Illinois’ Jake Davis and Ben Humrichous — both Indiana natives — do little things right in run to Final Four
INDIANAPOLIS — As a freshman at Cathedral High School in Indianapolis, Jake Davis earned some varsity minutes sporadically during the first half of the 2019-20 season. But in the championship game of the prestigious city tournament that January, Davis entered the game and took four charges .
The freshman forced coach Jason Delaney’s hand. Delaney had to play Davis moving forward.
“You’ve got something special when that happens,” Delaney said.
Photos: Illinois basketball practice at Lucas Oil Stadium ahead of Final Four matchup
Davis went on to take 83 charges in his high school career, believed to be the Indiana state record . His willingness to do the dirty work became an integral part of Cathedral’s state championship team during Davis’ junior season in 2021-22.
“That was Jake,” Delaney said. “He was a winner.”
It’s that same willingness to do the little things right that has Davis, now a guard at Illinois, playing in this weekend’s Final Four at Lucas Oil Stadium, just 11 miles from his high school.
The Illini, who take on UConn on Saturday night in the first semifinal (5:09 p.m., TBS), are a well-balanced team that can beat an opponent in multiple ways. Keaton Wagler is likely a NBA lottery pick. Andrej Stojaković can get to the rim against anybody. David Mirković is a mismatch nightmare.
But these Illini also are powered by two Indiana natives who don’t necessarily fill up the stat sheet. Along with Davis, Ben Humrichous is a Hoosier State native who grew up in Tipton, located about 50 miles north of Lucas Oil Stadium.
Davis and Humrichous have taken unique paths to college basketball’s pinnacle event.
“It’s special to be able to finish here in Indianapolis,” Humrichous said. “I would’ve never thought that I’d be playing basketball at Lucas Oil Stadium.”
Davis, who also won a state championship in football, was recruited late coming out of Cathedral and wound up at Mercer as a freshman before transferring to Illinois.
Humrichous played three seasons of NAIA ball at Huntington University in north-central Indiana before transferring to Division I Evansville and later to Illinois.
If someone told Humrichous at Huntington that he one day would be playing in the Final Four, he would’ve laughed. Former Huntington coach Kory Alford, now the associate head coach at Oral Roberts, took the job at Huntington ahead of the 2020-21 season, and Humrichous was one of the incoming recruits he inherited.
“You could see the potential,” Alford said. “You could see the growth, and I think for him to have stair-stepped his career the way he has, that is the blueprint for a lot of these kids coming out that are maybe frustrated with their high school recruitment.”
To go from NAIA ball to the Final Four is a rarity. It’s “Hoosiers” rewritten for the transfer-portal era.
“That’s a perfect college basketball arc for a kid from Tipton, Ind., who now gets to finish in Indianapolis,” Alford said.
Like Humrichous, Davis was once one of those frustrated high school seniors. College teams looked at the 6-6 guard with the long hair and likely judged the book by its cover.
“I’m not a freak athlete,” Davis said. “I don’t jump off the charts.”
Davis transferred to Illinois after Mercer dismissed coach Greg Gary following Davis’ freshman season in 2023-24.
Davis and Humrichous both came to Illinois last year, and both have seen their games evolve over these two seasons with coach Brad Underwood and his staff. Humrichous started 26 games a year ago but has embraced a role off the bench this season.
Davis averaged just 9.4 minutes last season before carving out a starting role as a junior. Davis has started the second half of the season, including all four NCAA Tournament games, even though he’s averaging only 19.7 minutes.
With an influx of talent joining Illinois over the offseason — largely from overseas — the Indiana natives did it by embracing the roles Underwood envisioned for them and developing a willingness to play good, hard defense.
“I knew that my play would be limited if my defensive efforts didn’t increase,” Humrichous said. “And so one of the big things I emphasized even this year was finding a way to be a better defensive player for this team. What I cared about coming back for Year 2 was I just wanted to win. I knew through the way that Coach Underwood preaches, what wins is defense and rebounding, and those were two things I had to get better at.”
The focus on defense was much the same for Davis. Every NCAA Tournament run has its unsung heroes. If Illinois is going to beat UConn on Saturday night, it wouldn’t be a surprise if Davis or Humrichous comes up with a key stop on the defensive end. Both can knock down 3-pointers at a solid clip too.
Underwood believes it’s that depth on both sides of the ball that has gotten Illinois to its first Final Four in 21 years.
“I say all the time, we’ve got eight starters,” Underwood said. “It’s a tribute to those guys. Some guys feel a little better coming off the bench. … It’s uplifting when you know that you go to the bench as a coach and you get better, not just on one side of the ball, you get better on both.”
Early in the season Underwood said something that has stuck with Humrichous. The coach wanted his team to work on winning, whatever that meant for this specific group. What he meant was finding the right roles for every player on the roster. Winning plays aren’t necessarily scoring plays.
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“If you have a team full of guys who are not egotistical who care about money, playing time, points, it makes it easier,” guard Kylan Boswell said. “I feel like that’s a big reason for our success.”
Boswell called Davis the “X factor” for the Illini this weekend. Everybody feeds off his energy. That’s exactly what Davis has been doing for years, ever since that night as a high school freshman when he took four charges to ignite the Cathedral varsity team.
Last Saturday, Davis and the Illini beat Iowa in the Elite Eight at the same time that Cathedral won another IHSAA state championship. Delaney and Davis exchanged texts that night, two basketball junkies at the top of their respective mountains.
Delaney got another title. Now Davis wants to go get his.
“It’s a childhood dream to play in the Final Four, and it being in Indianapolis is even better,” Davis said. “It doesn’t get much better than this for me.”
