Friarbasketball.com Turns 1,000 (on Substack)!

Friarbasketball.com Turns 1,000!

Roughly eight years ago, the plan was to follow the Providence careers of AJ Reeves and David Duke Jr. and then graciously call it a career.

Back then, my 40th birthday was on the horizon, my kids were just three and one, and I was in the process of getting my Master’s — but the biggest reason why I felt ready to move on from Friarbasketball.com was that I felt like I was running out of new ideas to bring to the space.

That was what I prided myself on since starting the site in December 2009.

I was a writer by trade, and thought about starting a site or blog of my own for a few years before taking the plunge. If I was going to create content, I wanted to bring something different than just another voice.

New England prep schools started really emerging at that time, so I spent the next couple of years learning everything I could about local Friar recruiting targets (or kids they might eventually recruit) in a few years. With the team so down at the time, people were looking for a reason for hope, so some of the diehards found me quickly and were all in.

A look back the earliest days of Friarbasketball.com (then Friarbasketball.net!)

With each passing year, I found myself wanting to bring something new to the table. What would people as invested in this program as me want to see next?

The addition of Craig Belhumeur in 2011 was a game-changer. His strengths balanced mine. He redesigned the site twice (I’d initially had a very simple Blogger template), understood digital marketing, and did the on-camera interviews that I never wanted to host at the time.

A year later, we added the great Craig Leighton to expand our recruiting, historical, and current-day coverage of the program. The three of us formed a team that I was so proud of and really balanced each other out perfectly. In the ensuing years, we did some things with video that (while commonplace now) were new at the time — game and recruiting highlights, posting full press conferences, sharing short interviews with Ed Cooley postgame, and so on.

I always wanted to bring something new, and honestly felt like we needed to in order to maintain and grow our following. When you’re independent, you feel like you can never let go of the rope.

Fast forward a few years, and I felt like my inspiration was waning. As much as I loved covering the team, there were nights when writing a game recap after a December win over Central Connecticut State felt burdensome. There were times when I’d go to a game in NYC or Mohegan with friends and wake up at 5am the next day to get a game story out.

As much as I loved it, with a growing family, it was only natural to wonder how much more I had left in the tank. I’d rather fully stop than scale it back, and after nearly a decade of year-round coverage it felt like maybe it was time.

Life got in the way somewhat at the beginning of the pandemic, forcing me to scale back my writing for a few months. It was the only time in 11 years that I’d done so. If I hadn’t, I probably wouldn’t be doing what I am today — celebrating writing over 1,000 articles on Substack since starting here in June 2021 (this is officially post #1,011).

I realized I didn’t want to step away, but I also needed to do it differently. Then, one random day in the spring of 2021, my wife mentioned Substack and we talked about how moving to a newsletter format could make sense.

Within a day or so of looking into it, I was in. I wanted to create a cross between the depth of The Athletic with the weekly excitement I felt as a kid when Sports Illustrated hit my mailbox. It would allow me to write on my time, and provide really deep coverage of the Friars.

I couldn’t have timed it any better. The following season, Providence won the Big East regular season title and reached the Sweet 16 for the first time since 1997 — and if you’re reading this you know how wild the ensuing years became.

I’ve evolved what we’ve done here since making the move — going from a Sunday night email with 7-10 articles being sent at once to sending emails more regularly throughout the week.

My partnership with Billy Ricci brought me back into the podcasting space, and we’ve just had a lot of fun talking about PC, both on and off camera.

The only thing missing is Craig L. He’s been gone for over two years now, and there are still long drives in the car, or on walks, when I get that itch to call him up knowing we’ll talk about the Friars for the next hour. We would talk for over an hour about PC whether it was during March Madness or in mid-June. We both just loved it all — the history, the what-ifs, the recruiting and team building. I really miss calling him and talking about it all.

I try not to focus inward too much on this site, but when I saw our post count pass 1,000 recently, I couldn’t help but think of how energizing the move here has been, or about the care that has gone into our coverage since 2009.

It’s been energizing because of all of you.

One thousand articles equates to almost 20 articles a month over the past four years — and that’s without aggregation and by writing in-depth articles, creating podcasts, and editing video content.

It goes without saying, but I genuinely appreciate anyone who has supported us throughout the years. Watching our email distribution list and subscriber count grow has been both humbling and motivating — I really want to make sure we’re providing something different.

Why Subscribe to Friar Basketball on Substack?

I’m as excited as ever to start another season, and look forward to continuing to provide consistently solid coverage of the Friars.

Thanks for joining us on this ride.