Spirits of '73 live on

["Stephen Beauregard" <sb@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Spirits of '73 live on

30 years later, Friars recall a special team

By Jackie MacMullan, Globe Staff, 3/18/2003

ROVIDENCE -- The two businessmen stride purposefully into Angelo's restaurant
on Federal Hill, dressed nattily in their suits and coats and ties. They
exchange pleasantries, then retreat to a table near the window. They easily
could be mistaken for power brokers about to strike a deal, until the coach
walks in, semi-retired now, wearing a golf shirt and slacks. There are more
handshakes, hugs, and the lunch patrons are now staring, because here comes
Marvin, bursting through the door, tall and trim, still speaking an octave
louder than everyone else in Rhode Island. He yells, ''Ernie D! My brother!''
The businessman, Ernie DiGregorio, grins, his arms outstretched. The other
suit, Mark McAndrew, plops his head into his hands, and says, ''Oh no, here we
go.'' Just like that, they're kids again, giggling about pranks on the bus,
bragging about their winning shots, reliving the glory of 30 years ago, when
their Providence College basketball team went 27-4 and crashed the 1973 Final
Four, capturing the hearts of New England basketball fans.



''Hold on, fellas,'' says Marvin Barnes, a cell phone pressed to his ear.
''I'm trying to get a young man his license. He's got 10 tickets already. I'm
talking running stop signs, no turn on left. Ten tickets, and he doesn't even
have his license yet. But I'm running a foundation to help kids just like
this.

''I tell the judges, `Give these kids a break. Do you want them to end up like
I did, a dope fiend in prison?' I've been in rehab 19 times. I tell the judges
these kids need a license to get a job, stay out of trouble. It doesn't hurt
some judges are PC grads. I tell them, `Marvin Barnes, Class of '74, show me
some love.' ''

Marvin roars at his own humor as Kevin Stacom walks in -- ''late, like
always,'' observes Ernie.

''Kevin Stacom! My adopted brother!'' shouts Marvin.

''I've got to say, it's kind of aggravating after all Marvin has been through
that he still looks better than all of us,'' Stacom says.

''You're still fit, Stake,'' says the coach, Dave Gavitt. ''We were so happy
when Kevin transferred from Holy Cross. He practices with us a whole year, but
he can't play. He's dying to get in a game. His first one is at St. Francis
[N.Y.], back when they were good. Kevin is so nervous, his first two shots are
airballs.''

''It's funny,'' Stacom says. ''I'm scouting a college game for the [Dallas]
Mavericks the other day, and I'm watching these kids take these horrible
shots, and I'm saying to myself, `How can anyone throw up an airball? I never
did that.' ''

''We could always score,'' says McAndrew, or Mac. ''We didn't call many plays,
but you gotta think the `5' play was the most popular one, right Marvin?''

''Ooh, Ernie, he's coming for you,'' Marvin warns.

''The `5' play was simple,'' Mac says. ''Ernie comes down with the ball and
holds up five fingers. That means he's going to take the next five shots.'''

''Aw, c'mon, you know I always got the ball to Kevin and Marvin,'' Ernie
protests. ''We had great chemistry. People were worried about me and Marvin.
Nobody thought a black guy from South Providence and an Italian kid from North
Providence would make it together. Make it? Hell, we were best friends.''

''All my brothers from the ghetto would walk into Coach Gavitt's office and
raise hell,'' Marvin says. ''Then all the Italian guys from Ernie's
neighborhood would go in there and raise hell. Coach Gavitt would walk into
practice and tell us, `OK, Marvin, if I don't play you, I'm going to get
stabbed, and if I don't play you, Ernie, I'm going to get shot.' ''

''Like there was any question you guys were going to play,'' Mac pipes in.
''I'm a freshman on that team, and the only way guys like me and Rick Dunphy
are going to get in is if the team was up by 20 or more.

''When we're up 20, we're getting ready to go in, but these guys look over to
the bench and see us. So they start letting the other team go in for layups.
The lead starts going down to 18, 16, 14, and Coach is going crazy, but he's
got to leave 'em in. They hated coming out.''


An excellent mix

Gavitt ticks off the nucleus of his team: Ernie the point guard, Marvin the
big man, Stacom the shooter, Fran Costello the thinker, Nehru King the scorer,
and Charlie Crawford the defender, who alternated as a starter with King.

''Nehru could be dangerous,'' Ernie says. ''He had great speed. He was a
streak shooter, but if we struggled, he was the guy who could hit three in a
row.''

''Nehru was really good, but he ran like a duck, remember?'' says Mac.

''You didn't want Nehru handling the ball much,'' Gavitt says.

''But if he had a 15-foot jumper, that was money,'' Stacom adds.

''Nehru was like the rest of us,'' Ernie says. ''What you had was a team that
never played at half-speed. Not in practice, not at the playground, and never
in games. We had certain aspirations. We hated to lose.''

The Friars did lose to Santa Clara, 97-92, in the Utah Classic Dec. 16, 1972.

''The night before, we had beaten South Carolina,'' Gavitt says, his eyes
shining. ''They had Kevin Joyce, Brian Winters, Alex English, Mike Dunleavy.
They were ranked No. 5 at the time.

''So we play Santa Clara, and they have this really good big man named Mike
Stewart -- remember him, Marvin? We're up 6 or 7, and we're playing OK, and
there's about two minutes left until halftime, and Marvin gets his second foul
. . .''

''It wasn't a foul, Coach,'' Marvin interrupts.

''Anyway, I put in Alan Baker,'' Gavitt says.

''Remember Bake?'' Mac cuts in. ''He was always saying, `I'm working, coach.
I'm working.' ''

''Only he never was,'' says Ernie. The laughter fills the room.

''I loved Bake,'' says Gavitt, ''but I wanted to kill him half the time. The
first thing he does is turn it over. Then he comes down, doesn't slide, and
fouls Stewart for a 3-point play.''

''So now we go into the locker room, and we're only up about 4 or 5. I lose
it. I mean, I start throwing stuff, and I'm swearing . . .''

''And that's not how Coach usually is,'' Stacom interjects, ''so we're
wondering, `What's the matter with him?' ''

''I was mad at Bake,'' Gavitt says. ''Not the rest of you -- just him. I
helped us lose that game. Instead of pumping you guys up, I totally deflated
you.''

''So that's why,'' says Ernie, as if he has just found a key to an old steamer
trunk that's been under his bed for three decades.

''I went home and looked at the film,'' Gavitt says. ''I see down the stretch
that Ernie is trying to win the thing on his own. I think to myself, `I've
given this kid complete freedom.' I call him up and have him come down. I
don't say anything to him. I just roll the film, stop it, reverse it, roll it
again.

''Finally Ernie gets up and says, `I understand, Coach.' That was it. We never
looked back.''

''The only loss we had the rest of the way was to UCLA,'' says Mac. ''That's
when [Bill] Walton was at his best. Ernie and Marvin were sick with the flu
for that game. We were hoping to get them again in the NCAAs. We won our last
14 games before the tournament.''

''That's because we were close,'' says Marvin. ''One of the smart things Coach
did was give us different roommates for every road trip. He put me with Franny
Costello. Now Franny was an intellectual. He was very conservative. My ways
were -- how shall I say it? -- well, not like Franny's. Dave makes us be
roommates, and before you know it, Franny and I are tight.''

''One thing, though, Coach. How come you never let me and Ernie room
together?''

''We did -- once,'' says Ernie. ''Don't you remember? He caught us at the bar.
That was the end of that.''

''We were a loose group,'' Stacom says. ''If you had put the wrong guy in
charge of this team, it would have been a disaster. If you had given us an
`I'll-show-you' kind of coach, we would have failed. Coach was the perfect fit
for us.''


Rout of Maryland

In the 1973 NCAA

Tournament, Providence beat St. Joseph's and Penn, leaving Maryland in its
path for a trip to the Final Four.

''That was the game [Maryland coach] Lefty Driesell didn't know my name,''
says Ernie. ''He kept telling the press, `Ernie whatever-his-name-is.' Well,
he knew my name when it was over.''

When it was over, a highly touted Maryland team featuring Tom McMillen was
spanked, 103-89. Ernie D had 26 by halftime. Driesell was so upset by the loss
he drove more than 300 miles home to College Park, Md., rather than fly with
his team.

''Years later, I'd run into Lefty and he'd say, `I never got to the Final Four
because of you,' '' Gavitt says, laughing. '' `I couldn't remember that kid's
name, and you put that damn article up in the locker room, didn't you?' ''

''We were staying in Charlotte for that regional,'' Mac says, ''in a crummy
hotel with broken air conditioning. Me and Dunphy booby-trapped the guys'
rooms. We'd put a cup of water on top of the door, knock, then run. They'd
open the door and get all wet.

''Well, we knew they'd come for us sooner or later. They knocked on our door,
and they're standing there with garbage pails full of water, but we had
grabbed every fire extinguisher in the place. We told them, `Back up slowly.'
Ernie wouldn't listen. He started coming, so we let him have it.

''We didn't realize there were chemicals in those things. We got Ernie right
in the eye. All of a sudden, there's our best player, down on one knee,
blinded. I said to Dunphy, `Wow, we're dead.' ''

''I've got to say, this is the first time I've heard this story,'' says
Gavitt.

''When we got to the Final Four, we told 'em, `No more pranks,' '' Ernie says.
''We wanted to win. And we had Memphis State down by something like 15 in the
first half when Marvin got hurt.

''I got smacked in the nose, and when I pulled back, my knee popped,'' says
Marvin. ''I couldn't straighten it. It hurt like hell. They took me to Barnes
Hospital in St. Louis.''

''It was bad,'' says Mac. ''We all went in to see him at halftime -- except
Ernie. Ernie wouldn't look.''

''You've got to remember, we were a team that revolved around Marvin's
rebounding and fast breaks,'' Ernie says.

''Marvin averaged 19 rebounds a night,'' Stacom explains. ''Every night.''


Dream unfulfilled

''I had a decision to make,'' Gavitt says. ''We still had the lead at
halftime. If we took the air out of the ball, we might have won it. But I
couldn't do it. It wasn't right to make a travesty out of the Final Four.''

Providence lost, 98-85, canceling the rematch with Walton and UCLA.

''We'd still be talking about that Memphis State game if I could have
played,'' Marvin says. ''We would have killed them. They were afraid of us.''

Suddenly, there is silence at the table, as the unfulfilled dream of a
national championship settles, along with the veal chops, ravioli, salad, and
pasta.

''No one else knew how good we were, but we knew,'' says Mac.

''I'm going to work later,'' says Ernie D, who is a celebrity host for the
Foxwoods casino. ''There will be 4,500 people there. People will walk up to me
and say, `Hey, Ernie D, from Providence. I remember that team. We loved you
guys.' It happens to me every day. Thirty years later, and people still
remember.''

Marvin's cell phone rings. ''I'll be right there, man,'' he says, winking at
his teammates. ''Don't worry, I'm going to get you that license.''

The two businessmen straighten their ties and follow the coach out the door.
The scout for the Mavericks trails, but Marvin lingers.

''I love being home,'' announces Marvin Barnes, Providence College class of
'74, to the patrons of Angelo's. ''I love it when the boys get together.''

Thanks,

Steve
sb@maine.rr.com

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