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Date Posted: 11:42:29pm 01/06/06 Fri,
Author: Stagophile
Subject: Interesting column - Providence at crossroads?
January 5, 2006
PROVIDENCE JOURNAL
by Bill Reynolds.
A plan and a lot of luck kept PC on hoop radar screen
Two old college basketball rivals were in the same city Tuesday night.
Providence College at the Dunk, Canisius at Brown.
Two old rivals who now live in two very different basketball worlds.
The Friars' glory days are all but gone as they try to survive in an expanded Big East Conference. But it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that PC could very easily be in the same strata as Canisius -- the school the Friars beat to win the N.I.T. in 1963 -- and not a school that will entertain Louisville on Saturday night in a rockin' downtown arena.
And it's not just Canisius, a school that now plays in the MAAC, far removed from big crowds and a conference tournament in Madison Square Garden. It's Niagara. It's St. Bonaventure. It's Holy Cross. It's Duquesne.
It's several schools that once were Friar rivals, schools that once were big names in eastern basketball that now seem little more than footnotes, standing on the side as the parade of big-time college basketball passes them by. It's Fordham and La Salle, too, small Catholic schools, very much like PC, that for a variety of reasons now find it virtually impossible to be the kind of basketball schools they once were.
It's easy to forget that.
Because you almost have to be 50 to remember when the Friars were no different than Canisius, little different than several small Catholic schools in the Northeast that used basketball back then as a public relations vehicle.
That certainly was the case for Providence College then, the fact that school president Father Slavin decided that a good basketball team might do more to spread the school's name than a few novenas in the chapel. But there was a real plan, and the only goal back then was to try to be competitive with Boston College and Holy Cross.
The point is the Friars' success in the late '50s was a marvelous fluke.
"We very easily could have turned into Assumption or Stonehill back then," Joe Mullaney once said, the same Joe Mullaney who built the program.
That's the history, and the problem is much of it's been forgotten, to the point that there's a sizable number of PC fans who just assume the Friars should always be good because they've always been good. This gets compounded with an aging fan base, one that's seen great players and great seasons, and doesn't have a whole lot of patience with anything less.
But PC basketball was built on a mixture of great coaching, a lot of unheralded kids who became great players, and a lot of luck, too. Underline luck. You can make the case the school often won despite itself.
There's little question Dave Gavitt and the opening of the Civic Center took the program uptown at a time when the Canisiuses of the world were starting to fall off the basketball map. Just as there's little question the Big East propped the Friars up again, gave them the imprimatur of the big time at a time when they were beginning to seem all about yesterday.
Take the Friars out of the Big East?
Hello Canisius.
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Re: Interesting column - Providence at crossroads? -- Alumina, 07:56:20am 01/07/06 Sat, [1]
Thank you for posting that article. It is right on the money and you could substitute the word 'Fairfield' for 'Canisius'
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Re: Interesting column - Providence at crossroads? -- JoeStag, 08:41:28am 01/07/06 Sat, [1]
We had opportunities to align with the Big East Catholic Universities in 1980, and and did not go after it.
We also had a good base of A-10 type Catholic Universities right in the MAAC with Lasalles, Holy Cross and Fordham that could have been parlayed into an A-10 Catholic league and we stood pat.
Now we seems that we want to move up , but its not that easy. But the first step would be for Fr von Arx to announce our intentions publically.... if that is out intentions.
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Re: Interesting column - Providence at crossroads? -- Stagophile, 08:49:02am 01/07/06 Sat, [1]
We had a chance to join ECAC Hockey, so we dropped hockey...
We had a chance to join Patriot League Football, so we dropped football...
Meanwhile our men's soccer team is nationally ranked and wins 12 games in a row, but does not receive an at large bid because we are in the MAAC. Plus our women's field hockey team is dumped by the Patriot League and now plays in the NEC because the Associate Members are not allowed.
The list goes on and on...men's lacrosse is the only thing that give us hope!
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Re: Interesting column - Providence at crossroads? -- Running Man, 10:02:11am 01/07/06 Sat, [1]
I read this piece with a certain degree of sadness. What made it especially poignant is that I am one of those guys who remembers the great pre-1980s teams. And of course the implication of the article is, despite Providence's difficulty competing with its fellow Big East members, moving to the Big East was the right thing to do and remaining there should never be an issue. Moreover,it accentuates the futility of playing at these lower levels and implies that once you find yourself there, it is difficult,if not impossible, to extricate your team from those circumstances.
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Re: Interesting column - Providence at crossroads? -- FU73, 01:24:14pm 01/07/06 Sat, [1]
Plans to renovate AH then AHY, lack of an effective plan to promote Stags basketball at AHY, chance to join Patriot Football then drop football, chance to join ECAC Hockey then drop hockey, watching Quinnipiac move forward with an agressive plan, the list goes on and on. We alumni should be dissapointed at the lack of leadership in an Athletic Department that seems to be moving forward without a plan or any strategy.
I agree that Fr. von Arx needs to address the issue of Fairfield athletics and soon. If it is all about money, then let's get another capital campaign going just for athletics this time. Get corporate sponsors to help. Look at Quinnipiac's website, their new basketball and hockey arena already has corporate sponsorship and half the "named" items are pre-sold already. Fairfield's last $150 million dollar campaign had money allocated for AH renovations that was not done. If we need hardware to get a game feed back to campus from AHY for internet broadcast, then let's have somebody do it now. If on campus sports can be broadcast, then do it. Have the administration find out what the alumni would want Fairfield athletics to be and do something before Fairfield falls farther behind UConn and Quinnipiac.
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