With no true point guard, it can take a while for the Hoosiers to overcome a double-team inside, which is why they fell 17 points down to Ohio State in the first place.

If Killingsworth is guarded one-on-one, he can muscle just about anyone toward the hoop. Ask Duke's Shelden Williams. The Blue Devils beat Indiana this season, but elected to concentrate on guarding Indiana outside and leaving the reigning national defensive player of the year to handle Killingsworth. Williams got torched for 34 points and 10 rebounds.

Indiana's turnaround comes just in time for Davis. Some fans for years have castigated Davis for the sin of not being Bob Knight, whose sudden 2000 firing opened the head coaching job to the former Knight assistant.

The first-time college head coach - learning on the job in a high-profile position made even more difficult by replacing a legend whom many fans didn't want to see go – didn't help by speculating on what sort of NBA job he might like, openly questioning whether he was ready to be Indiana's head coach, and suffering emotional meltdowns against Kentucky during the Hoosiers' inevitable loss each year.

But by the end of last season, the criticism was strictly about not being a winner. It came not only from dissatisfied fans, but also from Davis' new boss, athletic director Rick Greenspan (Davis' fourth athletic director as head coach), who made it clear Davis' future hinged on making the 2006 NCAA tournament.

Davis has a contract through 2007-08, but Greenspan, charged with turning around the financially moribund Indiana athletic department, had fired football coach Gerry DiNardo two months after arriving for the sin of running a losing program fans weren't paying to see.

Greenspan, while at Army, once fired football coach Todd Berry for similar sins, and Greenspan had praised him as his boss at Illinois State for winning and drawing fans. Not only was Davis struggling, but 2004-05's average attendance was 14,702, down sharply from the previous season's 16,487, and the lowest since 1979's 14,052.

Knight couldn't resist kicking Davis while he was down, telling reporters during Texas Tech's Sweet 16 run – five years after the fact – that he would have probably fired Davis had he stayed at Indiana.

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Davis doesn't have to worry about a lack of fan response doing him in, not with an average of 16,583 fans filling 17,456-seat Assembly Hall through six home games. But Davis isn't in the clear yet.

Help also came this year with a weaker nonconference schedule, with the likes of Florida A&M and Eastern Michigan replacing the likes of Connecticut and North Carolina. Even the Kentucky win, only Davis' second, doesn't seem to be what it was, not with the Wildcats following what was their worst-ever defeat in the Tubby Smith era with an even worse loss, by 27 to Kansas.

Also, teams might finally get wise and do what Indiana State did in its 72-67 upset of the Hoosiers – collapse the defense inside and dare Indiana to rely completely on its outside game. The Sycamores held Killingsworth to a season-low 10 points on 4-of-10 shooting, while the Hoosiers could only hit 8-of-24 3-points for a season low 33.3 percent. (Though it's also worth noting White was out that game, having missed the first seven games with a broken foot.)

And Killingsworth will be gone after this season. So it's a question if Davis might even be able to keep up this winning pace into next season.

Davis has been criticized for his inability to recruit the Midwest, particularly Indiana, where the state's top players have not changed a habit begun during the end of the Knight era – leaving the state to play basketball. The latest example: highly hyped 7-footer Greg Oden and his only slightly less-hyped Lawrence North High teammate, Mike Conley Jr., choosing Ohio State over Indiana.

Then again, part of Davis' problem with recruiting is the feeling he won't be around next year, much less the next four years. And continuing this winning season, and the fan response it's drawn, might be how Davis, after seven seasons on the job, finally sheds his de facto title as college basketball's longest-serving interim coach.

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