Our Second Podseries is in the Works!

The Friar Podcast and Friar Basketball are excited to look back at the 2013-14 Providence College Friars -- a group that won the Big East Tournament and set the tone for the Ed Cooley era.

As thrilling as last season was covering the Friars, one of the best things we have done at Friar Basketball since moving to Substack last summer was our podcast series on the 2003-04 Friars.

For a litany of reasons, I thought the 2004 team would be a unique group to dig into, and after I heard Billy Ricci’s Friar Podcast (and, more significantly, got to know him) I thought that together we could pull off a deep dive into how that team was built, the journeys the core of that team took to get to Providence, and the highs and lows of that season.

The result was a four-part podseries in which we spoke to four starters from that team and a member of the coaching staff, and detailed the build-up to that season and how it all unfolded.

Almost immediately after wrapping up the ’04 podcast in October, Billy and I began talking about what would come next. We knew it wouldn’t take place until the offseason, as the series was a pretty significant undertaking, but it didn’t take long to determine the group we wanted to focus on next.

Over the course of the next month and a half, Billy and I will be speaking with players and coaches from the 2014 Big East Tournament Championship Friars to reflect on how Ed Cooley and that team completed a rebuilding project in just three short seasons.

This was the group that helped define what the Ed Cooley era would look like at Providence College — at a time of great change in the Big East. The league was in its first year post-realignment, under a new television contract with Fox Sports.

While there were questions about where the “new” Big East was headed, those who paid close enough attention the season prior understood Providence was on the verge of a breakthrough.

That breakthrough came during a season in which six of PC’s games went into overtime (including four that lasted into double OT), the Friars returned to the Big East Tournament Championship game for the first time in 20 years, and then ended a ten-year NCAA Tournament drought.

We’ll examine the impact of Ed Cooley’s hiring, how he was able to so quickly turn the program into a winner, and discuss how this team paved the way for so much of the success Providence has experienced over the past decade.

Our goal is to release the podcast in October.

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If you weren’t subscribing to our site last October, here are the articles with links to each of the 2004 podcast series episodes.

Episode 1: Competition Breeds Success

Episode 2: Don’t Take Me Out of This Game

Episode 3: Back on the Map

Episode 4: The Final Curtain