March is here. Which means madness. March Madness. NCAA college basketball madness.
Is Providence College, given its late-season funk, on the bubble without a strong Big East Tournament? Will the record-setting URI women receive a bid despite losing in the semifinals of the Atlantic-10 Championship? Good questions. Answers to follow.
But first, join me in The Public’s Radio Time Machine. It’s 1973. The Providence College Friars have dribbled downtown into the sparkling new Providence Civic Center. Coached by a legend in the making, Dave Gavitt, and led by the incomparable Ernie DiGregorio of North Providence and Marvin Barnes of Providence plus the Holy Cross transfer Kevin Stacom, they have christened the new building with a 13-0 record at home.
And what a building it is! A 12,000-seat gem in a tray of old costume jewelry that is downtown Providence 50 years ago. Cherished department stores like Shepard’s with its famous sidewalk clock and Tea Room, Gladdings, and Cherry & Webb are sliding toward bankruptcy — all crippled by an economic downturn and the new suburban Midland and Warwick Malls. The Outlet, a retail landmark anchoring lower Weybosset Street, is heading in the same direction. Union Station is an aging mess. A decrepit parking deck fronts Kennedy Plaza, a dreary tunnel passes beneath the train station, and acres of tracks and unattractive parking lots mar the landscape toward the State House. Rhode Island Junior College squats near the top of Smith Hill. The widest bridge in the U.S. covers polluted rivers. The Bonanza Bus terminal sits at the corner of Sabin and West Exchange Streets.
Downtown is not a pretty place, so it is easy for the Civic Center, hard by the Atwells Avenue exit on I-95, to stand out with its distinctive roof, unobstructed sightlines and mid-arena concourse.
Venturing forth from Alumni Hall, their small campus gym, the PC Friars also stand out. With DiGregorio, the all-purpose guard few outside New England know, leading Gavitt’s fast-breaking offense, and Barnes, the enigmatic big man, rebounding at both ends of the court, the Friars start fast and take a 10-1 record to Los Angeles for a late January date with undefeated defending NCAA champion UCLA and its star center, Bill Walton. They compete for a half, but the Bruins and Walton are too good and win 101-77.
Undaunted, the Friars return to their new home and do not lose again for two months. They win 14 in a row and close the regular season ranked No.5 in the AP Poll. Ernie D dazzles with his passing and scoring. He torches Fairfield for 37 points, URI for 39 and St. John’s for 41. Marvin can’t be stopped on the boards. He grabs 28 rebounds against Fairfield and 30 against Division II Assumption. He gets at least 15 rebounds in all but two of the games he played. Stacom scores 30 against URI and 25 against Villanova.
The Friars are 24-2 overall after the regular season and receive a bid to the NCAA Tournament — only 25 teams in 1973. They defeat St. Joseph’s by 13 at home and Penn by 22 and Maryland by 14 in the East Regional in Charlotte. Maryland coach Lefty Driesell can’t pronounce DiGregorio’s name before the tournament but certainly knows it after the regional.
The Friars are on to the Final Four is in St. Louis, a decade after the 1963 Friars won the National Invitational Tournament in New York, a really big deal in those days. PC vs. Memphis State. UCLA vs. Indiana. Things look good for the Friars. Ernie is scoring from outside and flipping behind-the-back passes to Marvin cutting for layups. The Tigers have no answers. PC leads by 16.
But everything changes when Marvin steps on somebody’s foot, twists his knee and goes down with about 12:50 remaining in the half. He staggers to the bench. It’s bad. Memphis State starts to come back, but PC still leads at the break. It’s a different game in the second half. The Tigers capitalize on Barnes’s absence and pull away for a 98-85 victory.
For PC, the season is over. They show up for the third-place game — yes, there is such a thing — and lose to Indiana, 97-79. Stacom scores 29 points.
TPR’s Time Machine grinds to a stop.
Old folks around Providence remain convinced 50 years later that had Barnes not suffered that knee injury, PC would have beaten Memphis State and given UCLA a run for its money. Ernie D has said the Friars would have won the championship.
We’ll never know, will we? As it turned out, UCLA routed Memphis State, 87-66, behind Walton’s 44 points (21-22 shooting) for its 75th consecutive victory and seventh consecutive championship.
The 1973 Friars finished 27-4 and ranked No. 4. All-America Ernie D led the NCAA Tournament with 128 points, a 25.6 average. For the season, he averaged 24.6 points, 8.6 assists and 3.2 rebounds. Buffalo took him with the third pick in the 1973 draft; he was the NBA rookie of the year in 1974 and shares the NBA rookie record of 25 assists in a game. A knee injury cut his career short. He started the 1978 season with the Lakers and finished with the Celtics. In John Havlicek’s last game, Ernie D played 15 minutes and passed to Havlicek whenever he could. Havlicek finished with 29 points in 41 minutes and made his last basket on an Ernie D pass. Ernie had three assists. That game, coincidentally against Buffalo, was also DiGregorio’s last in the NBA.
DiGregorio, 72 now, coached girls high school basketball in Rhode Island and was an ambassador for Foxwoods Resort and a motivational speaker.
Barnes led PC in rebounding in every game he played as a junior in 1973 — except Memphis State — and finished with 19 rebounds and 18.3 assists per game. In 1974 he led the nation in rebounding as a senior was All-America. He signed with the St. Louis Spirits of the ABA for $2 million instead of the Philadelphia 76ers of the NBA, which drafted him with the second pick overall. He was rookie of the year in 1974-75 but, as teammate Bob Lanier recounted years later, he preferred “the street life”, which got him into trouble. He spent time in jail on gun charges and played only six professional seasons. Years later, Barnes straightened himself out and spoke to youth groups about his life. He died in 2014 at 62.
Stacom averaged 17.8 points and 3.9 rebounds in 1973. As a senior in 1974 he helped PC get back to the NCAA Tournament; they lost in the regional. The Celtics selected him with the 35th pick in the 1974 draft, and he played six seasons with the Celtics, Pacers and Bucks. He was on Boston’s 1976 championship team. He later coached the Newport Gulls of the USBL and scouted in the NBA. He is 71.
Fifty years later in 2023, what are PC’s post-season chances? The Friars entered the last weekend of the regular season with yellow caution flags flying. They are only 4-5 since February 1 with a disappointing loss at St. John’s, a bad loss at UConn, their first home loss last week to Xavier that jeopardized the No. 2 seed in the Big East Championship, and another blowout loss at home Saturday afternoon to Seton Hall that put the No. 3 seed at risk. The Friars gave up 176 points in their last two games.
Bryce Hopkins (16.5 ppg), Ed Croswell (13.4), Devin Carter (13.2), Noah Locke (11.3), and Jared Bynum (10.0) compose a solid core worthy of their Top 25 ranking, but they and their teammates will have to regain the swagger they showed during their nine-game winning streak if they hope to do much in the post-season. Plus, the Friars are only 6-8 away from home, including 0-2 on neutral courts.
And how about those URI women? Atlantic-10 co-champs with UMass. Second seed in the A-10 Tournament. 23-5 after the regular season, a program record. 14-2 in the A-10, another record. 13-1 in the Ryan Center, yet another program first.
Wait! There’s more. Tammi Reiss is the A-10 Coach of the Year for the second time in three seasons. Junior Maye´ Toure´ (13.8 ppg, 8.6 rpg) is the A-10 Most Improved Player and first-team All-A10. She led the conference with her 53.8 shooting percentage.
URI beat George Washington in the A-10 quarterfinals but did not play its best basketball in the semifinals and lost to Saint Louis. Now the waiting begins. The fields for the NCAA and WNIT tournaments will be announced March 12 and 13, respectively.
With six players from France on the roster this season, these Rams are enjoying a bon voyage. Just as the 1973 Friars did.
Mike Szostak can be reached at mszostak@thepublicsradio.org
