SN Archive: Remembering Rick Pitino's first Final Four at Providence (April 13, 1987, issue)
SN Archive: Remembering Rick Pitino's first Final Four at Providence (April 13, 1987, issue) originally appeared on The Sporting News . Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here . This article, ' Waking up echoes at Providence ' by Bill Reynolds, originally appeared in the April 13, 1987 issue of The Sporting News.
PROVIDENCE, R. I. —He arrived here two years ago making more promises than a door-to-door salesman.
He came armed with a reputation as a gung-ho recruiter who once had postponed his honeymoon to go on a recruiting mission. And, from the beginning, he promised to wake up the echoes of Providence College's great basketball tradition. “When you go to sleep tonight, I don't want you to think about your Visa or Mastercard,” he told the school's booster club the first time he addressed it.
“I don't want you to think about your troubles. I want you to go to sleep and dream about cutting down the nets. ” Who was this guy?
At the time it was as if Rick Pitino was just another obsessed coach with a pocketful of mumbles that are promises, some basketball version of Elmer Gantry, an evangelist with a clipboard. Go to sleep and dream about cutting down the nets? With a program that had been 11-65 in the Big East Conference since the league's inception?
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