all-time scorer in NCAA men’s basketball history, with 2,734 career points.
That’s already more than BYU’s all-time leading scorer, Tyler Haws, who had 2,720 in his career and is No. 24 in the NCAA all-time.
If Davis maintains his average of 24.6 points per season, he would be the No. 2 all-time scorer in NCAA history with over 3,400 points, behind only LSU’s Peter Maravich at 3,667.
Davis has averaged over 20 points per game throughout his college career, averaging 26.1 ppg as a freshman, 24.3 as a sophomore, 24.0 as a junior and 23.9 last year as a senior.

Davis shot 40% or higher from the field all but one season at Detroit Mercy, with a 40.6% career field goal percentage.
He has shot 88.7% for his career from the free-throw line, including two seasons above 90%.
Davis has shot 36.4% for his career from 3-point range, with 429 career 3s. He is 80 3-pointers short of the NCAA career record.

Davis, the Horizon League co-Player of the Year this past season, has averaged 4.3 assists per game during his college career. That included an average over 4.0 per game in three of his four seasons, including a high of 4.8 as a junior.
Davis also averages 3.2 rebounds and 1.3 steals per game.
One area of improvement for Davis would be his assist-to-turnover ratio. He averages 3.6 turnovers per game.

His father, Mike Davis, who coached him at Detroit Mercy, explained that Antoine Davis’ decision to enter the transfer portal was motivated in part by his desire to take advantage of name, image and likeness (NIL) opportunities.
“If I wasn’t his coach, I would tell him to do exactly what he did,” his father told The Detroit News. “You have a chance to make a half-million to a million dollars in NIL, and you put that money in the bank and you don’t spend it ... let it sit for 10 years, that’s pretty impressive. It’s hard to turn that down.”

The Cougars must replace their two starting guards: three-year starter Alex Barcello, who led the team in scoring last season (16.8 ppg), and grad transfer Te’Jon Lucas, who averaged a team-high 4.7 assists.
Spencer Johnson and Trevin Knell, who both averaged nearly 20 minutes per game, both return.
BYU has had three guards — Hunter Erickson, Nate Hansen and walk-on Jeremy DowDell — enter the transfer portal.
Dallin Hall and Richie Saunders are expected to join the program after returning home this summer from their missions for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

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