Upcoming Podcast Series on the 2003-04 Friars
Friarbasketball.com is teaming up with The Friar Podcast to bring you a podcast series on the highs and lows of the 2003-04 Providence Friars.
I have rather vivid memories of heading down to Alumni Hall with my college roommate on a hot July evening in the summer of 2003 to watch the Friars play pickup. I guess driving from Boston to watch pickup hoops is what you do when you’re 24 with nothing better to do.
I had a feeling the Friars were going to be good the following season, but after watching them scrimmage that night I was certain of it. The depth, the competitiveness, the versatility of that group -- it was all on display, and if I could have flipped the calendar from July to November that night I would have done so.
Months earlier, Providence, rather dramatically, turned its 2002-03 season around by ripping off a 26-6 run to come back from 16 down at St. John’s. Something seemed to click that night and it carried over for a year.
NCAA Tournament participants in 2001, the Friars were lost for a year and a half until that comeback at St. John’s. They closed that season by winning eight of their last 11 games, including a 76-70 victory at Connecticut featuring a formula for success that PC would follow for much of the next 12 months: sophomore Ryan Gomes scored 26 points against Emeka Okafor, and a reemergent Marcus Douthit blocked nine shots.
Tim Welsh returned five starters in 2003-04, and was due to welcome back former leading scorer Abdul Mills from injury, as well as a pair of top 100 freshmen who had Friartown buzzing in Dwight Brewington and Gerald Brown.
The 2004 Friars are most remembered for being on the cusp of the Big East championship and a potentially deep NCAA Tournament run (they were ranked 12th in the country with a 20-5 record heading into March) before losing their final four games of the season in shocking fashion.
It seemed unfathomable for a team that had carved through a very good Big East.
I always wanted to explore why things fell apart for that team, especially because they had been so resilient all season.
They lost in a blizzard to URI the year the Ryan Center opened on a Saturday afternoon. The following Tuesday they obliterated an Illinois team with five future NBA players in Madison Square Garden. That win kicked off a five-game winning streak, including at Virginia with former PC coach Pete Gillen.
They lost at the buzzer in consecutive games against Texas and Rutgers, but bounced back with six straight victories, including at Connecticut -- a performance by Gomes that led to this all-timer from Jim Calhoun.
This Providence team defeated the reigning national champions (Syracuse), the eventual ’04 champs (UConn), a 2004 Elite Eight team (Alabama), and that Illinois group that spent virtually all of the following season ranked #1 in the country before falling in the national title game. PC beat up on Gillen in Charlottesville, took out a tourney team in Richmond on the road and, if not for crushingly bad breaks against Texas and Rutgers, they very well could have been 22-3 heading into March.
There is so much I always wanted to dig into on this group, like how did Gomes go from having two D1 offers (PC and Siena) to 1st Team All American as a junior? Were there any warning signs of the late season collapse? What sort of difference could Mills have made had he not been hurt again? How did the staff balance reincorporating starter Rob Sanders after Brewington had filled in so ably during his absence? Just how far did this team think it was capable of going?
There is so much I’ve wanted to relive -- the wild night at the Dunk when Rick Barnes and Texas came to town and PJ Tucker broke our hearts, the absolutely insane atmosphere when Pitt was here in early March, hanging 100 on the road at Villanova, taking over the Garden against Illinois, and so on.
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I enrolled at Providence the fall after the 1997 Elite Eight run (lucky me), and still insist that the 2004 Friars were the best PC team I have seen since.
I long wanted to dig into this team again, but knew covering it all in an article would be challenging. Then I heard the terrific Friar Podcast that Bill Ricci came out with this year and was hopeful that we could collaborate on a miniseries that would delve deep into the 2003-04 team. We quickly agreed that this could be a potentially great story and went to work on reaching out to some of the players and coaches who were a part of the season. We are aiming to release the first episode in August.
This is the type of content that I am hoping to do more of once we officially transition into releasing Friarbasketball content on a weekly basis. Billy and I are both extremely excited to introduce this pod series and share the story of the 2003-04 Friars.
Friartown memories at its best..