Reasons Why Rhode Island Loves PC Basketball

Reasons Why Rhode Island Loves PC Basketball

For the past six decades plus, the Providence College Friars have been Rhode Island’s beloved team. It is the big-time. They are the little engine that could. They are the school that produces the big-time players that go on to the show.

With no major league team in the state, the Friars have overshadowed college football, the minor league teams and to the frustration of the folks in Kingston, consistently overshadowed the University of Rhode Island Rams.

 

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How did a small Catholic College become so inextricably linked to the state?

PC had the advantage of playing in the capital -- where the media was located and the population. And, it was a Catholic school in a state that in the 1950s was the most catholic state in the country.

You have to travel back in time to the late 1950s when PC hired Joe Mullaney — the first great Friar coach.

In his third season at PC, Mullaney led the Friars to a 24-5 record and a 14th ranking at the end of the year.

It was Mullaney and a guard from New York named Lenny Wilkens that made PC a national power. Wilkens was a two-time All-American (1959 and 1960) at Providence College.

He led the team to their first NIT appearance in 1959, and to the NIT finals in 1960. Wilkens was drafted sixth overall by the St. Louis Hawks in the 1960 NBA draft. He placed second to Wilt Chamberlain in the 1967–1968 MVP balloting. 

Wilkens was one of the inaugural inductees into the College Basketball Hall of Fame in 2006. 

Mullaney and Wilkens got it started, but after Wilkens left, Mullaney kept it going.

The New York Times wrote of Mullaney in his obituary in 2000:

"He took over the program in 1955 and led his team to 12 straight winning seasons, including National Invitation Tournament championships in 1961 and in 1963, and three appearances in the N.C.A.A. tournament.

Mullaney recruited future stars like Lenny Wilkens, John Thompson, Mike Riordan, Johnny Egan and Jimmy Walker to play for him. 'You had to listen to Joe because he taught Bob Cousy how to be tricky,' said Thompson, who coached Georgetown University for 27 years before retiring in January 1999."

Mullaney left Providence in 1969 to coach the Los Angeles Lakers. He did another stint from 1981 to 1985, it was not successful. It was a different time.

 

Ernie, Marvin and Gavitt

After Mullaney went to the NBA, David Gavitt became the head coach. "As coach of the Friars from 1969 to 1979, Gavitt led Providence College to 209 wins, including eight consecutive 20-win seasons, five NCAA Tournament appearances, the 1973 Final Four, and three NIT appearances," states his bio in the Basketball Hall of Fame.

The Gavitt era took PC from the small Alumni Hall on the PC campus to the gleaming new Providence Civic Center in the heart of downtown Providence led by two local phenoms -- Ernie DiGregorio, an Italian kid from North Providence, and Marvin Barnes, a Providence star out of the powerhouse Central High School.

The Friars went on a legitimate run for a national championship and lost in the Final Four. Ernie and Marvin went on to pro-basketball fame and controversies. Both had successes in the ABA and NBA, but it was all overshadowed by endless Barnes problems. In 1990, the Chicago Tribute wrote a heart-breaking profile of Barnes' near-endless problems, "There were times when all Marvin Barnes had were his memories and the clothes on his back. Walking the streets, living in abandoned buildings and junk cars, stealing to get his food and drug money, Barnes would push the memories of his life as a basketball star deeper and deeper into the back of his mind until he couldn`t remember playing basketball at all. 'I had to forget a lot of things or I would have gone crazy,'' Barnes says."

 

Pitino's Final Four Run

Gavitt went on to more success and then with the business vision of a tech entrepreneur, he created the Big East -- what became the most glamourous college basketball conference that claimed three out of four Final Four teams in 1985, but PC was a bit of an also-ran until Rick Pitino came to Providence.

Pitino coached the Friars for just two years and led them to an improbable Final Four run behind a group of three-point shooters. Pitino took over the city -- he was a super celebrity and could be seen out dining at every Italian restaurant. 

The Friars were 29-9 in the 1986-87 season. Rhode Island loved Pitino and he seemed to love the state, but he was simply too hot and too big.

Then, he was gone. Gone to the New York Knicks and the Friars fell hard.

 

Cooley, South Providence Kid

In March of 2011, GoLocal's Scott Cordischi broke the story of Providence College hiring Ed Cooley.

"Providence College has made Fairfield’s Ed Cooley their top and only target in their search for a new men’s basketball coach. Athletic Director Bob Driscoll has summoned former Big East Commissioner Mike Tranghese to be his point man in a search for a new head coach and apparently Cooley is his top choice. This may not be the sexiest hire that sends Friar fans running to the box office to buy season tickets for next year.  But that shouldn't matter.  What should matter is that PC feels that he is the right man to lead their program back to respectability," wrote Cordischi of breaking the big story. 

Friars fans blasted the GoLocal article and the official announcement did not come for a week. Nearly every comment was critical. 

But, GoLocal got the story right -- Cooley was hired and the fans quickly got the sense that the hiring of Cooley was brilliance.

On Friday night, Cooley's Friars play the #1 seeded Kansas Jayhawks for a trip to the Elite 8. This is a Friar team created in the mirror image of Cooley, tough and focused.

This team has helped Rhode Island recover from the pandemic and economic uncertainty. It is a team that the state has rallied around and a team that helped a state regain its hope.