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Ole Miss to hire Middle Tennessee’s Kermit Davis

Middle Tennessee v Syracuse

ST LOUIS, MO - MARCH 20: Head coach Kermit Davis of the Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders looks on with Reggie Upshaw #30 in the second half against the Syracuse Orange during the second round of the 2016 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament at Scottrade Center on March 20, 2016 in St Louis, Missouri. (Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images)

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Ole Miss is expected to announce in the coming days that they will be hiring Middle Tennessee State head coach Kermit Davis to replace Andy Kennedy.

Davis will continue to coach the Blue Raiders throughout their NIT run, according to 247 Sports.

Davis has been with Middle Tennessee for the past 16 seasons, helping to build the program into one of the strongest at the mid-major level. The Blue Raiders had won a game in the NCAA in each of the last two seasons prior to getting snubbed for an at-large bid this year. MTSU has won five regular season titles in the last seven seasons. Davis was the youngest head coach in America when he got his first job at Idaho in 1988. Two years later, he was hired by Texas A&M. He lasted for one season before getting fired and slapped with a two-year show-cause for allegedly paying a “talent scout” from New York City and a player named Tony Scott to get that player to transfer from Syracuse to A&M.

There’s no question that Davis is a terrific coach.

The question is just how different he is from Kennedy. The knock on Kennedy in recent reasons is that he wasn’t able to recruit the high-end, five-star talent and that he spent too much time mixing it up with JuCo prospects that were good enough to keep the Rebels relevant but not good enough to turn them into SEC title contenders. That’s Davis’ bread and butter.

It will interesting to see