Thomas was excellent in an opening round win over Pat Garrity and Notre Dame in an 11am start. The next day's loss to eventual National Champion Connecticut was a tough one to swallow, but the Friars played well against a team that entered play 26-4 on the season (a two point game with 2:30 to play). It was a clear rebuilding year with Thomas and freshman Erron Maxey manning the paint for an undersized Friar team, but better days were soon to follow. I just watched this team make an Elite Eight run and win the Big East Tournament during my high school years and it was just a matter of time before they did something similar in my four years at PC.
June, 1, 2010. My four years at Providence have long since passed (sadly) and that run never came. Now 13 years after stepping foot on campus I'm still waiting for my first NCAA tournament win. Since Jamel and Justin Farley led PC to that early morning win over the Irish in 1998 Providence has won two games in the Big East Tournament: a blowout win in 2003 over West Virginia by a red hot Friar team and a harder-than-it-needed-to-be victory over winless DePaul in the first round of 2009's tourney.
Providence is currently recruiting kids who were in diapers when the Friars upset Duke in '97. Literally. They are 2-12 in their last 14 Big East Tournament appearances.
For all of the talk about Providence being a difficult place to coach and the fans of PC having unrealistic expectations, the Dunk is never empty during Big East games.
With everything that has taken place over the past two months, Providence fans will be back again next year and if the young Friars show promise, the die hards will look towards the future, not this past spring.
The die hards will always show. The problem is, the Providence College class of 2010 will be the tenth class in a row to graduate from PC without experiencing a tournament win. Nearly half of those classes have not experienced a tournament appearance.
Thirteen years removed from their last tournament run, there is an entire generation of Rhodes Island kids who don't know what a second round PC tournament team looks like. How many Rhode Island kids under 20 can remember 1997?
This is not an article about an aging Friar fanbase, but rather, a patient one that is often miscast as one with unreasonable expectations.
This city is electric when the Friars are in contention. When the patience of PC fans meets realized expectations the result is a complete mad house. The Dunk came alive in the upset of #1 Pittsburgh in 2009, but there is a different vibe when Providence fans know entering the building they are a Big East contender. The crowd doesn't get progressively louder, rather the place buzzes from the start and carries the Friars like they did against Texas in 2004.
It is games like that which show of the best of Providence's basketball program. There are unrealistic pockets of fans in any fanbase, but in order to grow the fanbase further PC needs to leave graduates with memories of significant wins and young kids with memories of growing up going to the mad house that the Dunk can become.
Your die hards will remember the details of a loss to UConn in the Big East Tournament 12 years ago. They'll sit tight through the difficult times, follow recruiting closely, and fill the Dunk no matter what the product is on the court, but there is another faction of PC fans that are there for the taking as well.
Unless Providence gets surprising seasons from a cast of freshmen next year, then the fringe fans will view this as a similar season in Friartown as the past five or six. The die hards will see progression in Vincent Council and potential in Gerard Coleman and ready themselves for a more optimistic future.
The die hards who fill the Dunk now will always be there, but it's time to create a new generation of die hard Providence basketball fans. A few more moments like this won't hurt.
For those of you interested in taking a trip down memory lane, here are highlights from Dave Gavitt's 1976 Friars at the Dunk versus Louisville. Not sure which is better, the Louisville male cheerleaders' back peddle dance or PC's warmup pants.
I also found an undefeated 1965 Friar squad taking on Villanova.
