March Madness: Hofstra's Cruz Davis is quite accustomed to having people count on him

Cruz Davis is leading Hofstra to the NCAA Tournament this week. He is the team’s top scorer (20.2 points per game) and was named the Coastal Athletic Association Player of the Year. As the Pride get ready to face Alabama in the first round on Friday, they are counting on him.

Good thing that dynamic is nothing new for Davis. People have been relying on him for a very long time.

And most of that has nothing at all to do with basketball.

Davis learned at an early age that some responsibilities outweigh personal desires. His brother Cayl, 15 months younger, was diagnosed with autism at age 3 and suffers occasional seizures, and Cruz has pretty much devoted his life to looking after Cayl’s well-being.

There certainly are others who are on that job too. The boys’ father, Vincent, left his job as a delivery truck driver about 10 years ago to become a full-time caregiver to Cayl at the family’s home in Plano, Texas. Cassandra Davis, the mother of the two boys, works as a nurse but is very involved in attending to Cayl’s needs.

Cruz, though, has a special bond with Cayl that no one else can claim, one that does not diminish even with the thousands of miles that often separate the siblings.

That meant checking in on him in person when they attended the same elementary and middle schools (and paying someone out of his own lunch money to do it for him during the one year when they were in two separate buildings). It meant calling him three times a day each and every day since leaving home to attend prep school in West Virginia as a high school senior (a habit that continued when he played at Iona and St. John’s and now Hofstra). It means just sitting on the sofa during the few weeks of each year when he can make it home in person and  watching episodes of Cayl’s favorite animated show, “The Backyardigans,” on his tablet for hours and hours.

 Davis’ world revolves around Cayl.

He wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Growing up, I knew I would have to be more responsible than the average kid,” Davis told Newsday. “Instead of only caring about yourself, I knew my life wouldn’t be like that. I knew I would always have to look after two people, myself and my little brother.”

Said Cassandra: “Cruz has grown to love Cayl, I think, more than he loves himself.”

It’s a part of Davis’ life that even many of his Hofstra teammates said they were unaware of. Davis is a quiet person by nature, and sharing such details doesn’t suit him.

Oh, there are times when he disappears and people wonder where he is. That happened three years ago when he was a freshman at Iona and made it to his first NCAA Tournament when the Gaels won the MAAC Tournament. As the squad celebrated on the court, no one could find Davis. Eventually he came back; he had run straight to the locker room to grab his phone and FaceTime Cayl and his parents so they could share the moment with  him.

Little do his teammates know that it is Cayl who truly drives Davis to succeed and pushes him to star on the court. He is Davis’ why.

The opportunity to someday play professionally — maybe even in the NBA — would give Davis the financial means for a much better life. And not just for himself.

Davis said he was in second grade or so when he realized he had to step up in such a way.

“I knew that my brother would never be able to take care of himself. He wouldn’t be able to ever live on his own,” he said. “And I knew my parents, they’re not going to be on this Earth forever. At some point I am going to have to take care of him, and I needed to know how to do that so he has a happy life.”

That was a lot for a second-grader to carry back then. It’s a lot for a 22-year-old college student to carry now. But Davis dived right into that reality very early on and has embraced it.

“I guess that’s just part of growing up and being responsible, knowing that some things are bigger than yourself,” he said. “Everybody’s life is different, everybody’s path is different, and this is mine. This is my life.”

That may be heavy, but it’s not sad. And neither is Cayl. By all accounts, he is a giddy 21-year-old who enjoys his life.

“He’s a real happy kid. He’s always smiling and laughing,” Davis said.

Cassandra said there  definitely are challenges to raising a special-needs child, but they are outweighed by the joys and blessings.

“The best thing is our child is happy,” she said. “He is always cheerful, never crying, never sad.”

A big part of that is due to Cruz.

“Kids can be cruel and they don’t always understand different things,” Cassandra said of the risks of sending Cayl to public school. “You know how kids can be, taunting and stuff like that, but when Cruz was around, they saw it different. Cayl didn’t have the bullying and all that stuff. The kids stopped doing it. They were ‘Hey Cayl! Hey Cayl’ and being buddies with him and all the kids who had special needs. Cruz was the cool kid in school who played basketball and did this and that. It helped a lot.”

These days Cassandra says Cayl knows that Cruz is away at school to play basketball. He enjoys watching Hofstra play its games.

“He jumps around a lot, but when he sees his brother on TV or hears his name, he’ll perk up and look and he’ll be like, ‘Come on, Cruz!’ ” Cassandra said. “He always says, ‘Cruz, don’t you want to win?’ And I say, ‘Yeah, of course Cruz wants to win.’ And then he’ll miss a shot or pick up a foul and he’s like, ‘Oh, no!’ ”

“I know he’s watching,” Cruz said of having Cayl in his thoughts on the court. “I’m thinking about him all day.”

Does Cayl know how good Cruz is at basketball?

“No, he doesn’t,” Cassandra said.

Cruz agreed. “And I don’t think he cares, either,” he said.

He just knows that Cruz is his brother and that the love they share is bigger than any athletic accomplishment.

That’s enough.

By Tom Rock

tom.rock@newsday.com@TomRock_Newsday

Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.