Titans open Horizon tourney with win, Davis (38 points) on brink of record

Detroit — The chase will continue.

Antoine Davis, playing in his 62nd and final game at Calihan Hall, scored 38 as Detroit Mercy coasted past Purdue-Fort Wayne, 81-68, in the opening round of the Horizon League tournament Tuesday night. That win earned the Titans and Davis at least one more game.

Davis now sits 25 points behind "Pistol" Pete Maravich for the No. 1 spot in college basketball history, and is a good bet to get there when Detroit Mercy visits Youngstown State at 8 Thursday night in the second round.

"Yeah, I mean I'm close now, really close," Davis said afterward, his dog, Milo, sitting behavingly at his feet. "It'd be good to get it the next game, but, you know, we gotta win these games.

"We've gotta focus on Youngstown, we've been in the games with them, we've been close with them."

Davis has said all season that he returned to Detroit Mercy rather than transfer to a high-major or Power Five so he could pursue an NCAA Tournament bid, not the scoring record.

More:BOX SCORE: Detroit Mercy 81, Purdue-Fort Wayne 68

Youngstown State (23-8) is the No. 1 seed, and swept the regular-season series with Detroit Mercy, winning, 84-79, at Calihan Hall, and 73-63 at Youngstown State.

Detroit Mercy (14-18) swept all three games from Purdue Fort Wayne (17-15), which managed to keep things close into the second half, until graduate-student swingman Damezi Anderson made three consecutive 3's -- two on passes from Davis -- to make it 58-37, and get the Calihan Crowd of more than 1,600 on its feet.

Anderson was just 1-of-10 on 3-point attempts over his last two games, but Titans losses.

"I was so fired up," Anderson said. "I've been struggling. My team kept believing in me."

"Huge, huge, huge, huge," Detroit Mercy head coach Mike Davis said of Anderson's spurt.

"Daggers," Purdue Fort Wayne head coach Jon Coffman said. "We were hanging around, and those were killers."

Purdue-Fort Wayne trailed by as many as 22 but cut it to 12 with less than 7 minutes left, before Davis hit a stepback jumper from the free-throw line to push the lead back to 62-48. On the other end, senior forward Gerald Liddell unleashed a monster block, before Davis drained another 3 on the other end to push it to 65-48.

Davis finished with seven assists -- including one late on an alley-oop to 7-foot graduate student Buay Koka, who threw down the dunk -- and eight rebounds and four steals to go with his point total, which was just four off his season high, on 14-for-27 shooting, 6-for-13 on 3's.

Davis left the game shortly after his final assist, with about a minute left, receiving a large roar from the crowd.

"He's a special player," Coffman said, saying his team's game plan always is to see if it can limit Liddell, Anderson and A.J. Oliver, and for the most part Tuesday, his team did. "You're not going to keep him from scoring."

Freshman guard Marcus Tankersley had 12 points and three steals -- he stepped up big in the absence of graduate-student guard TJ Moss (Ankle) and graduate-student forward Arashma Parks (COVID) -- while Anderson finished with 11 points, and graduate-student guard Oliver added nine points, eight rebounds and two steals.

Detroit Mercy shot 47.5% for the game, to Purdue-Fort Wayne's 38.3%.

Davis, the fifth-year senior guard whose No. 0 was hanging in the rafters at Calihan Hall for the first time for all to see Tuesday -- it was retired by Detroit Mercy following the final regular-season game -- made back-to-back 3's about 12 minutes into the game, opening up a 24-16 lead. He had 15 points at that point.

Then, about 90 seconds later, Davis gave Titans fans a scare when he went high up for a defensive rebound and had his legs taken out from underneath him. He crashed seemingly head first into the floor, but he said he actually braced his fall with his hip. He lay there for several moments before rising to a nice ovation.

The two-time Horizon League player of the year stayed in the game and played 38 minutes for the game.

"It really just knocked the wind out of me," Davis said.

Davis finished 18 points at the half, including a nice driving and-one layup late in the half.

Detroit Mercy led, 34-26, at the end of the first half -- a first half that was interrupted briefly when police removed more than two dozen Detroit Mercy students from under the Purdue-Fort Wayne basket, and sent them into the upper bowl. Coffman was irate over what seemed to be a personal verbal barb from a Detroit Mercy fan directed at fifth-year senior guard Damian Chong Qui. The student told The News that he was trying to get in No. 2's head, and said, "Your mother doesn't love you," not knowing Chong Qui's mother was murdered when he was 4.

"No place for comments like that at any venue," Detroit Mercy athletic director Robert Vowels said. "I am glad university public safety and our staff acted swiftly to move the student section away from the student-athletes."

There were no further incidents after the fans were relocated. Coffman declined to comment on the incident after the game, saying he didn't know exactly what happened.

Chong Qui finished with 12 points for Purdue-Fort Wayne, while graduate-student forward Bobby Planutis led the way with 20. Senior guard Anthony Roberts scored 15

This marks the third straight year Detroit Mercy has won a first-round home game in the Horizon League tournament. The Titans have lost in the second game, both road games, the previous two years.

"Man, you know, we played with great energy, and that's the only thing that's gonna give us a chance to win," said Mike Davis, whose made nine NCAA Tournaments, but none in the first four years at Detroit Mercy. "We hadn't played with this kind of energy since the Oakland game (96-74 win at Oakland on Feb. 17).

"It's great fun. This is what March Madness is all about."

Oakland (13-18) opens the tournament at Northern Kentucky (19-12) at 7 Thursday.

tpaul@detroitnews.com

Twitter: @tonypaul1984