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Detroit — When Mike Davis went looking for a new assistant basketball coach, he went looking for the best possible assistant basketball coach. It didn’t matter to him if that person was a man or a woman.
It just so happens he found a woman, in Jerica Williams.
Williams is in his first year on Davis’ staff at Detroit Mercy, making her the first and only woman on a Division I men’s basketball staff in the country. She’s right there, on the Titans’ bench. The Detroit City Council recently celebrated the history-making by giving Williams the city’s Spirit of Detroit Award.
“Oh, it means a lot for the women, but it means a lot because she’s really good,” Davis said during a recent interview in his Calihan Hall office, just a couple of doors down from Williams’ office. “When you come to practice, you see her input in practice, and in the meetings. The guys, you know, sometimes they don’t know or appreciate what they have, but when they see her work … a lot of guys don’t want to listen to what a woman says when it comes to basketball, but when they see her, they see that she knows what she’s talking about.
“She worked with Steph Curry. It don’t get no better than that, come on.”
That’s right. Williams has worked extensively with Steph Curry, the Golden Star Warriors star, and at his camps, for boys and girls. That might be the headline on her resume, but it’s a long resume, starting as a star high-school player in San Diego, before continuing her college career at UCLA and San Diego State.
She was chief of staff at San Diego State in 2018-19 (where former Michigan assistant Brian Dutcher is the head coach), and an assistant coach at Cal State Northridge from 2019-20.
From 2020-22, she was head girls basketball coach at Detroit Country Day, a job she took to be closer to her son, Jeriah, who’s now 12.
Davis tried a year ago to hire her out of Country Day, which she led to back-to-back state Final Fours, but she went back to California to continue her work, including with Curry. This year, Davis finally convinced her to join him as an assistant coach and chief of staff, the latter role which has her as the program’s point person, including booking all travel accommodations. A detailed season schedule is on the whiteboard in her office.
“Yeah, it means a lot, but I don’t think it’s something that I lead with,” Williams said, when asked about her historic hire at Detroit Mercy. “Me and Coach Davis talk about it all the time, it’s not like he hired me to break ground or make history. He hired me because he felt I was great for the job, and similarly, I feel like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. So it doesn’t feel like a first. It feels very natural.
“But I don’t want to shy away from what it means to be at the forefront of something like this, so it means a lot to me for women, young women, women in this space, women in basketball, women in sports.
“There is space for women here.”
Many professional sports leagues, including the NBA, NFL and Major League Baseball have made histroy hiring women assistant coaches in recent years.
Williams sees that as progress. Whether it’s enough progress depends on your perspective.
“Look at the NBA and the WNBA. The NBA’s a lot older, and the WNBA’s a lot younger,” Williams said. “For us, it may seem like we’re so far behind, but we had a different starting point. Women in sports have had an entirely different starting point, so I don’t think that we’re necessarily behind.
“If people start to see a woman on a men’s basketball bench, hopefully it can become, I guess, I little more normal, because for me, it feels perfectly normal.
“I just want to be here and do the best job I can and be the best version of myself for these guys and the staff.”
By the way, for those who feel there hasn’t been enough progress, Williams understands that.
She also understands it’s not just the leagues’ fault.
“I’ll also say,” said Williams, “that women, if they are interested in being in the men’s space, then they have to be proactive in putting themselves in that space. We do have to meet people in the middle a little bit.”
On her landing on Detroit Mercy’s staff, Williams noted, “I had something to do with that.”
Williams brings a variety of skill development to the Titans, most notably 3-point shooting. Again, she worked with Curry, after all. She also brings insight into training and conditioning. Again, she got to learn from the best on that front, Curry, who’s the master at streamlining his workouts. They’re not too long, and they touch on his skill development and conditioning at the same time.
After Antoine Davis, Mike’s son, left Detroit Mercy last spring after five seasons, during which he went on to become college basketball’s No. 2-leading scorer all-time, Williams worked him out, ahead of him joining the Portland Trail Blazers. He’s now with the Trail Blazers’ G League affiliate, the Rip City Remix.
Another strength for Williams, on this job in particular, is her marketing and branding background. That’s what she went into out of college, and in 2013 she was honored home in San Diego for her business acumen. Detroit Mercy, the lone DI school in the city limits, has long struggled with building a fan base. Even Davis’ chase at “Pistol” Pete Maravich’s scoring record didn’t create the buzz it should’ve. Davis is just one of several legendary names who’ve played basketball at Detroit Mercy.
“I was a publicist in a past life. I still kind of carry that with me,” Williams said. “You have to get creative.”
Getting creative. Some would suggest that’s what Mike Davis did in hiring Williams.
But he would dispute that.
“She’s gonna be special,” said Davis, who’s in the sixth year of a seven-year contract, with his Titans currently 0-5 entering Saturday’s game at Southern Illinois-Edwardsville and Wednesday’s Horizon League opener, at home against Oakland. “I’ve been doing this a long time. She’s gonna be special.”
Williams officially replaced Tim Waller, Detroit Mercy’s director of basketball operations before announced his retirement before last season started.
More surgery for Tungate
Neither situation is ideal.
But if Oakland women’s coach Jeff Tungate has to choose, he’d choose that the injury bug hits him over his team. He feels he has a special team this season.
Now, unfortunately for him, he’ll have to watch it play out from afar.
Tungate will undergo another spinal surgery — this will be his fifth spine, neck or back surgery — on Tuesday, and that’s likely to lay him up for the rest of his team’s season. Oakland announced last week that Tungate would take another leave of absence, and he broke the news to his team after Friday’s 110-51 win over Cleary.
Assistant coach Deanna Richard, an Oakland alum, will be acting head coach, starting Saturday against Madonna.
“It was very emotional in the locker room after the game,” Tungate said. “But they said it’s too much risk to try to keep sucking it up. It sucks. I’ve been through this enough.
“And this is my most talented team in 11 years.”
Tungate’s last surgery was in December 2021, and that cost him the rest of that season — though the bright side was he wasn’t supposed to have any more health complications.
That turned out not to be the case. He started thinking something might be wrong again during an early October round of golf, and initial tests confirmed it, and second and third opinions confirmed that. He tried to find a doc who would give him the news he wanted, but that news never came.
Tungate’s first surgery was on his birthday, Nov. 29, 14 years ago, and it’s been a frustrating ride ever since.
“It’s beyond frustrating, and it’s really almost sickening to have to deal with this,” Tungate said. “I just feel horrible for our team. I just love being around this group of kids. I just want to be there for them. Now, I’ll just have to do that from a distance.”
Oakland, led by graduate-student guard Markyia McCormick (12.3 points), sophomore point guard Brooke Quarles-Daniels (10.5) and senior guard/forward Linda van Schaik (10.3), is off to a 2-2 start.
Hoop like Hooper
For a second there, it looked like the Oakland men might have another Max Hooper on its hands. Hooper, you’ll recall, made history his senior year with the Golden Grizzlies when every shot he took that season was a 3-pointer.
It appeared guard Jack Gohlke, a graduate-student transfer from Division II Hillsdale, might follow in Hooper’s footsteps, but alas, Gohlke took a pair of 2-point attempts during Oakland’s three game in the Cayman Islands.
Before the trip, I asked head coach Greg Kampe if he had barred Gohlke from shooting anything inside the 3-point line, like the legend has it he once told Hooper. Kampe responded, “Not yet.”
Gohlke has put up 74 shots, with 72 of them coming from 3-point range. He’s shooting at a 33.3% clip from 3-point range, and is averaging 13.7 points. That’s second on the team behind only junior forward Trey Townsend‘s 14.8.
With 3-point sharp-shooter Blake Lampman dealing with yet another injury, this one a hip issue, Gohlke’s presence figures to be key for the Golden Grizzlies, who are off to a 3-3 start. Those losses were all close ones, at Ohio State, at Illinois, and to Drake, a solid mid-major, in the Cayman Islands.
Games of the week
MEN
▶ Oakland at Xavier, 6:30 Monday (FS1)
▶ Oakland at Detroit Mercy, 7 Wednesday (ESPN+)
▶ Central Michigan at Ohio State, 7 Wednesday (BTN)
WOMEN
▶ Detroit Mercy at Youngstown State, 6:30 Thursday (ESPN+)
▶ Michigan State at DePaul, 7 Thursday (CBSSN)
▶ Purdue-Fort Wayne at Oakland, 7 Thursday (ESPN+)
State power rankings
MEN
1. Michigan State (last week: 2), 3-3
2. Michigan (1), 4-2
3. Oakland (3), 3-3
4. Eastern Michigan (4), 3-2
5. Central Michigan (7), 2-4
6. Detroit Mercy (5), 0-5
7. Western Michigan (7), 0-4
WOMEN
1. Michigan State (2), 4-0
2. Michigan State (1), 4-1
3. Oakland (4), 2-2
4. Detroit Mercy (3), 3-2
5. Eastern Michigan (7), 1-2
6. Central Michigan (5), 1-3
7. Western Michigan (6), 1-2
tpaul@detroitnews.com
@tonypaul1984
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