PROVIDENCE – The last time Providence coach Tim Welsh walked out of the Garden, it was at the lowest point of his career – or so he thought. His Friars had just been hammered by Seton Hall in the Big East Tourney to end an 11-19 season. His star guard had missed the whole season. His team had suffered through its worst campaign since 1985. It could not possibly, Welsh convinced himself, get any worse.
Then came The Call. And The Doubts.
Several of his players were arrested for their part in an off-campus brawl. Three were expelled. Tongues started wagging that Welsh had brought bad kids to Providence, the tiny Catholic school with a spotless reputation. First came the rumors, then the self-doubt.
“It feels like 20 years ago,” Welsh said with a smile Friday, leaning back into a plush sofa in his sumptuous new office. He’s clad in a black Providence sweatsuit that matches his neatly-quaffed hair. “We must be winning,” he said, jibing a reporter. “The Post is coming up here.”
Oh, they’re winning all right, the same way Welsh won at Iona – with fastbreaks and pressure and depth. This is the team he envisioned when he came to Providence in ’98.
The 40-year-old Massena native has his Friars 17-6 after they shot 14-of-19 from 3-point range last night to overwhelm No. 12 Georgetown 103-79. And their 8-3 mark in the league’s East division is their best league start ever, even better than Rick Pitino’s 1987 Final Four team.
“We feel we’re a good team and every game we can win,” guard Abdul Mills said. His Friars might’ve cracked the Top 25 if they hadn’t blown a five-point, second-half lead in an 83-68 loss at UConn Tuesday. But ranked or not, their goals are all within reach: Their first regular-season league title. A Big East Tourney crown. Dancing in March. And if they keep winning, they’ll get the rankings and respect they want.
*
“Everyone wanted to be ranked. We were so close,” said 5-9 senior point guard John Linehan. “But we just need to stay focused, keep winning and we’ll get there someday.”
He’s sitting at a table after finishing the Friars’ ritual team meal at a downtown restaurant called Hops. (It’s a fitting name for a place frequented by a basketball team, although the moniker comes from another kind of hops). As he did in 1998-99, Linehan leads the league in steals and the Friars in intangibles.
“I’m not [surprised],” Linehan said of their success. “I knew if we got better individually we’d shock a lot of people in the league and the country, and we’re doing it.”
In the Friars’ fast-break game, athletic forward Erron Maxey leads them in scoring (11.3) and rebounding (7.0), but Linehan is their most indispensable player. That was never more evident than when he played just six games last year because of injuries. First came a sports hernia that was expected to sideline him just three weeks. But he developed an infection, and then finally blood clots.
Linehan’s condition worsened to the point he could barely walk, and he underwent three separate surgeries. And with no experienced point guard to get the ball to Maxey and 7-2 center Karim Shabazz, they finished dead last in the league in offense (64.2) and ahead of only BC in the standings (4-12).
“It was tough. I couldn’t walk. One day, one of the managers had to dress me because I couldn’t bend,” Linehan said. “It was hard on me. Then to have to sit and watch the team lose every game, that year was hard.”
The co-captain was helpless as the Friars’ eight newcomers floundered on the court. He had to watch as they made mistake after mistake. But those gaffes paled in comparison to the mistake some of them made that spring.
*
The Friars lost 85-65 to Seton Hall in the first round of the Big East Tourney, and like a man being tortured, Welsh felt only relief when it was over.
“I remember walking out to 33rd St. with my mother and my sister. We took a long walk up Fifth Ave. It was like a breath of fresh air,” Welsh recalled. “[I thought] the season’s over; now we start working toward next year, and this won’t happen again. Then the phone call comes. It’s every coach’s nightmare that you hope will never happen . . . but it happened.”
It was an off-campus brawl in April that involved eight of his players, a fight so violent that two students needed reconstructive facial surgery.
All eight players were disciplined by the school. Three – Donta Wade, Jamal Camah and David Murray – were expelled, while Mark Jarrell-Wright and Marcus Jefferson transferred. Welsh was left with just four returning scholarship players, and Pitino lamented at the time, “It’s going to set the program back four or five years.”
Pitino was wrong. Oh, sure, Welsh admitted earlier, “You start to have this self-doubt. It begins to creep into everything you do. It was a miserable time.” But he learned – as his Hall of Fame father Jerry had, as Pitino had, as all coaches do – that you earn your pay in the tough times.
“Those kids weren’t bad kids; they just made a bad decision. [But] absolutely, that perception was definitely there,” Welsh said. “My concern was to repair the damage to the program, and also an obligation to the kids who got in trouble. I didn’t just abandon them.”
Welsh knew the fight had shaken the family atmosphere at Providence, a tiny Catholic school with the Big East’s smallest enrollment (3,812). To mend fences the players handed out tickets and T-shirts at the cafeteria. They held workouts at an inner-city youth center. They attended other school sporting events. And most of all, they won.
“The good feeling is back. I wasn’t sure it’d [come back] this quick, but it has,” Welsh said. “They’ve carried themselves with a confident bravado that hasn’t been obnoxious, a something-to-prove attitude. We lost some respect [last year] with the year we had, and the things off the court. We took a lot of hits, but these are good kids. They have a lot of pride.”
They stood proud in wins over UConn, Miami, Villanova and St. John’s. But they remember enough of last year to stay hungry, to avoid complacency and keep the edge and fire that got them here.
“It seems like yesterday,” senior guard Chris Rogers said of last season. “We talk about it every day. We use it as an incentive to get up every day and do well this year. It keeps you on your toes. We went through that last year; we don’t want to go back; keep going forward. Our goal was just to do well in the Big East, and now [it’s] to win the Big East.”