Wake Forest Sports Hall of Fame
- Induction:
- 1975
A native of Johnston City, Ill., the 6-1, 151-pound Davis was not highly recruited out of high school.
Davis played in 99 career basketball games for the Deacons, scoring 1,594 points, an average of 16.1 per game. He also averaged 6.2 rebounds per contest. Davis earned All-ACC honors in basketball in 1954, 1955 and 1956 and was an all-conference baseball selection in 1955 and 1956. In 1955, Davis was the recipient of the Teague Memorial Award as the outstanding athlete in the Carolinas.
In 1955, Davis teamed with Dickie Hemric to give Wake Forest one of the top one-two punches in college basketball. Hemric averaged 27.6 points per game and Davis scored 19.3 per game.
In baseball, Davis compiled a 20-5 career mark including a 10-1 record for Wake Forest's 1955 College World Series championship team. At one point during the season, Davis won eight straight games. His only loss was to West Virginia in the District III playoffs. He had a 7-1 lead entering the ninth inning but lost 9-7 to the Mountaineers.
At the start of the CWS, Davis was not allowed to fly with the team to Omaha because he had missed too many chapel services. However, athletic department officials were able to reach a compromise that allowed Davis to play in the weekend games as long as he was back in class on Monday morning. Davis was flown to Omaha where he beat Northern Colorado 10-0 in a weekend game.
"When the school was in old Wake Forest, he went to a track meet at (N.C.) State to pole vault and high jump in the morning," former teammate Jack Murdock told the Winston-Salem Journal. "In the afternoon, he went back to Wake Forest and pitched three innings against State in baseball. We won that game."
Davis was one of the top pole-vaulters and high-jumpers in the ACC during his time at Wake Forest.
Davis pitched left-handed but would write, eat, and play golf right-handed.
Murray Greason, Wake Forest's basketball coach at the time, recalled how Davis came to Wake Forest. Wendell Starrick, Lefty's high school coach, had sent Jack Williams to Wake Forest a year earlier. Starrick contacted Greason and told him he had another player for him and Greason said to send him along.
"I almost dropped my teeth when Lefty walked in and told me who he was," Greason recalls. "I was of the same opinion as many other Wake Forest people. I thought the kid should be in the infirmary instead of on the basketball court."
In 1952-53, Lefty's freshman year, he played in 15 of 30 basketball games as Wake Forest won the Southern Conference championship. He had one win on the mound that spring.
During the 1953-54 basketball season, Wake Forest played in Madison Square Garden. Hemric was out of the lineup due to an injury and Davis scored 28 points against Seton Hall.
As a sophomore, Davis averaged 17.4 points as Wake reached the finals of the first ACC Tournament before falling to N.C. State. In the spring of 1954, Davis was 4-3 for the baseball team.
In 1954-55, Davis averaged 19.3 points and went 10-1 on the mound.
As a senior, he was named to the Dix Classic All-Tournament team in basketball and was a second-team all-tournament pick in a Charlotte tournament.
Basketball coach Bones McKinney said of Davis: "Lefty can do everything the pros can do but knock you down, and he isn't heavy enough to do that. He is one of the greatest competitors I have ever seen."
Davis was killed in an auto accident in Oklahoma City in 1986. He had been a drafting supervisor with AT&T Information Systems.
