The journeyman - University of Arizona basketball star Ben Davis

Sporting News, The,  Feb 6, 1995  by Richard Obert

Ben Davis says he listens only to his heart. He doesn't let people tug at him to go this way or that. He doesn't consider himself the lost soul who, for what seemed like all his life, traipsed across the country in search of the basketball program that would suit his needs, help him forget his past and make him feel at home.

Wherever he goes, his past follows. Forever. The University of Arizona is the fourth college he has been to in four years. He attended three high schools.

He says he is securely entrenched in what people in these parts of Arizona call the Old Pueblo. It is the place his mother told him four years ago was just too, too far from home (Fort Pierce, Fla.), too far from Mom.

"This is where I should have been all along," Davis says. "Things would have been easier."

Peripatetic Ben Davis hopes to finally find peace and happiness at Arizona, where he is counted on heavily for rebounds and low-post scoring, if not being the savior to take the Wildcats back to the Final Four. Davis felt lost at Kansas and got side-tracked at Florida. Can he stick at Arizona? If freshman sensation Miles Simon, a guard, can return from a hand injury, and guard Reggie Geary can return to form from a foot injury, the addition of Davis, who became eligible December 21, gives the Wildcats the right interior ingredient to make them national championship contenders.