Indiana University of Pennsylvania Athletics

In Carl Davis' first year (1970-71) as head men’s basketball coach at IUP, the Indians posted a 24-4 record and advanced, for the first time since 1957-58, to the NAIA national championship tournament in Kansas City, where they missed advancing to the quarterfinal round by just two points.
 
That was only the beginning. Three years later, in '73-74, Davis and company, after winning the PSAC/Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference championship, were off to Kansas City again. This time they did advance to the Elite Eight.
 
These, however, were only two highlight years in Davis' 13 campaigns, 10 of them winning, that came to a close in 1982-83 after he had won 199 games (second only to Hall of Famer Peck McKnight) and lost 124. IUP advanced to postseason tournaments in nine of his seasons, including an advance to the 1980-81 PSAC title game after it had won the Western Division crown.
 
Ask Davis to cite his round ball-related accomplishments, however, and he singles out his roles in conceiving computerized multi-year scheduling for PSAC teams that was instrumental to the conference becoming an all-NCAA Division II league in 1980 and in his pioneering more sophisticated analysis of videotape. Among his other innovations were scheduling Division I opponents and regular-season dates as far away as New Orleans.
 
None of this says anything about his three years as baseball coach. Asked virtually on the eve of the 1991 campaign to succeed the just-deceased 1996 Hall of Fame inductee Owen Dougherty, and despite limited experience in the diamond sport, Davis guided the Indians to three PSAC championship tournaments. Davis first came to IUP as basketball defensive assistant for Herm Sledzik's final season in 1969-70, after having established himself since 1958 as a highly successful coach at Jeannette High School, a post he assumed at the age of 23.
 
After graduating from Tarkio College in Missouri (he later completed a master's degree at the University of Pittsburgh), Davis married Joan in 1959.
 
They raised daughters Lisa Howell, who lost a tragic, several- year-long battle with cancer in April at the age of 38, and Wendy Davis-Dar and sons Carl and Eric, all IUP graduates.