Basketball Coach Gifts
Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:22:31 +0000
Campus Log
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More snapshots from Ecuador
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Phoenix women swimmers claim Horizon League Championship
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Great concert…
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Promoting sex-assault awareness
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We weren’t all home watching the Olympics
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Aftermath of Chilean earthquake
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Rahmon Fletcher named All-Conference first team
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As a kid growing up in Irvington, Anthony Davis loved basketball. In fact, it wasn’t until he moved to Piscataway in the 8th grade that Davis even thought about a future playing football.
“”My AAU basketball coach, Arthur Pierson, he kept telling me, ‘Three letters! Three letters!’ ” Davis said, laughing while recalling how Pierson kept cramming the NFL into his head.
Davis towered over most of his peers on the basketball court, measuring, by his own estimation “”like 6-3, 280” at the time. But Pierson, Davis said, wasn’t pitching the NBA.
It wasn’t that Davis wasn’t any good at basketball. By all accounts, he possessed the kind of talent that could’ve landed him an eventual Division I scholarship had he focused on basketball.
And it wasn’t even like Davis was any good at football, either. Since he was always too big to play in Pop Warner leagues growing up, Davis didn’t play organized football until he entered high school.
“”He didn’t start playing until his freshman year, but once he started playing,” Piscataway coach Dan Higgins said, “”he picked it up really quickly; not only athletically but intellectually as well. He’s always been a student of the game, and actually a technician, too. He not only used his size, but he learned how to use his technique and that really impressed me, because most of the big guys just lean on people. But he had great feet, and he great technique, and he was really a natural at it.”
Davis credits his coaches at Piscataway, particularly defensive line coach John Bizzel, for teaching him the game he grew to love.
“”Once I started playing my freshman year, it was all new to me,” Davis said. “”Coach Bizzel basically took me under his wing, picked me up from his house every day and talked to me about football. And he just told me, whatever I want to be – at any level – I can be. And I just took it from there.”
Davis took it right through a three-year varsity career at Piscataway, where he became one of the nation’s most sought-after offensive line recruits by his senior season. He took it to Rutgers, where he earned All-America honors his final two seasons before declaring for the NFL Draft shortly after his junior campaign last December.
And now, Davis plans on taking it to those three letters his summer-league basketball coach etched into his head eight years ago.
“”I’m excited just to get the process going,” said Davis, whose professional football career will begin in earnest Saturday when he begins his first workout at the NFL Combine in Indianapolis. “”It’s been a long wait, so I’m excited to just get in there and basically show all the coaches and scouts what I’m capable of.”
