Kermit Davis - Ole Miss Men's Basketball Coach on Team Captains, How to Grow as a Coach, Building a Positive Locker Room, and More.

Coach Forward is an interview-style podcast hosted by Jason Mejeur (Coach J), accomplished Coach, Mentor, and Founder/CEO at OWN IT.

Highlights from the episode:

[11:22] - Finding Ways to Grow as a Coach[14:50] - Using Freshmen and Transfers as Captains[23:27] - Building a "Happy Locker Room"[28:08] - Kermit Davis' Best Advice After 27+ Years[32:34] - What's On The Coaching Horizon

I’m excited to be joined today by Coach Kermit Davis. Kermit Davis is in his fifth season at the helm of Ole Miss Men's Basketball. 

A nine-time conference coach of the year, Davis is 30th among active Division I head coaches with 467 career wins over 24 seasons, including stints at Middle Tennessee, Idaho and Texas A&M. In 27 seasons as a college basketball head coach, he has amassed 533 wins.

After leading Middle Tennessee to conference championships and NCAA Tournament runs, Davis was named head coach of the Ole Miss basketball program in March 2018.

Prior to returning Ole Miss, Davis guided Middle Tennessee to league titles in 6 of his last 9 years in Murfreesboro, between Conference USA and the Sun Belt. Middle Tennessee was one of five programs he led to conference championships.

Under Davis’ watch, Middle Tennessee made 3 NCAA tournaments and defeated No. 2 seed Michigan State and No. 5 seed Minnesota in back-to-back seasons.

With a 25-8 record in 2018, MTSU reached the 24-win mark for the sixth time in seven seasons, which in turn led to six postseason appearances during that period. The Blue Raiders won consecutive Conference USA regular season titles in Davis’ final two years, posting a 33-3 mark in C-USA play.

In two tours of duty as Idaho head coach in 1997 and from 1989-90, Davis compiled a 63-29 record, the best three-year total in the program’s history, and earned NCAA Tournament berths in 1989 and 1990.

Davis took the helm at Idaho before the 1989 season after two years as an assistant coach under Tim Floyd, and at the time, was the youngest Division I head coach in the nation at age 28. It was not the first time Davis had been the country’s youngest head coach. When he was hired as the head coach at Southwest Mississippi Community College in 1984, he became the youngest junior college coach in the nation at age 24. His youth served him well at Southwest Mississippi, as he put together a 39-20 record in two seasons. His 1986 squad won 22 games, posting the school’s first 20-win season in 17 years.

About Jason Mejeur (Coach J)

Jason has 15+ years of experience coaching basketball at the college and high school level and has lived on the sidelines and in the locker rooms working to build teams and inspire athletes. His mission is to build authentic relationships with his players so that he can impact them beyond the basketball court.

More recently, Jason founded the OWN IT System to help bring data-driven sleep and health coaching to student-athletes and their teams.

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