Davis Using Season Ending Injury As Learning Experience

When IU sophomore center De’Ron Davis tore his Achilles during practice prior to the Minnesota game at the beginning of January, he was frustrated and confused.

He wasn’t frustrated that he had tore his Achilles, he was mad because he thought one of the IU managers rolled a ball across the floor while he was doing sprints; hitting his back foot and causing him to fall to the ground.

Then he felt a pain and quickly numbness. Davis was confused with what had just happened.

“As soon as it went numb, and this all happened in the like the matter of twenty seconds, I kind of realized something went wrong,” Davis said. “I told (Dr. Tim Garl) that I heard a pop when he came to check on me and it went numb and he kind of knew what was up too.”

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Davis underwent surgery to repair his torn right Achilles on January 11. Garl told him the recovery process would take six to nine months.

He got his stitches removed about a week ago and now currently has two heel lifts in his walking boot to take the pressure off of his injury.

The rehab process has been slow so far, but Davis is working his way back to 100-percent as much as possible.

“Just doing some one legged stuff to strengthen my quad and my hamstring and the muscles around my knee,” Davis said. “I started picking up marbles now with my toes and putting them inside a cup and I’ve been doing some movement on the bike, just kind of getting back into the motion.”

Without Davis on the court for the Hoosiers, they’ve lost their biggest post presence. Because of this, Indiana is severely undersized at times.

The biggest thing he’s upset about is that he’s not able to contribute to his team when he can tell that they need him most.

“The Purdue game when you’re going up against (Isaac) Haas, you know we’ve got J-Mo guarding him and then the Ohio State game they’ve got another good big,” he said. “Just being out there trying to contribute, I feel really helpless on the sideline so I try to do as much as I can cheering the team on, but I only go so far. I wish I was out there.”

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Davis committed to working hard in the gym this summer, and as a result he became a lot leaner and lost 21 pounds.

He started the season strong, averaging 12 points a game in the first month. Then throughout December he slowly declined averaging just 9.6 points a game by the time his injury occurred.

“Overall if I had to grade it. My season was probably a ‘D’ season,” Davis said. “Coming off of last year, which was like a ‘F’ season.”

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Davis said the little improvements he made this year were in his conditioning and he’ll continue to work in order to build his body and come out stronger and faster next year.

He viewed last season as a failure and this year as a step in the right direction. Ultimately he wants to be back to the player he was in high school, dominating on both ends of the floor.

“I just want to be more aggressive on the offensive end and defensive end, play more freely and just enjoy the game,” Davis said. “Me and my high school coach were talking and this was probably like a mental check for to get back to loving the game, always being in the gym working on my game. He told me that he’s going to come up here and do something bad to me if I don’t show people that I can shoot the ball. I gotta just continue to work on my game and bring the love back to the game.”

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