The subject alone was enough to make Ed DeChellis contort his entire body and briefly look away.

"I feel badly for him; it's not easy," the Penn State basketball coach responded.

DeChellis will not be able to look away tonight, however, when Indiana and embattled head coach Mike Davis come to the Bryce Jordan Center for a tussle with the Nittany Lions.

Davis' rapidly eroding and perpetually questioned job security is starting to take a toll on the Hoosiers, who have lost five of their last six games and currently sit in the middle of the Big Ten standings at 13-8 overall, 5-5 in the league.

After a 72-54 defeat at Iowa last week, Hoosier fans voiced their displeasure with Davis' coaching performance, questioning how the sixth-year coach could have such limited success with the crop of talent on this year's team.

Callers on talk radio shows were irate, and posters on internet message boards were incensed.

One Web site, FireMikeDavis.com, has increased in popularity. The site has teamed up with an online gambling firm to offer visitors the chance to place bets on whether or not Davis will be given the axe.

Since the site's inception, over 7,500 people from Bloomington to Bratislava have become members and have posted messages. By comparison, FightOnState.com, a popular site that covers Penn State athletics, has only a few hundred more registered members.

"[Coaching is] an interesting business," DeChellis commented. "It's gotten more interesting with the Internet. It is what it is, but 10 years ago it wasn't this way, five years ago it wasn't this way. Everything you do is under a microscope."

Until last week, though, Indiana was just a game out of the conference lead.

"It doesn't make any sense," Davis said. "I've been under fire by both fans and the media the last few weeks, and we were just one game out of first place and ranked in the top 25 during that time."

The complaints about Davis range from him not being able to motivate his team on the road (the Hoosiers are 0-4 in Big Ten away games) to him being unqualified for the position from the start of his tenure.

Indiana made a run to the national championship game in 2002 before falling to Maryland, but has missed the last two tournaments altogether.

One group of Indiana fans tried to organize a black-out for last Saturday's game against Iowa. The plan was to wear a black shirt in order to voice support and solidarity in the effort to oust Davis.

Not too many participated, but that, along with the constant talk of Davis getting the boot, seemed to suck the energy out of the Hoosiers in the loss to the Hawkeyes.

"Our guys made a run at the end, and that was when they said, 'All right, let's go play,' and it should have been that way at the beginning," Davis said.

The head coach had to watch the game on television because he was feeling under the weather, causing some to prematurely speculate that Davis' tenure had come to a close. Davis cleared things up in interviews later that day and then again by teleconference on Monday.

Davis actually tried to make several things very clear.

First, he pointed out that his team is suffering because, as a close family, the Hoosiers become mentally strained each time they are confronted with rumors about their leader's job status.

"I don't know any family that can go through these questions about one of their family members maybe losing their job and withstand it," Davis said. "It's my job to keep them focused, and we're still right there, but the players have to start believing that."

Then Davis explained how difficult that job of keeping the players focused and making them believe has become under the current circumstances.

"I can't explain to you how hard it is to get these guys going," he said. "They want to go so bad, but it doesn't make sense to anybody. That's the question -- does it make sense?

"The things I'm trying to get them to do, a coach never should even have to involve himself with. I should be trying to coach basketball, and these guys should really enjoy their college career because this is the time they're going to remember."

Davis, who replaced Indiana coaching legend Bob Knight after the latter's firing in September of 2000, went on to say that his detractors have been going after him ever since he took the job. The atmosphere surrounding the Hoosiers makes Davis question whether any of his six teams have walked away from the program having had a positive experience.

Knight, now coaching at Texas Tech, was fired by then-Indiana President Myles Brand for a string of questionable behavior over many years, punctuated by Knight's forceful grabbing of a student by the arm. Even so, the firing was so fiercely opposed by many in the Hoosier community that some 2,000 students held a rally outside of Assembly Hall and then Brand's house in protest of the decision.

But Knight won three NCAA titles while at Indiana. Davis, Knight's assistant at the time of the firing, has little more than an improbable run to the Final Four to brag about.

Knight once called State College a hick town and threatened to wear overalls and a straw hat into Rec Hall. Davis is simply hoping to leave Happy Valley tonight with his job intact and his program safe from the embarrassment and speculation that would follow a loss to Penn State.

Perhaps it's about more than success, though.

"Indiana needs to have somebody that played here so they can embrace him; they need that," Davis said, adding that his players deserve better.

The players, however, are behind Davis and want to play for him. They do look up to him as the team's father figure and they do play well at home, but the Hoosiers must still prove their coach's worthiness.

The coach, on the other hand, must prove to his growing list of detractors that he can motivate a team besieged in controversy and put the X's and O's into a successful equation.

"It's incredible that my job has been discussed for six years," Davis said. "It doesn't make sense. If we're in last place, then you have a complaint, but we've been one game out for the past couple weeks. You can just see on their faces after we lost one or two games on the road."