Davis Holds Stanford Class Reunion at UW

The fifth-year point guard faces old team with his new one.

Most people wait 10 years before they go to a college reunion. Not Daejon Davis. He left Stanford barely six months ago.

He'll reintroduce himself to his former teammates on Saturday when his University of Washington basketball team hosts the visiting Cardinal at 3 p.m. at Alaska Airlines Arena.

For Davis, he simply came home to Seattle after spending four seasons in the Bay Area to use up the generous NCAA eligibility provision extended him and everyone else who had their college sporting careers impacted by the pandemic.

After playing 104 games and starting 97 for Stanford, Davis will face the Cardinal (10-4 overall, 3-1 Pac-12) as the leading ball-handler for Mike Hopkins' Huskies (7-7, 2-2).

Had things turned out differently with the local coaching situation, he might have done this in reverse, using the bulk of his time playing at the UW and picking up another season elsewhere.

Daejon Davis dunks against Cal.
Daejon Davis goes in for a dunk on Wednesday night against Cal / Skylar Lin Visuals

Stanford will note that he still looks the same, as a somewhat hard-nosed player who can handle the ball and steal it frequently, but he doesn't scare anyone with his 3-point shooting.

In his Cardinal career, Davis averaged 10.5 points, 3 rebounds and 4.2 assists per outing. His 14-game stat line for the UW this season is 8.5, 2.7 and 2.6.

He wound up playing against the Huskies six times, with four of those games coming at Alaska Airlines Arena. He was 5-1 against them. He missed two others in California because of injuries.

Daejon Davis goes up against current teammate Jamal Bey.
Daejon Davis and Jamal Bey are teammates now.  / USA TODAY Sports

Davis was one of those local players who got away because of a sudden slip in Husky basketball fortunes. 

In 2014, when he was a sophomore at Seattle's Lakeside School, Davis received a scholarship offer from then Husky coach Lorenzo Romar.

A year later, the point guard accepted the offer after transferring across town to Garfield High.

In 2016, after decommitting when he wasn't quite sure about his decision and visiting Gonzaga, Oregon, Arizona and Stanford, Davis once more accepted Romar's UW offer.

A year later, Davis pulled out of his Husky commitment for good, or for at least four years, when Romar was fired and replaced by Hopkins, and he signed with the Cardinal.

As a Stanford freshman, he was at his best against the Huskies by scoring a series-best 16 points  in a 73-64 victory in Seattle and handing out 9 assists while not taking a shot against them in Palo Alto in a 94-78 win.

So today Davis will go to this reunion, hoping to have a much better time than fellow Husky guard and former Arizona playmaker Terrell Brown had last week at his. Brown lost by 16.

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.