Very rarely do kids from small schools have a chance to be highly recruited from all over the country, but Tom Bean’s Joe Davis was in that minute percentage. He was the Tomcats 6′ 9″ center on their basketball team and was a four-year starter, All-Region and All-State. With the skills that most youngters only dream of, Davis was the complete package and recruiters knew it. Davis could have committed any college in America, but chose Baylor because of his excellence in the classroom and his goal of becoming an engineer.
His head coach, Brent Hollensed, sat down with Howe Enterprise owner Monte Walker, who guarded Davis
in his last game, to talk about Davis as a person and as a supreme athlete. Hollensed shared how Davis showed his level of talent at a camp where he out-performed future NBA player Greg Ostertag. Hollensed remembered that one coach preferred to recruit Davis over Anfernee “Penny” Hardaway.
However, during Davis’ senior year basketball season, he was involved in an accident on Monday, January 22, 1990 that took his life. The accident happened on Highway 11 as Davis was traveling with teammate Brent McLain to Sherman to visit McLain’s mother, who was at Wilson N. Jones Hospital. Davis and McLain made it to the hospital that night, but between Tom Bean and Sherman, a fork in history forever altered the Davis family, Tom Bean, the Texoma region, college basketball, and even the NBA.
The full interview with Hollensed and story of Joe Davis will be in Monday’s edition of The Howe Enterprise.
VIDEO: Joe Davis’ final game on Jan. 19, 1990 at Howe’s Charles R. Thompson Gymnasium.
