There are 26 tats in all and they trumpet everything from his Chicago roots — there are the Bulls and the White Sox logos and the Michael Jordan Jumpman image, as well as tributes to his family and even his faith. He has the Lord’s Prayer wrapped around one leg.
Davis once recalled coach Archie Miller’s early teasings every day in practice: “He’d say, ‘Who’s the boy with all the scribble-scrabble on his legs?’ ”
Add in his playful nature and that Cheshire Cat grin that appears beneath his wisp of a moustache and it was easy to interpret the 6-foot sophomore guard as something he is not.
And now?
“He’s a tough-minded soul,” Darrell Davis, the freshman guard who is no relation, said with a bit of reverence as he nodded in Kyle’s direction.
“He’s a pain in the neck if you’re going against him,” said junior forward Bobby Wehli, who has often been harassed by Davis in practice.
Flyers junior forward Dyshawn Pierre said Davis is the guy who jump-starts the team with his unbridled energy and the way he makes life utterly miserable for opposing ball-handlers.
Davis prides himself on being a defensive specialist: “When I came here I saw everyone on the team could score but the one thing I saw our team was lacking a little bit was defense. And now it’s embedded in me. It helps my team get going and helps us win and that’s what matters.
“And I found if I play good defense, I’ll still get my points. I get them off transition because my teammates reward me.”
Even though he was snubbed when it came to Atlantic 10’s all-conference defensive team, Davis has shown in the past two NCAA Tournament games that the league’s balloters fumbled that choice.
It’s kind of the way Providence point guard Kris Dunn — the co-Big East Player of the Year and a guy Miller called “probably the best point guard in all of college basketball” — mishandled the ball Friday night and Saturday morning (the game didn’t end until 1:09 a.m.) when guarded by Davis in the Flyers’ 66-53 victory at Nationwide Arena.
Dunn turned the ball over seven times and made 4 of 13 shots for 11 points, nearly five below his average. He eventually fouled out.
Friars teammate LeDontae Henton, who decommitted from UD when Brian Gregory left to coach Georgia Tech and has gone on to amass 2,059 points and 1,054 rebounds at Providence, struggled just as much, going 7 for 26 from the floor.
Davis, meanwhile, had maybe the best game of his UD career: a career-high five steals, career-high nine rebounds, six points and two assists while turning the ball over twice in 34 minutes of intense play.
The 11th-seeded Flyers now meet No. 3 seed Oklahoma tonight at 6:10 p.m. at Nationwide. The winner advances to the Sweet 16.
Sooners point guard Jordan Woodward already has taken notice of Davis:
“I saw he’s really athletic. And he’s real quick. You can’t play with the ball in front of him because he uses his quickness against you. When he gets turnovers, he’s going to get the crowd into it. So we just can’t let him get steals.”
Dunn — just as several other opponents found out this year — wasn’t able to prevent that and Davis not only helped keep his cold-shooting team in the game early, but he gave the large, red-clad, pro-Flyers crowd something to roar about from the start.
“It felt like we were at home,” Davis said. “The fan support — all the crowd always lovin’ us — it felt like we were back at UD Arena. They really lifted us.”
Afterward Dunn gave Davis and the rest of the defensive-minded Flyers — UD has held 33 of its last 42 opponents under 70 points — credit for “making it tough all night.”
“Really they’re just a tough team. They play under you. They tail you. They just played harder than us.”
Davis had set his sights on Dunn the moment he and his teammates were given their scouting report:
“Coach told us he was an NBA guard, a good player, and I took it as a challenge. The refs weren’t calling ticky-tacky fouls, they let us play, so I tried to stay aggressive with him. I knew I had to throw everything at him I had … and I did.
“And after a while I saw it a couple of times in his eyes. He was getting frustrated. He kept losing the ball and he kept passing it away, not trying to score. It was getting to him. I could see it.”
Dunn certainly is not the only player Davis has derailed in his two seasons with the Flyers.
“Freshman year when we beat Cal in Maui,” Davis remembered. “I ticked off their point guard (Justin Cobbs) and he fouled out. He was talking a lot of trash. I just looked at him and laughed.”
Then there was Davis’ end-game heroics Wednesday night in the Flyers’ 56-55 First Four victory over Boise State at UD Arena.
The Broncos had the ball at game’s end and were trying to set up a shot for point guard Derrick Marks, the Mountain West Player of the Year.
First the Flyers double-teamed him and he nearly lost the ball until UD deflected it out of bounds. With 4.2 seconds left Boise State again inbounded to Marks, but Davis was on him so tightly he could only launch a 3-point heave that got nowhere near the basket.
“We wouldn’t be anywhere now without him,” Miller said of Davis. “He’s so important to who we are and what we’re doing now. He’s playing at an extremely high level. In my opinion he’s dealt with two of America’s premier guards in back-to-back games (Marks and Dunn) and he’s given them all they wanted. He’s been terrific.”
Pierre, who led the Flyers with 20 points and nine rebounds against Providence, agreed with his coach after Friday night’s game:
“Kyle really took the lead tonight and he helped us make up for the amount of shots we were missing in the first half. He did a great job on them. He’s one of the great defensive players in the A-10 and around the entire country.”
Just as he’s made himself into a superb defender, Davis has remolded other people’s view of him as well.
“Coach used to make jokes every day when I walked into practice,” Davis said with a grin.
But he doesn’t talk about it anymore.”
Now Miller and everybody else knows the “boy with all the scribble-scrabble on his legs.”
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